G2

Elias N.

Architecture‑Firm Client & Project‑Delivery Operations Manager

Architecture & Planning

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

10/22/2026

Business partner of the seller or seller's competitor, not included in G2 scores.

"Robust Scheduling, Time Tracking, and Team Communication for Hybrid Staff"

4.5/5

What do you like best about Homebase?

As Architecture‑Firm Client & Project‑Delivery Operations Manager at Terraform Design Workshop, what I value most about Homebase is its robust shift scheduling, time-clock validation, and integrated team communication hub that keeps our hybrid studio and field staff aligned across site visits, drafting sprints, and client presentation days. Our sustainable architecture team splits time between desk work on construction documents, on-site assessments, and client meetings, with a mix of full-time designers and part-time freelance engineering consultants we bring in for structural and MEP support. Before Homebase, I coordinated schedules through a shared spreadsheet and scattered text threads, which often led to misalignment: a consultant would show up for a site walk that had been rescheduled, or a designer would log hours against the wrong project code, forcing me to spend hours sorting timesheets after the fact. Homebase lets me tie each scheduled shift directly to a project tag, so every team member selects the relevant residential or commercial build when they clock in. On our passive solar home project earlier this quarter, this tagging immediately flagged that our structural consultant had logged three hours to the wrong job, and I corrected it before invoicing the client.

I rely heavily on Homebase’s drag-and-drop schedule builder and automated clock-in reminder system, which saves me hours each week mapping availability, adjusting for last-minute site visits, and chasing incomplete time entries. I can lock role permissions so only lead designers and approved consultants get assigned to technical drawing milestones, and set up geofenced clock-in boundaries for our office location to cut down on buddy punching or misplaced time logs. The timesheet approval workflow centralizes all entries in one queue, and I can add notes directly to individual line items to flag overtime or billable work for our client reports. Once a week, I export the approved timesheet CSV and feed those hours into our project costing tracker, giving leadership clear visibility into whether we are staying within budget for each sustainable design project. The built-in team message board also serves as a quick place to post last-minute updates, such as a canceled county planning review or a change to an on-site inspection window.

One unexpected benefit I’ve discovered is how Homebase’s PTO request and approval flow helps me protect critical project deadlines from staffing gaps. We work on rigid submission timelines for planning permits and construction document packages, so unplanned absences can derail weeks of work. The platform overlaps approved leave directly onto the master schedule, so I can spot conflicts the second a designer submits a vacation request. When one of our senior drafters requested time off right before a commercial permit deadline, I saw the overlap instantly and reallocated a freelance consultant to cover the drawing package ahead of time, rather than scrambling to find support at the last minute. We had not selected Homebase primarily for leave management, but this layer of visibility has become indispensable for our deadline-driven studio.

Homebase is built for hourly service teams first, not architecture project management. It lacks native integration with CAD file tools or our CRM, and it cannot track detailed task progress within a design phase. Since we have no dedicated in-house IT, building custom syncs between Homebase and our project costing system is out of reach. Even so, for our lean 11–50 person team balancing studio work, site visits and freelance vendor coordination, Homebase brings order to our staff planning and time tracking. It reduces timesheet errors, prevents costly scheduling mix-ups, and preserves the time I need to coordinate consultants, manage blueprint deliverables, and hit our strict planning and construction document submission deadlines. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Homebase?

As Architecture‑Firm Client & Project‑Delivery Operations Manager at Terraform Design Workshop, Homebase's scheduling and time‑clock tools save me time coordinating our hybrid studio and field staff, but its shift‑based design, shallow project costing features, and weak integrations create friction for our sustainable architecture workflows. Our team does not run a traditional hourly‑service model; designers move between schematic design, construction documents, and permitting milestones that span weeks, and freelance structural and MEP consultants bill against project phases rather than clocking in for scheduled blocks. Homebase is built around the assumption that work happens in discrete shifts, which clashes with how our studio actually operates.

The biggest pain point is the lack of task‑level time tracking. We currently log hours against project tags, but I cannot split a designer's day across multiple deliverables, such as drafting a wall section for one residential job, reviewing consultant redlines for a commercial project, and preparing a presentation set for a client meeting. Every clock‑in locks the team member into a single project tag for the whole block, so we either create overlapping shift entries or accept imprecise time data. During our adaptive reuse commercial project last quarter, one of our designers spent the morning on permit corrections and the afternoon on a client deliverable, but the timesheet recorded everything under a single tag, which forced me to manually split the hours in our costing tracker. This adds repetitive data cleanup and weakens the project profitability reports leadership relies on for each sustainable build.

Homebase also has no native integration with the tools we actually design in, such as CAD platforms, our CRM, or our document control system. We cannot pull scheduled shift data into our project timeline, and we cannot sync time entries back into our project costing software. Since our lean team has no dedicated in‑house IT, building custom API bridges is out of reach, so I spend part of every Friday exporting timesheet CSVs, reformatting them, and importing them into our tracker. The reporting module itself is limited: it surfaces hours per employee and per tag, but it cannot show billable hours by project phase, consultant cost against fee budget, or utilization across our studio team. For a firm that prices fixed‑fee design work, this level of cost visibility matters far more than the labor‑cost reports Homebase emphasizes.

