Straight answers before you book a call.

We’re setting pricing with our first firms, so it isn’t published yet. Founding firms get pricing locked in for as long as they stay with us. Book a demo and we’ll walk you through it for a firm your size.

We’re deciding that with our founding firms. Either way, you won’t pay extra for the people who only log time.

Not a self-serve one. Stratum only works when it holds your real projects and your real hours, so we set it up with you and make sure it fits before you commit.

Engineering, survey, architecture and landscape firms of roughly 10 to 250 people whose margin comes from their people’s time: civil, structural, survey, land development, design.

Firms whose margin comes mostly from materials and subcontracts, like contractors and builders. You’ll be better served by construction software, and we’ll tell you so.

No. QuickBooks stays your accounting system, and Stratum runs the work. Billing goes out to QuickBooks as ready-to-import invoices, and QuickBooks reports back to Stratum, so PMs can see when an invoice has been sent and when it’s been paid. Aging shows up on each project and client, so the office manager and the PMs share responsibility for collecting what the firm has earned.

Most tools in this space start from the general ledger and work down. Stratum starts from the hour a person logs and the deliverable they’re working on, and builds the numbers up from there, so the people doing the work can see how it matters, not just accounting.

Most firms are logging time within the first week. We set up your divisions, teams, people, timekeeping codes and rate card with you, then bring in your active projects.

Clients, active projects and milestones, past proposals, employees and rates, and your QuickBooks history. Spreadsheets are fine; we’ll work from what you have.

We do, with you. There’s no self-serve wizard and no six-month implementation. You’ll have a direct line to the people who built it.

Technicians need about fifteen minutes: the timer, their tasks and their timecard. PMs and leads get a walkthrough of their own screens. Everyone sees only what their seat needs.

In a managed PostgreSQL database hosted in the western United States, with encrypted connections.

No. Every firm is walled off inside the database itself, not just in the app, so one firm’s records can’t be read from another firm’s account.

Each role sees different information, and the firm’s owner controls who sees what. PMs see everything they need to manage costs and revenue on their projects: hours, labor cost, margin, billing and what’s been paid. Technicians see their own work, time and scoreboard. Pay rates stay private, and people can’t read each other’s big rock reports.

Hours, invoiced billing, change orders and deliverables are retired, never deleted, and every edit to an hour is recorded with who made it and why.

Not yet. We’ll tell you plainly what controls are in place and answer any security questionnaire you send us.

It’s yours. You can export your projects, hours, billing and people at any time.

Stratum runs a working engineering firm every day, so it isn’t a side project that can quietly go away. Your data is always exportable, and we’re glad to talk through continuity before you sign.

The people who built it. Questions go straight to us, not to a ticket queue.

Yes. Stratum runs in the browser on phones and tablets, and the timer is built to be started and switched in a few taps from a job site.

Yes, on the admin work that slows good people down. AI drafts proposals from your own scope library, reads a past proposal or signed contract into a new one, and sets up a project from a won proposal, so people spend their time on the work only they can do. It never sets your price; a blank fee beats an invented one. The firm’s owner decides whether AI is turned on.

AI plugins are on the way that make everyday work in the app faster, like setting up projects, drafting updates and finding what you need. Each one is optional, and the owner decides which ones the firm uses.