NetSuite vs Sage Intacct for an Architecture Firm's WIP
A project moves from schematic design into construction documents, the team logs hundreds of extra hours revising a detail set, and the invoice that goes out still reflects last month's phase percentage. That lag between earned value and billed value is the real question behind NetSuite vs Sage Intacct for commercial architecture and design studios, and it shows up long before anyone compares feature lists.
Construction administration is where this bites hardest: a phase that's supposed to wrap in a few site visits can run for a year once permitting delays and contractor questions pile up, and a firm billing flat monthly fees during CA is often working well past what it invoiced.
Vendors Covered in this Article
Disclosure: We may earn a commission if you buy through some links on this page. It doesn't change what we recommend.
Where Billed Value and Earned Value Drift Apart
Most fee agreements in this industry are phase-based: a percentage for schematic design, a larger chunk for design development, more for construction documents, and a tail for construction administration. The trouble is that hours spent don't track those percentages evenly. Say a studio burns through 80% of its CD budget while only 60% of the phase's billing has gone out: nobody notices until the project margin report runs cold at year-end.
A system that tracks earned value against billed value at the phase level catches this in real time instead of at reconciliation. NetSuite's project accounting module holds both numbers side by side and flags the gap automatically. Sage Intacct can track the same two figures, but usually needs a connected project-management or practice-management tool doing the phase percentage math upstream, since dimensional reporting alone won't tell you a phase is over budget on hours before it's over budget on cash.
Reimbursables and Sub-Consultant Fees Are Not Revenue
Structural, MEP, and civil sub-consultants get paid through the architect on most commercial projects, and printing, travel, and specialty renderings get billed back to the client too. None of that is fee revenue, and booking it as such inflates the top line while hiding what the firm actually earned for its own design work.
Both platforms can separate reimbursable pass-throughs from fee income with the right chart-of-accounts structure, but the discipline has to exist before the software does. If your firm currently nets consultant invoices against a single project revenue line, that's the first thing to fix, independent of which ERP you land on.
What NetSuite Handles That a Lighter Platform Doesn't
NetSuite's advantage shows up on multi-phase, multi-consultant jobs where percentage-of-completion revenue recognition needs to reconcile automatically against timesheets, purchase orders for consultants, and client billing schedules in one place. For a firm running a dozen active projects across several offices, that native connection between the job-cost ledger and the general ledger removes a lot of manual spreadsheet work at month-end close.
The tradeoff is implementation weight: NetSuite's project module has more configuration to get right before it produces a trustworthy WIP schedule, which matters if your firm doesn't yet have a dedicated finance hire to own that setup.
When Sage Intacct or QuickBooks Still Fits
A studio running fewer than a handful of active projects, with straightforward fixed-fee contracts and light sub-consultant involvement, often does fine on QuickBooks using classes or projects to separate jobs. The ceiling arrives once phase-level WIP, multi-office overhead allocation, or audited financials for an institutional client enter the picture.
Sage Intacct sits between the two: its dimensional reporting handles overhead allocation across offices and practice groups well, and it pairs cleanly with a dedicated AEC project-management tool that already owns the phase-percentage math, so the ERP only needs to post clean numbers rather than calculate them from scratch.
Build a WIP Schedule Before You Compare Vendors
Pull your three largest active projects and, for each one, write down the contracted fee by phase, the percentage of hours burned in the current phase, and the percentage actually billed to date. If those two percentages are more than 10 points apart on any project, you have an underbilling or overbilling problem right now, independent of what system you're running.
Ask each vendor to build that exact WIP table live, using your own phase structure and your own consultant list, not a demo dataset with generic percentages. Frank, MeetMyCFO's AI CFO, can help you assemble that three-project WIP table before the first vendor call so you walk in with real numbers to test against, not a hypothetical.
Build the WIP comparison for each of your three largest projects:
- Write down the contracted fee for every phase of the project.
- Record the percentage of hours burned in the current phase.
