WorkflowMax Alternative for Architects

How Can Drum Help Australian Architects?

Drum is Australian based business management software that has been a fantastic WorkflowMax alternative for architecture studios in Australia and across the world.

Here’s a quick demo overview on how we can help Aussie architecture studios:

Drum has the features a WorkflowMax Alternative needs

If you’re looking for a WorkflowMax alternative, it’s likely that you need the base features that WorkflowMax offers, but ideally, you want them implemented better.

Drum has you covered. Drum has:

1. Tight Xero integration for invoicing, purchase orders, bills, leave and timesheeting.
2. Intuitive time tracking against project stages.
3. Project expense management.
4. Sales CRM and contact management.
5. Intuitive invoicing system.
6. Progress claims against project milestones.
7. Reporting across your whole business.

What makes us a compelling WorkflowMax alternative for architects is that we take those things even further:

1. Drum is fast and intuitive. Our goal is to reduce clicks and busy-work for the work that you find yourself doing day after day.
2. Drum better matches how your studio works. From pricing projects to managing project financials, Drum is structured in a way that feels second-nature.
3. We work closely with each and every customer to ensure that their account is setup in a way that helps them work smarter and faster.
4. Our support is second-to-none with an averaged 15m response time in our business hours live chat (talking to a real human being!).

Unique Requirements for Architecture Studios Looking For a WorkflowMax Alternative

The studios that we’ve worked with have some unique requirements compared to other industries:

1. Their progress claims can be complicated and difficult to manage.
2. Complex sub-contractor management requirements adds additional overhead to progress claims, invoicing and project management.
3. Project pricing can be complicated and is often managed in spreadsheets.
4. Projects have many phases/stages that must each have a pricing type (fixed or time and material) and a managed budget.

Here’s how Drum has approached those challenges.

Drum’s new “Progress Claim” feature

After working closely with our architecture studio customers, we added a new “Progress Claim” feature on top of our existing invoicing systems.

Progress claims allow Drum customers to easily allocate claim percentages (or fixed amounts) against a project. A progress claim can be converted to an invoice (in Drum and Xero) within seconds and can be exported as an Excel file or Word document.

Sub-contractor management

Drum allows easy allocation of sub-contractor expenses against your projects, including markups and managing insurance requirements.

Within any progress claim against a project, you can allocate billable sub-contractor costs and in a future release of Drum, you will also be able to manage sub-contractor statement requirements.

When invoicing, you can adjust the percentage of a total sub-contractor cost to allocate and easily see the profitability of your total expenses against the invoice amount.

Project pricing

Another feature that was created in liaison with our wonderful customers was the project pricing feature.

This feature allows your team to easily price projects with a template-driven drag and drop interface. If you have consistent pricing for certain phases of your projects, you can set those up at the template level to save unnecessary data entry in all of your future projects.

In Drum, the proposal’s pricing structure converts directly to the project’s budget and phases, saving data entry and ensuring a seamless flow from proposal to project.

Flexible Project Budgets

In Drum, you can allocate any phase of a project any budget type to match your client agreement.

The financial KPI’s shown against each phase match exactly what you need to see.

Moving isn’t easy, so we’re here to help

We understand that moving your primary work software is no simple task, so if you’re looking for a WorkflowMax alternative for your architecture studio, we’re here to help.

We can offer:

1. Flexible trial periods that match your availability.
2. Uploading of your existing data, ensuring you get a running start.
3. Teams calls during the on-boarding stage to help key staff understand Drum’s core concepts.
4. Structured training plans to help your staff migrate to a new system.
5. Monthly or annual subscriptions to match your budget.

We’re a local service provider that has built world-class software. Unlike our competitors, we’re here to help in a human way.

Drum as a WorkflowMax Alternative for Architects

For a no-obligation Teams meeting with the Drum team to see if Drum is the WorkflowMax alternative that you’ve been looking for, book a call with our team here.

After that call, we can work out how best to structure a Drum trial for your studio that matches your requirements, provided that we’re a good fit.

Choosing a WorkflowMax alternative is a major business decision and we’re here to help. If WorkflowMax isn’t meeting your requirements, we’re here to help.