What architects ask before they start.

Toggl and Harvest are timers for anyone who bills by the hour. Traceroll is made for architects: your time goes onto a project’s phases, and each phase has the pauses you don’t control, the client’s review, the council’s approval.

From that it answers the three questions you need answered to run a practice: where your hours go, whether you’re on target, and when you’re free for the next project. A timer alone can’t tell you that.

Traceroll starts from simplicity, to get you in the habit of using it before you add new rolls that expand its capabilities. Notably, it helps you manage time, leaving the conversion into money to you (and to future rolls). This approach lets you see the gaps in your time as projects are inevitably paused for revisions, or while they await a council’s decision.

A pause is time a project spends waiting on someone else: the client reviewing a design, an engineer, the council deciding on a permit. Every phase comes with one pause inside it and one at its end, ten days each. Change their length, add or remove them; ticking a phase done asks how long the next pause should be.

The forecast leaves those days free on that project and fills them with your other work, so you see the gaps coming, and when you’re free for a new project. Hours never start a pause: a phase can run past its hours. With a country roll the long ones come counted: the permit’s 105 days after PDU in Belgium, the city’s plan review in the United States.

Nothing has to be exact to the minute. Start the timer when you start, or type the time afterwards: 1:30, 1.5 or 90m. Forgot to start it? Tell it you began ten or fifteen minutes ago, an hour ago, or at the time you type. Traceroll for Windows, coming soon, will ask you at six in the evening where the day went.

No. Traceroll keeps time: your hours, your phases and their pauses, and what’s booked ahead. It doesn’t make invoices or keep accounts, and its figures aren’t accounting or tax advice (terms of sale). Keep your accounting tool and your accountant: Traceroll tells you where the hours went.

Yes, that’s where it starts. The base roll is one person’s projects, phases and hours, and the Calendar, Projects and Contacts rolls are in the price: $9 a month, or $90 a year. It’s made by an architect who works alone, from the tracker he runs his own office on.

Everyone works on the studio’s projects and logs their own time, and keeps a side of their own for their own projects and overhead: one switch between the two, one timer for both. The projects and everyone’s hours on them are shared; each person sees only their own week. The forecast counts everyone’s hours, and the Projects and Contacts rolls come with it.

It costs $9 a month for the studio, plus $9 a seat: for three people, $36 a month, or a year for the price of ten months. The Studio roll.

New projects start with the Ordre des Architectes’ seven phases, PRE to EXE, the permit’s legal wait after PDU already counted, and Traceroll walks you through the Ordre’s contract for the complete mission, out as a PDF to sign. It’s included in the price. The Belgium roll.

In Flanders the phases, the pauses and the forecast work just the same. But for now the contract is the Ordre’s French model, the Stage roll follows the French- and German-speaking council (CFG), and Traceroll speaks English, French and Spanish. A Dutch version is coming, with the Vlaamse Raad’s stage.

Yes. The base and the Calendar, Projects, Contacts and Studio rolls work anywhere: phases start as Phase 1, 2 and 3, and you name them as you like. A country roll adds that country’s phases, contracts and rules; Belgium and the United States have theirs. Next come the Netherlands and Flanders, Argentina and the United Kingdom. Tell us yours at hello@traceroll.com.

Yes. Phases are only names: rename them, add or delete them, give each its hours or let it run. A new project starts with the Ordre’s or AIA’s phases, with Phase 1, 2 and 3, or with the same phases as an earlier project: you choose each time.

The Stage roll keeps your stage the way the Ordre’s French- and German-speaking council asks: your hours on the grid’s twelve tasks and your maître’s projects by letter, each month’s grid in the Ordre’s layout to sign or to send your maître de stage to confirm, the four controls and what to upload. The Stage roll.

For half price, $4.50 a month, ask for it on your stage’s page: Traceroll emails your maître de stage to confirm your stage, and we look you up by your member number on the Ordre’s public list of stagiaires. It lasts until your stage ends: two years from its first day, plus the days marked illness or force majeure, and never more than three years. In the United States, the AXP keeps your hours the way NCARB counts them.

Open a student space with your school or university email address: it’s free. You get weekly lines for your studios, courses or work at a firm, the timer, your hours and their report, and the calendar. It stays free for a year, and for another year each time you confirm your school address again. Open a student space.

When you want the full Traceroll, you pay half price while your school address stays confirmed.

About five minutes. Log in with a code sent to your email, no password; say the hours you work in a week; then add your current projects, each a code and a name. Their phases come ready. Want to look around first? The sample setup is a full office you can open without an account.

Yes. In Settings → Bring in from a spreadsheet, choose an Excel (.xlsx) or CSV file with a row for each time logged: the project’s code or name, the day and the hours, and the phase, activity and memo if you have them. Traceroll shows the projects, phases and hours it found before anything is saved, and bringing the same file in again adds nothing twice.

Its headings can be in English, French or Spanish. Contacts come in from your phone as vCards.

Yes. At any time, the Time tab downloads your hours for any period as a PDF or an Excel file. Ask, and we send the office’s owner a full copy of its data in CSV or JSON. After you cancel, everything is kept 90 days, so you can come back or ask for that copy; then it’s deleted.

You’d hear it from us at least 90 days before, by email. In that time you get a full copy of everything, your projects, hours and contacts in CSV and JSON and the PDFs you filed, and the unused part of a yearly subscription is refunded. Your data is yours: kept in the EU, and never sold.

The first 30 days are free, with everything, and no card. Add a card and you get 30 more days free: nothing is charged until they end, and Stripe reminds you 7 days before. If the free time ends without a subscription, the office stops working; its data is kept 90 days in case you subscribe, then deleted.

Yes, from the app, at any time. Your subscription runs to the end of the month or year already paid, and isn’t renewed. A period that has started isn’t refunded, with two exceptions: if you subscribed as a consumer, you can withdraw within 14 days; and if we remove a feature you rely on, the unused part of a yearly subscription comes back. Terms of sale.

You don’t need one. Prices are before VAT, which is added at checkout for where your office is. If your office is in an EU country other than Belgium and gives a valid VAT number, no VAT is charged and you account for it yourself: that’s the reverse charge. The VAT number you give goes on the invoice Stripe emails you.

In the European Union. Your account, your office’s data and the PDFs you file are kept by Cloudflare in its EU jurisdiction, in data centres in the EU only. Some things, such as an email being sent or a payment, may pass through the United States, under the GDPR’s safeguards. We never sell your data or use it to train AI models. Privacy policy.

Not unless you want them to. In a studio, everyone sees the studio’s projects and everyone’s hours on them; each person sees only their own week. What each person’s hour is worth, as a ratio or as pay, is set by the managers, and the amounts reach the managers only. Tick Open books in Settings and everyone sees every week, the roles and the weights; the amounts still stay with the managers.

It only reads, and only what’s yours: your office’s projects and phases, the time you’ve logged with its activities and memos, and your week’s plan. It can’t change anything, and it never sees other people’s time, your contacts, the PDFs you filed or anyone’s pay. Connect Claude, ChatGPT or another AI app in Settings → Your AI, with the address traceroll.com/mcp, and disconnect it there at any time.

Traceroll for Windows is coming soon. It counts how long each window is in front, Archicad, Rhino, your email, a PDF, and at six in the evening asks where the day went, sorted by project from the files’ names and codes. The window titles stay on your computer: Traceroll only gets the time you accept.

Pedro Augspach, an architect with his own office in La Hulpe, Belgium. Traceroll grew out of the tracker he runs that office on, and he logs his own hours in it every day.