Monograph Reviews

Monograph is so beautifully designed that my team of architects enjoy looking at an analyzing data now. We love how past, current, and future fee and staffing projections are married together to give us a clear picture of our firm's profitability and staff and project needs. Our firm owners can see high level firm health info, our project managers can see how they're performing on their projects, and our staff can see exactly what they should be working and reporting on. I also appreciate that it's a newer platform that's constantly putting out new updates, features, and functionality.

We understand that it takes time to build a great product and some things are going to be missing or slightly off as the platform improves. There are some minor annoyances with reporting functions, exporting features, and how resources are assigned work, but we get around it for now. Accurately tracking overhead time and PTO could use major improvement. I'd love to see different user types for guests and/or independent contractors - it's too high of a price point to invite part time 1099 contract staff to use it, but would be very convenient if they could track time directly against our projects on Monograph. I'd also like to see more app integrations.

Very accessible and easy to use. The minimal learning curve meant we could have staff up to speed in a week of implementation.

The cost and the payment options are perhaps the most limiting aspects. As a software geared towards smaller firms, I would have expected a variety of payment options - especially annual subscriptions. Otherwise the price is on the higher side of similar on the market

Monograph is great for getting a quick overview of projects and team assignments. The development team has been making significant improvements even in the short time we have been using it. Planning projects is straight foward and the tracking time and money against budgets is super helpful.

The task management needs a lot of work still. It is clunky and not very user friendly. There is also no easy way to budget for expenses on a project that are not tied directly to an employee's time.

Monograph is designed for Architects and the features are practical and functional. The project management and time management are very intuitive and easy to implement.

Making the conversion from our previous time keeping and invoicing systems has been a slower process than anticipated. Some projects span over multiple years and converting them to the new tracking system is somewhat complicated.

It is easy to use and allows us to analyze and assess each project. Based on previous projects, we can more accurately predict the amount of work and hours required, making each project more profitable. Lastly, Monograph are constantly improving the various features ie: payroll, taxes, payments, linking to accounting software, etc.

I wish team members could see their allocated hours vs. how many they've used in each phase of work without seeing the financials in a separate section of each project.

Monograph is easy to use and in some way intuitive. Resource allocation and reporting are great features, but they need improvement.

Integrating with QuickBooks client information was simple, but we had to manually transfer our time from QBs to monograph which was very time consuming and to this day we have not transferred all our time into. We do not use the invoicing feature to directly invoice our clients because we wish that we could add some notes under each phase, or at least under hourly phases. Also, I do not like that you cannot combine hours under same titles, for example two principals have worked on the same project/phase - it shows as separate in the invoice. Also, project reporting and project financials lack important data. Such as showing profit and loss reports for each project. It only shows based on billable rates but not employee cost/overhead multiplier. Under time log, it would be helpful if the phases are shown. It would be great if rate tables could be adjusted or set per project. It would be helpful if tasks and resource allocation were sync, rather than being separate features. Also, it would be great if it were mobile/tablet friendly.

I can track my time per project and create invoices from it which is my primary use. The format of the software is simple and easy to read and mostly navigate.

You cannot customize the invoice - the default invoice format is also quite large; I'm surprised that this was designed by architects and not customizable. It doesn't quite make sense about how to track budgets and time in the project setup so I have not used it as much. It's not as flexible either if your project is very flexible and not as rigid (hourly, open ended, etc). Customer service is kind of hit or miss; it takes a few days for a response and then at one point, I had to schedule a zoom call appt just to answer a question that could have taken a few minutes to properly answer (they could not clearly answer my question in a chatbox).
They say they are a project management software company and not an accounting company which I understand, but time is always tied to money in an architectural software tracking projects. So the fact that I cannot really look back and report on invoice tracking (YTD, MTD, etc.) and estimates and whatnot, seems counterproductive to me. I was told to use another software program to do all my accounting. I was initially looking for a one stop shop to provide all my needs as a working designer/architect. The other programs I've looked into also fall short so it is what it is.

I love the ease of use of Monograph. For the level of detail Monograph supports, it's always easy and super intuitive to use.

Monograph does not interface with Quickbooks, so you either have to invoice from Monograph and duplicate in QB or duplicate time in QB to invoice in there. Either way you're doubling up work, which is not ideal.

Full disclaimer: I am an administrator who was not trained in architecture, so learning what my firm needed to streamline its project management and personnel operations was a challenge. The fact that Monograph is custom built for the quirks of the architecture industry is really invaluable. This, plus it is intuitive enough for a non-industry professional like me to learn the ropes quickly. As we roll out Monograph, we will be able to consolidate so many extraneous processes and tracking spreadsheets - I anticipate it will make our workflow much more efficient.

There are some reports we're accustomed to creating that are not yet features in Monograph, so we'll still need to do some legwork outside of the software to track certain data. Until consultant fees are tracked against the overall percent-complete progress of each project, we won't be able to use Monograph invoices or reports to share with clients as part of our monthly billing package.