Why we built Korrit

My father is an architect, so I grew up around drawings, models and deadlines. I didn’t become an architect myself. I studied software. But I never really left that world, and Korrit is what came out of going back to it.

This post is about why I built Korrit, what it is, and how I work on it today.

Three years inside architecture firms

After I finished studying, I spent 3 years freelancing as a developer for architecture firms. The projects I worked on changed from firm to firm. The problem underneath them did not.

Every firm had the same split. Projects lived in one tool. Time lived in another. Invoicing happened in a third. Payroll ran from a spreadsheet nobody wanted to touch.

Each of those tools did its own job well enough. The trouble was in the gaps between them. The hours someone logged against a phase were the same hours that belonged on the invoice, in the budget and in payroll. With four separate systems, those hours had to be carried from one place to the next by hand.

That is the part I kept coming back to. These firms weren’t short on talent. They were spending skilled people’s time keeping several systems in agreement with each other, and that time came out of the design work.

What Korrit is

Korrit is one platform for the business side of an architecture firm, from first client contact to payroll. In practice that covers:

• Clients, your pipeline, and fee proposals built around the phases architects work in.
• Projects with their phases, team, tasks and budget attached.
• A weekly timesheet by project and phase, with an approval queue before hours go anywhere else.
• Invoicing by phase, percent complete or approved hours.
• Expenses, bank accounts and budgets, shown next to the projects they belong to.
• Payroll from approved timesheets, on the Enterprise plan for now.
• A sync to QuickBooks, so you keep your books and your accountant.
• A connection to Claude and ChatGPT, so you can ask about the firm in plain English.

The list matters less than one fact about it: everything shares the same data. An hour logged on a Tuesday is the same hour that shows up on the phase budget, on the invoice and in the pay run. Nobody copies it from one place to another.

What I believe about running a firm

A few beliefs shaped how Korrit is built, and they still guide what I work on.

Architects should be designing. Running the firm shouldn’t eat the hours that belong to the work. Every hour a principal spends reconciling spreadsheets is an hour that isn’t spent on the drawings. Korrit’s job is to handle the business side so you can get back to them.

One place beats five tools. Projects, time, invoicing and payroll belong together. When they share the same data, there’s nothing to copy between spreadsheets and nothing to fall out of step.

Built from inside real firms. Korrit didn’t start from a guess about what architects might need. It comes from 3 years of building software for architecture firms and seeing the same problems in each of them. That’s why projects in Korrit are organized around the phases architects actually work in, like schematic design, design development and construction documents, and why fees, hours and invoices follow those same phases.

How I work with firms

Korrit is available now, and I work directly with every firm that signs up. If you have a question, a problem or an idea, it comes to me, and I’m the one who answers.

I do it this way because it’s the best way I know to get the product right. The years I spent working inside firms taught me more than any amount of guessing from the outside could. Talking with the people who use Korrit is how I keep learning.

Moving your firm over is part of that work. Nobody wants to re-enter years of projects by hand, so onboarding and data migration are free for every team. We bring your clients, projects and history across for you.

What’s next

I’m not going to publish a roadmap here. What comes next depends on the firms using Korrit, and on which parts of running a practice still take more time than they should. When something new ships, I’ll write it up here and in the help center.

The idea underneath it won’t change: one place for the business side of the firm, so the people who should be designing can get back to it.

Get in touch

If this sounds like your firm, I’d like to hear from you. Email me at [email protected], or book a call and we’ll go through how your firm runs today and where Korrit would fit.

If you’re on another tool now, read Moving to Korrit from Monograph, Deltek or BQE to see how the move works. Migration is free, and we do the moving for you.