A separate frustration is that Homebase's shift schedule view does not adapt to milestone‑driven work. We operate on submission deadlines: a planning board submittal, a construction document package, or a client design review. Homebase shows staff availability and shifts well, but it does not let me layer project milestones, document deliverables, or consultant review windows onto the same calendar. I find myself keeping a second project schedule in a separate tracker, which reintroduces the split‑brain problem we adopted Homebase to remove. When a site visit gets rescheduled, I have to update both the shift calendar and the project tracker manually, and occasionally a designer is scheduled for a meeting that conflicts with a permit deadline I only track in the other tool.

The mobile experience also lags for our field staff. Designers visiting construction sites for verification surveys need offline access to their schedules and time logs, but Homebase's mobile app depends on a stable connection, and our consultants in rural building sites frequently lose signal. A structural engineer on a hillside passive‑house project could not clock in on site one morning and had to log hours later from the car, mislabeling the time against the wrong phase.

I would like to see Homebase add project‑phase time categories, milestone layering on the calendar, and a more flexible reporting engine that lets firms like ours export utilization and fee‑against‑budget views. Deeper integration with design and project management tools would also remove my weekly manual reconciliation. Homebase is a strong scheduler, but until it understands project‑based professional work, it will remain a partial fit for a deadline‑driven architecture studio like ours. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Homebase solving and how is that benefiting you?

As Architecture‑Firm Client & Project‑Delivery Operations Manager at Terraform Design Workshop, our core pain before adopting Homebase was chaotic staff scheduling and unreliable time entry tracking across our hybrid team of in‑studio designers, field site assessors, and on‑demand freelance engineering consultants. We struggled with scattered schedule updates shared over email threads and text messages, inconsistent time logging, and a lack of centralized visibility into who was working, where they were working, and which project their hours belonged to. Before Homebase, I spent six to seven hours every week chasing incomplete timesheets, resolving double-bookings for site visits, and sorting mislabeled hours in spreadsheets. Designers and consultants often forgot to submit their hours until days after the work wrapped up, which delayed our project costing reviews and client invoicing cycles. We also had no simple way to spot upcoming PTO conflicts that could threaten critical permit and construction document submission deadlines.

We struggled with disjointed manual scheduling, but now we can build, adjust, and share our master staff schedule in Homebase’s drag-and-drop scheduler, which has cut my weekly scheduling and timesheet administration workload down to roughly two hours. The platform lets me tag every shift and clock entry to a specific residential or sustainable commercial project, so team members select the correct job when they punch in. During our passive solar cabin project earlier this quarter, our freelance structural engineer accidentally logged hours to a different client account, and the tagged entry system flagged the mismatch quickly. I caught the error within 24 hours instead of discovering it weeks later during invoicing, which prevented us from sending an inaccurate bill to that client. The geofenced clock-in feature for our studio office also reduces accidental or retroactive time entries, making our labor data far more consistent for internal costing.

We struggled with unplanned leave creating last-minute staffing emergencies ahead of hard project deadlines, but now we can view all approved PTO requests overlaid directly on the shared schedule, which has eliminated nearly all last-minute coverage scrambles. When our senior drafter submitted a vacation request overlapping with a commercial adaptive reuse permit deadline, I spotted the conflict immediately and locked in a freelance MEP consultant two weeks in advance to cover the drawing review workload. This prevented a costly delay to our planning submission and saved us the stress of rushing to source qualified support at the last minute. Our client delivery timeline stayed on track without extra overtime for the rest of the design team.

We struggled with slow, fragmented communication around schedule changes and shift reminders, but now we can trigger automated SMS and email alerts for upcoming shifts, rescheduled site walks, and pending timesheet approvals, which has reduced our incomplete time entry rate by more than half. Team members get automatic nudges to clock out and submit their notes at the end of the day, so we no longer wait until month-end to collect most of our billable hours. I export validated timesheet data as a CSV file each week and feed it into our project costing tracker, giving leadership steady visibility into whether we are burning hours within our fixed project fee budgets.

One secondary benefit we did not anticipate was that the simple team message board built into Homebase reduces noise in our main design communication channels. Quick operational updates like office closure notices or changed site inspection times live inside Homebase instead of mixing with CAD comments and client feedback threads. That keeps our design-focused Slack space cleaner and helps our creative team stay focused on drawing work.

Homebase is still built primarily for hourly service teams and lacks native CAD or CRM integrations, plus it cannot track granular design-phase task progress. Even so, for our lean 11–50 person studio with no dedicated in-house IT, it solved our biggest operational gaps around scheduling visibility and trustworthy time collection. The hours I recover each week go back to coordinating consultants, organizing blueprint deliverables, and safeguarding our strict planning and construction document submission deadlines. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.