- Record the percentage actually billed to date for that same phase.
- Flag any project where hours burned and billing are far apart, since that is an underbilling or overbilling problem today.
- Ask each vendor to produce the same view from your data without a manual spreadsheet rebuild.
What to Check Before Migrating Mid-Project
Never migrate a project's job-cost history mid-phase without a clean cutover reconciliation. Every open purchase order to a sub-consultant, every unbilled reimbursable, and every open change order needs to land correctly in the new system on day one, or your WIP schedule starts life already wrong.
Receivables days run long in this industry, partly because owners hold retainage until substantial completion, so collections discipline matters as much as system choice1. Neither platform fixes a firm that isn't following up on aged invoices.
What Good Looks Like
A well-run architecture finance function can produce an accurate earned-value-versus-billed-value figure for every active project phase within a day, keeps reimbursable pass-throughs off the fee revenue line entirely, and closes the books without a manual WIP reconciliation scramble.
Building The Capability (5-Stage Skill Ladder)
How to Get Started
Disclosure: We may earn a commission if you buy through some links on this page. It doesn't change what we recommend.
For a firm running many concurrent phased projects with sub-consultant pass-throughs, NetSuite's native project accounting keeps earned value and billed value reconciled without a separate practice-management tool.
If your firm already runs a dedicated AEC project-management tool for phase tracking, Sage Intacct's dimensional reporting handles multi-office overhead allocation well without duplicating that functionality.
For a small studio with a handful of straightforward fixed-fee projects, QuickBooks with project-level classes can track job costs without the setup weight of a full ERP.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do we track work in progress across multiple project phases?
You need earned value (hours or costs incurred against the phase budget) tracked separately from billed value (what's actually gone out on invoices), by phase, for every active project. A platform with native project accounting flags the gap automatically; without that, someone has to rebuild the comparison by hand every month, which usually means it doesn't happen until year-end.
Should sub-consultant fees run through our revenue line?
No. Structural, MEP, and other sub-consultant fees you pass through to the client are reimbursable costs, not design fee revenue, and should sit on a separate line even though they flow through the same invoice. Booking them as revenue overstates your top line and understates your true margin on the design work itself.
Is QuickBooks enough for a two-office architecture firm?
It can be, if your project count is manageable and contracts are mostly fixed-fee with limited sub-consultant complexity. The point where it stops working is usually overhead allocation across offices or the need for a phase-level WIP schedule that updates automatically rather than through a manual spreadsheet.
Sources
Where we quote a benchmark, we show its source. Other figures in this guide are estimates or general guidance, so check them against your own numbers.
- Receivables days (DSO proxy, AR/Sales x 365) by industry (US). NYU Stern (Aswath Damodaran), Working Capital Ratios by Industry, US, 2026.
Related Guides
Questions Before Granting Equity at a Design Studio
Answers to what architecture and design studio owners ask before setting up Pulley or Carta for equity, from licensing rules to project-based valuation.
BILL vs Tipalti for Commercial Architecture and Design Studios
Architecture studios run subconsultants, reimbursable client costs, and retainage on every project. Here's how BILL and Tipalti fit that payables pattern.
Setting Up Multi-State Payroll for an Architecture Firm, Step by Step
A step-by-step runbook for a commercial architecture or design studio choosing between Gusto and Rippling as project work crosses state lines.
Matching Revenue to Design Phase Before Audit Tools
How commercial architecture firms should reconcile phase-based billing and reimbursables before comparing FloQast and AuditBoard for controls.
409A Timing for Architecture Studios Funding a Partner Buyout
A partner's retirement can expose an unfunded buyout formula at an architecture studio. Here's how that changes the Carta vs Shareworks decision.
Architecture Firms: Cube vs Mosaic for Phase Fee Planning
Weighing the tradeoffs between Cube and Mosaic for an architecture firm: modeling phase fees, scope creep, and staff allocation by project phase.