Skip to content
Drum

Software for Building Design Practices

Run Your Building Design Practice Without the Spreadsheets

Drum gives building design practices a single place to manage their pipeline, track time against project stages, keep fees on target and invoice through Xero. Your full project history comes with you.

Book a free demo
Run Your Building Design Practice Without the Spreadsheets

  1. Track time by project stage

    Log hours against concept design, design development, construction documentation, council approvals or any custom stage your practice uses.

  2. Know your project margins

    See live profitability across every project. Catch when design revisions or drawn-out approvals are pushing you past your quoted fee.

  3. Stay on top of new enquiries

    Track every opportunity from first phone call to signed fee proposal. See your weighted pipeline at a glance and forecast the months ahead.

  4. Invoice through Xero

    Tracked time and expenses flow straight into Xero invoices. No re-keying, no end-of-month catch-up.

  5. Plan your team's workload

    See who has capacity and who is stretched across too many projects. Know when you can take on a new residential job and when to push start dates back.

  6. Australian-built, Australian-hosted

    Made by a team that understands the way Australian building design practices work. Your data is stored on Australian servers.

Built for how building design practices actually work

Flexible project stages

Organise projects around the way you actually work, from initial brief and concept sketches through design development, council submissions and construction documentation.

Professional fee proposals

Put together detailed proposals with fixed fees, hourly rates or a mix of both. Set follow-up reminders so outstanding quotes don't slip through the cracks.

Simple time tracking

Quick, straightforward time entry that logs every hour against the right project and stage. Your team will pick it up in days, not months.

Deep Xero integration

Two-way sync keeps your project financials and accounting in lockstep. Turn tracked time into invoices with a few clicks.

Drum's philosophy of being a 'single source of truth' has allowed us to manage project data simply and accurately. It has helped streamline our processes and we have found the team to be accommodating in all regards.
Lauren Sutton

Lauren Sutton

Accounts Manager, Projex Partners

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Common questions from building design practices about how Drum handles project stages, time tracking, fees and Xero integration.

How does Drum's Xero integration work?
Drum integrates with Xero for invoicing, purchase orders, bills, payroll and leave requests. Drum's invoice integration automatically syncs in the background, so you never have to manually fetch new data.

Can I customise project templates in Drum?
Your project templates in Drum can be customised easily from the settings area of your account. If you need help customising your templates, reach out to our team and we'll be happy to help!

How does Drum help with financial tracking?
Drum tracks all time, costs and invoices for each project ensuring that the budget shows the project health in real time. You can see a high-level overview of your project's financial health from your project dashboard and you can dig deeper on each project as required. Drum captures total costs, WIP, remaining budget and much more.

How is time tracked against projects?
Billable time can be allocated to project phases in Drum via the project page or in the intuitive time-sheet tool. Staff can also track time against leave (synced with Xero) and business overheads.

Can we capture costs against projects?
Sub-contractor costs, disbursements or other expenses can be easily allocated to projects in Drum. Simply drag and drop the receipt or invoice onto the costs tab of one of your projects and Drum will import the line items and supplier for you! You can always just enter costs manually too!

How does invoicing work in Drum?
Drum's smart invoicing system allows you to raise invoices against projects and capture the unbilled time and costs against them. This provides you with insights on the profitability of each of your invoices and helps you track unbilled time and costs. A single click is all it takes to integrate your Drum invoices with your Xero account.

Weighing Drum against Total Synergy, Projectworks, WorkflowMax or Abtrac? Compare pricing and features side by side, or see our shortlist of project management software for architects and engineers.

See how Drum works for building designers

Book a free demo