Factor A/E

What Is Factor A/E?

Factor AE is project management software built for architecture and engineering firms to manage projects, resources, time, billing, and firm performance. Its budget setup helps teams align project scope, hours, and billing around a shared financial plan. At the same time, resource scheduling shows availability and projected workload for better staff allocation.

Project timelines organize phases, tasks, and milestones, helping managers identify overlaps and keep delivery aligned with budgets. Time and expense tracking, task management, invoicing, and reporting further support day-to-day project administration. Following its acquisition by Total Synergy in 2025, Factor joined forces with Monograph in 2026.

What Is Factor A/E Best For?

Factor AE is well-regarded for ‘The Pulse’, its central command center for firm-wide project visibility. The dashboard brings project health, profitability, budgets, timelines, utilization, workload, and financial performance into one live view. Teams can compare projects, spot risks, and adjust dates or resources while seeing the impact play out in real time. For A/E firms, this means replacing fragmented tracking with faster, data-informed decisions across projects and people.

How Much Does Factor A/E Cost?

Factor A/E price starts at $36/user/month for the Monthly subscription option. It also offers an annual option at $30/user/month (5+ users). All core features are included in this cost: this includes A&E-specific project setup, project management, time entry, resource scheduling, invoicing, KPI dashboards for A&E, and more.

The vendor claims no hidden fees. There is only a one-time fee for setup, data migration, and training, depending on your firm’s needs. A free trial is also available for users to explore the platform before making a commitment.

Users generally view Factor AE’s pricing favorably, particularly for smaller A/E firms. They describe the cost as fitting their budgets and offering better value than larger alternatives.

Disclaimer: The pricing is subject to change.

Factor A/E Integrations

The platform integrates with several third-party applications and systems, such as QuickBooks, to facilitate smooth data flow.

How Does Factor A/E Work?

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how users can navigate the software:

• Log in to Factor AE and access the main workspace
• Open the Projects menu and add or select a project
• Set up the project budget, phases, milestones, and planned dates
• Schedule resources and assign team members to project work
• Create tasks, assign owners and due dates, and track completion
• Record time and expenses against the relevant projects and phases
• Review project progress, budgets, workload, and profitability in The Pulse
• Manage invoicing and payments, then use dashboards and revenue forecasts to monitor firm performance

Who Is Factor A/E For?

Factor A/E is designed specifically for the architecture and engineering industries, and serves:

• Firm owners
• Project managers
• Office managers

Factor A/E Use Cases

Based on our analysis of Factor A/E software’s current capabilities and user feedback, we have identified the following scenarios where the software works well:

Architecture Firms Struggling To Keep Projects Within Budget And Schedule

Architecture and engineering firms can lose profitability when project hours, schedules, and budgets get managed separately. Factor A/E connects project budgets with time, scheduling, and billing, while project timelines keep phases, milestones, and percent complete visible together. This helps project managers spot when work is drifting from projected timeframes before overruns become harder to correct. Firms still need consistent time and project data for these budget views to stay useful.

Engineering Organizations Spending Excessive Time Preparing Invoices

Manual billing can eat up substantial administrative time when firms need to reconcile hours, expenses, project progress, and different billing arrangements. Factor AE supports fixed-fee, hourly, and phased invoicing, with approved time and expense entries flowing directly into invoices.  This can potentially translate into saving hours per month, letting teams focus on more productive tasks. Firms with highly unusual billing processes, though, may still need invoice customization during implementation.

A&E Companies Needing A Clearer View Of Firm-Wide Performance

When project information is scattered across individual teams, leadership can struggle to see which jobs need attention and how current work affects profitability. Factor A/E's ‘Pulse’ provides a portfolio-level view of hours, budgets, and forecasts, while real-time dashboards bring project health, workload, and financial metrics together. This makes the software particularly relevant for owners and managers overseeing multiple active projects.

Firms Coordinating Growth With Future Workload And Revenue

Growing A&E firms can struggle to match incoming work with available staff, projected revenue, and existing commitments. Factor A/E combines opportunity tracking with resource scheduling and revenue forecasting, letting firms weigh potential projects alongside scheduled work, budgets, capacity, and projected starts. This gives decisionmakers a clearer basis for planning hiring and workloads before opportunities become signed projects. Still, forecasts remain only as reliable as the pipeline, budget, and scheduling assumptions behind them.

Is Factor A/E Right For You?

Architecture and engineering firms can struggle to keep project budgets, staff time, billing, and profitability aligned across multiple jobs.

Factor brings these workflows together with project planning, resource scheduling, time and expense tracking, invoicing, and firm-wide visibility. Its A&E-specific design makes it particularly relevant for firms that want project management built around industry workflows, rather than a general-purpose platform.

In terms of security, data gets encrypted using SSL/TLS during transmission, and the company says it takes extensive measures to secure data at rest as well.

That said, Factor is no longer onboarding new firms following its October 2026 combination with Monograph. New buyers can explore Monograph instead, while existing Factor customers can continue receiving support.

Still doubtful if the software is the right fit for you? Connect with us at (661) 384-7070 for further guidance.