Finance & profitability

Beech Finance is a job-costing and commercial ops layer for architecture firms. It turns monthly CTC, day hours, and project bandwidth into project burn, utilization, collections, payables, and a firm ledger. Absolute fee and CTC rupees are Admin-only. Managers see burn %, allocated hours, weeks of fee left, and can log project expenses. Beech is not payroll and not a full accounting suite — use it to see which jobs are eating fee, then hand GST registers to your CA.

Setup (recommended order)

1. Open Settings → Finance. Set fiscal year start month (India is usually April), standard day hours, GSTIN, PAN, SAC, invoice prefix, and bank details for the tax invoice PDF. Optionally define employee grades as CTC templates, then enter each person’s effective-dated monthly CTC. Add firm expenses such as rent or software seats.
2. On each project’s Financials tab, choose how the fee is calculated (lump sum, rate per sqft, or percent of project budget). Split expected revenue across billing stages. Set each member’s bandwidth % for capacity planning (or manage staffing from More → People). Log project expenses with optional vendor, due date, and pass-through flag.
3. The team fills My Hours with project / pursuit / leave / holiday rows and hours per day. Optional task timers record effort detail only — they never drive rupee costing.
4. Admins open the Finance dashboard (/finance) to review portfolio burn, cash forecast, collections (AR), payables (AP), utilization, and the ledger. Capacity planning lives on More → People. Download the month-end pack when you close with your CA.

How people cost reaches a project

Hourly rate = monthly CTC ÷ (working days per month × standard day hours). Labor hours on a project come from My Hours project-row cells for that job. Labor cost = those hours × hourly rate. Example: 4.25 hours on Oakridge Tuesday → 4.25 hours costed to Oakridge. There is no loaded cost multiplier on labor. Shared overhead such as rent belongs in firm expenses on the ledger, not baked into every hour.

Bandwidth % is for capacity planning only — it does not split day hours for ₹ costing. Keep each person’s bandwidth across all projects at or under 100%. Over-allocation shows a warning on More → People (Capacity) and on the manager Financials chip. Leave and Holiday rows are not costed to projects. Pursuit rows cover BD / pitches. Timers and task time logs never drive ₹ costing.

Job cost, burn, and utilization

Job cost = labor cost + absorbed project expenses. Pass-through expenses (client reimbursables) stay off job cost but still appear in payables until paid. Expected revenue = fee from billing type (or override) plus fee variations. Burn % = job cost ÷ expected revenue. Default bands: green under 70%, amber 70–90%, red at or above 90%.

Utilization on Finance is available for this month or this quarter. Numerator is worked hours synced from the timesheet. Denominator is Mon–Sat calendar days in the window × standard day hours, minus that person’s Holiday rows. Project labor ₹ uses project-row hours. Bandwidth remains for capacity planning on People.

Invoices, payables, and the ledger

Admins generate a GST tax invoice from a billing stage. Beech splits CGST/SGST vs IGST from firm state vs place of supply, prints bank details, and supports partial payment plus TDS. Mark Paid to post income to the ledger. Credit and debit notes reverse or adjust invoices.

Log project expenses (consultants, survey, print, and similar) with optional vendor, due date, and GST breakup. Mark paid to post an EXPENSE ledger row. The Finance Payables tab mirrors Collections: outstanding balances by aging bucket. Firm expenses expand into the ledger on a monthly, quarterly, or annual cadence. From Finance, download a month-end CA pack (invoice register, credit notes, GSTR-1 style worksheet, sequence gaps, party-wise AR, FY ledger, and salary cost summary labeled as job costing — not payroll).

Who sees what

• Admin — CTC, grades, firm expenses, full project P&L, invoices, credit notes, Finance dashboard, and the month-end pack.
• Manager — Burn % (no fee or cost rupees), allocated hours, weeks of fee left at recent labor burn, over-allocation chip, and project expense create/delete/mark paid.
• Contributor — My Hours (project/pursuit/leave/holiday grid), optional timesheet submit, and timers.

Before you start

• Confirm you can open the relevant page and that your role has permission to perform the action.
• Identify the project, drawing, or task context before you start so updates are recorded in the right place.

Workflow checks and quality guardrails

• ✓

  Checklist item 1: Follow the Finance & profitability process in order and save frequently after each meaningful update.

• ✓

  Checklist item 2: Write enough context in notes or comments so another teammate can understand the change without asking you.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Skipping ownership or due-date details, which makes reporting and follow-up unreliable.
• Updating status without adding context, which creates confusion during reviews and handovers.

Troubleshooting

1. 1
   Troubleshooting step 1

   If an action is unavailable, verify role permission and whether required upstream fields are completed.

2. 2
   Troubleshooting step 2

   If expected results are not visible, check page filters and refresh to confirm synced state.

What to do next

1. Open /docs/home and continue with the next workflow.
2. Open /docs/reports and continue with the next workflow.
3. Open /docs/troubleshooting and continue with the next workflow.