For much of the past decade, the most consequential decisions inside architecture firms have taken place far from the design studio. Staffing plans lived in spreadsheets. Financial performance surfaced weeks or months after the fact. Billing, payroll, and project management existed in separate systems, connected through manual workarounds and institutional memory.
That model is beginning to give way.
In 2025, a growing number of architecture firms reached a tipping point. Projects became longer and more complex. Clients made slower decisions. Teams are spread across offices, remote locations, and time zones. Margins tightened. Firm leaders were asked to make higher-stakes decisions earlier, often with incomplete information. In that environment, firm management software stopped being a back-office utility and became a strategic asset.
Quietly but decisively, a new generation of firm management platforms, led by BQE CORE, has begun reshaping how architecture firms operate, plan, and scale, moving far beyond the limitations of legacy systems built for a different era.
From Accounting Tool to Operating System
Historically, firm management software in architecture centered on accounting. Time sheets, invoicing, and general ledger functionality formed the backbone, while planning and analytics remained secondary. Leadership teams often managed the firm by looking backward. Meanwhile, the main users of the software were bookkeepers and other financial administrators. It wasn’t designed for all teams to benefit from a single firm operations platform.
CORE’s evolution reflects a different approach. Over the past year, the platform has increasingly functioned as an operating system for architecture firms, unifying projects, people, time, billing, payroll, and financials into a single, continuously updated system.
That approach appears to be resonating. Today, more than 3,500 architecture and engineering firms use CORE to manage their operations. The scale matters. It allows the platform to evolve based on real-world usage across firms of varying sizes and complexity, particularly those in the 20–300 person range, where operational discipline becomes critical as firms look to scale.
Financial Discipline Without Rigidity
One of the clearest shifts in 2025 came in financial structure and control.
Architecture firms often struggle to balance flexibility with rigor, especially as they grow. Enhancements to accounting periods, closed-period controls, and audit trails gave firms stronger guardrails without slowing down day-to-day operations. Books can be closed with confidence, while still allowing controlled adjustments when necessary.
Automated revenue recognition further reduced reliance on manual intervention, aligning revenue with how work is delivered rather than how invoices happen to fall. For firms managing long-running or phased projects, this provided earlier insight into performance and risk.
The result was not just cleaner financials, but greater trust in the numbers guiding leadership decisions. With earlier insight into project performance, firms are able to make corrections while work is still underway rather than after losses have already been locked in. Benchmarking data shows that firms with real-time financial visibility consistently outperform peers, a trend reflected in individual cases such as INC Architecture and Design, which reported a six-percentage-point increase in firmwide profitability after adopting BQE CORE and tightening financial controls and acting on project data earlier.
Planning Becomes a Competitive Advantage
As financial foundations strengthened, attention turned to planning.
Staffing and workload planning have become some of the most consequential challenges facing architecture firms. CORE’s Project Planner and forecasting enhancements addressed this directly by tying plans to real-time data.
Instead of static schedules maintained offline, firms gained living plans that evolve as time is logged and projects progress. Principals can see capacity constraints emerging, assess whether backlog aligns with available staff, and make hiring or scheduling decisions earlier.
For firms navigating growth, this level of foresight is increasingly essential. Planning is no longer a support function. It is a competitive advantage.
Data Begins to Tell a Different Story
As platforms mature, performance data is beginning to validate the operational impact of tighter integration.
Based on recent studies, architecture firms using all-in-one firm management software like BQE CORE saw an increase of approximately $13,000 in revenue per employee compared to the industry average. That represents a 9 percent increase in revenue per full-time equivalent when comparing data from the 2024 BQE Benchmarking Report against the 2024 AIA Firm Survey Report.
Billing efficiency shows similar gains. Firms using CORE’s billing tools have seen, on average, a 14 percent reduction in days to payment, improving cash flow without increasing administrative overhead.
While no single metric defines success, these trends point to a broader pattern. Firms that unify operations around a single system tend to operate with greater clarity and less friction.
Reducing Friction Where It Hurts Most
Growth often stalls because of operational friction. That friction can arise within a firm’s marketing and business development process, leading to not enough work to keep the firm growing. But just as common are operational inefficiencies in delivering the work on schedule and on budget.
In 2025, CORE focused heavily on removing that friction. Automated invoice reminders, support for multiple billing contacts, and more flexible billing workflows reduced manual effort while preserving client relationships. Finance teams spent less time chasing payments. Leaders gained more predictable cash flow.
At the same time, CORE expanded its open architecture. APIs, webhooks, Power BI connectors, and the introduction of a Zapier connector made it easier for firms to integrate CORE with the broader software ecosystem they already rely on.
The emphasis was not on forcing standardization, but on allowing firms to build workflows that reflect how they actually work.
Payroll Moves Inside the Core System
One of the most consequential developments of the year came with the introduction of CORE Payroll, powered by Gusto.
Payroll has traditionally lived outside firm management systems, creating delays between time worked, costs incurred, and insight gained. By bringing payroll directly into CORE, approved time entries now flow straight into payroll processing, and labor costs appear immediately in project financials.
For architecture firms, where labor is the single largest expense, this closes a long-standing visibility gap. Project managers see the financial impact of staffing decisions sooner. Finance teams reduce reconciliation work. Principals gain a clearer view of true margins in near real time.
Built for Firms That Are Scaling
As firms grow across offices, regions, and legal entities, operational complexity increases sharply. CORE’s investments in automated intercompany billing, class-based cost transfers, and distributed backlog reporting reflect a recognition that multi-entity operations are no longer edge cases.
These capabilities allow firms to scale without losing financial accuracy or operational control, a critical requirement for practices navigating mergers, expansion, or diversification.
The Standard Taking Shape
Taken together, the developments of 2025 point to a broader shift within the profession. Architecture firms are beginning to treat firm management software with the same seriousness they bring to design tools.
The systems running the business are no longer neutral. They shape how quickly firms can respond, how confidently they can grow, and how clearly leaders can see what lies ahead.
In that context, BQE CORE is increasingly emerging as the default choice for firms seeking not just functionality, but a foundation for disciplined, scalable practice. The transformation may be happening quietly, but its influence on how architecture firms operate is becoming difficult to ignore.
For firm leaders watching these shifts unfold, the question is no longer whether firm management software matters, but how quickly expectations are changing. The details of CORE’s 2025 product evolution, including the specific investments behind its planning, billing, and financial capabilities, are explored further in a longer, in-depth review published by BQE. For readers interested in how these systems are being built and where they are headed next, the full analysis offers a closer look at the forces shaping firm operations today.
See how BQE CORE can help your firm gain clarity, reduce friction, and scale with confidence. Explore the platform through a personalized demo.
About the Author
Lucas Gray is a writer, strategist, and architecture-industry advisor focused on helping firms use data to build stronger businesses and better careers. Through his role as director of content and community at BQE Software, he creates tools, research, and insights that support transparency, equity, and long-term growth across the profession.
Connect with Lucas on LinkedIn.
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