Financial management for architecture firms : Insights from OOTI × Daftime

Running an architecture firm today goes far beyond designing projects and delivering drawings. Firm leaders must deal with increasingly complex financial challenges: pressure on margins, extended payment terms, difficulties in anticipating workload, and the need to secure cash flow.

In this context, financial management becomes a strategic tool, essential to ensuring the firm’s sustainability and long-term development.
To explore these issues, Sami Sehrine, Chartered Accountant and Founder of Daftime, shares his on-the-ground perspective and experience working with architecture and design firms, alongside OOTI.

Cash flow : anticipating rather than reacting

Cash flow is often the first point of vulnerability for architecture firms. Even with a healthy order book, timing gaps between invoicing, payments, and expenses can quickly put pressure on the business. The issue is not necessarily the volume of activity, but rather the lack of visibility over future cash flows. Without clear projections, decisions are made day by day, often under pressure.

“In many firms, generating cash is not the real issue. The real risk lies in poor cash-flow management. Without proper monitoring and forward-looking projections, cash flow can hide structural imbalances, and decisions end up being reactive rather than anticipated.”
— Sami Sehrine, Founder of Daftime

Implementing structured cash-flow monitoring helps firms regain control: better planning of incoming payments, adjusting invoicing schedules, and securing the months ahead.

Profitability : understanding what projects really generate

Revenue remains a key indicator, but it is not enough to measure a firm’s true performance. Two projects with the same fee can produce very different results depending on time spent, internal organization, or unforeseen issues during execution.
Without detailed analysis, some firms continue to repeat unprofitable project types, simply out of habit or lack of visibility.

“I often see very busy firms where certain projects consume far more time than they generate in value. Without a precise analysis of time spent and margins, it’s possible to work a lot… without actually creating value. These are what we call hidden costs.”
— Sami Sehrine

Managing profitability starts with a detailed, project-by-project analysis of margins, and the ability to adjust practices accordingly: fee structuring, team organization, and project prioritization. To achieve this, it is essential to rely on management software designed specifically for your industry, aligned with your professional needs. A dedicated solution OOTI like OOTI centralizes key data, tracks costs and time spent in real time, and provides a clear, actionable view of profitability to support better decision-making.

Financial visibility : a prerequisite for confident decision-making

Financial visibility is often what architecture firms lack most. Many firm leaders have a strong intuition about their activity, but few have consolidated indicators that allow them to plan ahead in the medium term. Yet hiring, investing, expanding, or turning down a project, are fundamentally financial decisions that require reliable and readable data.

“A leader’s intuition is valuable, but it’s no longer enough. Hiring, investing, or refusing a project are strategic decisions that must be based on clear, shared, and reliable indicators, your best allies : KPIs.”
— Sami Sehrine

Centralizing financial and operational data helps firms move away from instinct-driven management toward a more controlled approach, aligned with the reality of the business.

Structuring financial management : methods and tools

To address these challenges, more and more firms are choosing to structure their financial management by combining:

• strategic reflection on their business model,
• financial support tailored to their activity,
• and management tools designed specifically for architecture firms.

The goal is not to multiply dashboards and reports, but to simplify analysis, ensure data reliability, and save time on a daily basis. This is precisely where the complementarity between Daftime’s financial expertise and a dedicated management solution like OOTI comes into play.

Financial management as a source of stability

Beyond numbers, structured financial management brings a frequently underestimated benefit: stability. Stability in day-to-day operations, in growth decisions, and in relationships with teams and partners.
Better financial management is not only about improving profitability, it is about creating the conditions for sustainable growth, aligned with the firm’s vision and values.