The short answer
A small architecture firm tracks RFIs, submittals and change orders on one log, one row per item. Three things make it work, and none of them is software. Every row has a date out and one owner, and seven days of silence puts a task on that owner's list. The columns and statuses below are in use today at a studio we build for.
Tools sold to general contractors solve a volume problem a seven-person studio does not have. Procore prices by annual construction volume and publishes no number; Newforma sells project information management through a booked demo. The studio's problem is the inbox, and nine columns fix it.
Step 1 Decide what the log holds
Keep one log for the whole studio, not one per project. Principals ask "what is out, across every job, and for how long," and only a single log answers that without opening every project. Filter by project for one job; never split the log.
The log holds everything out of the office during construction and waiting on someone else's answer. That's RFIs from the contractor, submittals and resubmittals for review, change orders and the studio's own requests to the contractor. We log plan-check submittals and the city's clearances here too, each with its own type, because the office handles them alike: sent, waiting, chased. Separate logs for the city and the contractor mean chasing from two places and missing both.
Step 2 Number items the way the contractor does
Use the contractor's numbers and never invent a second set. The contractor already numbers RFIs in sequence and submittals by spec section, such as 09 29 00-01 for the first gypsum board submittal. Keep those numbers in a text column, so the email subject, the stamp and the log row all name the same thing.
Change orders take the studio's own sequence (CO 01, CO 02), with the contractor's proposal number beside it. Plan-check rows use the city's application or permit number. The Number column is the one people type rather than choose. Disputes are settled on it, so it's worth ten seconds of care per row.
Step 3 Set the nine columns
| Column | Type | Why it is there |
|---|---|---|
| Project | Link to the project row | So the log filters by job, and the project board can show its CA items |
| Type | Status: RFI, Submittal, Resubmittal, Change Order, Plan Check, Clearance | Each type has its own lifecycle and its own review clock |
| Number | Text | The contractor's or the city's number, exactly as they wrote it |
| Party | Status: Contractor, Building and Safety, Planning, Fire, HOA, Other | Who the ball is with when it is not with you |
| Date out | Date | The day it left the office, or the day it arrived if it is theirs; the follow-up rule counts from here |
| Owner | Person | One person at the studio; the follow-up task lands on them |
| Due | Date | The turnaround the contract sets for your review, or the date the city gave |
| Status | Status, from step 4 | Where it is in the lifecycle |
| Waiting on | Status: Us, Contractor, Agency, Client, Consultant | The column the weekly review filters on |
A tenth column, a link to the document in Dropbox or the file system, costs nothing and saves the search. Add nothing else for the first month: columns added on day one go unfilled, and nobody trusts a half-empty log.
Step 4 Set statuses that follow the real lifecycle
For RFIs and submittals, the statuses are Awaiting, Received, Under Review, Returned, Resubmitted, Approved and Closed. Awaiting means sent with no answer; Received means it's on your desk; Returned means reviewed and sent back, with the stamp result in the notes. Change orders run Proposed, Priced, Approved, Rejected and Executed. Plan-check rows run Awaiting, Corrections, Resubmitted, Approved, Ready to Issue and Closed. Keep the lists short and honest, and delete any status nobody ever sets.
Most logs lack one state: Returned as distinct from Closed. A submittal returned "revise and resubmit" is still open, and a log that marks it done loses it. On a real City of Los Angeles job, the same log carries the clearances. Each departmental approval on the city's Clearance Summary Worksheet gets a row under the agency that owns it. Each agency's heading flips to Blocked automatically the moment any of its clearances goes to Corrections.
Step 5 Add the seven-day follow-up rule
After seven days in Awaiting, create a chase task on the owner's own list, dated today and named for the row. Make it a task, not a notification; that difference is the whole value of the log. A notification gets read on a phone and forgotten; a task stays on the owner's list, reviewed every Monday, until someone does it. In the Los Angeles build, the rule puts the task on the linked project's board, assigned to the submission's owner, and the principal gets nothing. He said on the first call that notifications addressed to him get ignored.
If the due date passes while a row is Under Review, a second rule sets it to Overdue and gives the owner a task. That rule protects the studio's own turnaround, which the contract sets and the contractor counts. Two rules are enough. A log with twelve automations leaves its owner unable to say why a task appeared.
Step 6 Decide who sees what
The studio sees the whole log, with views by project, party and waiting-on. The contractor needs no seat: an RFI arrives by email or through a form that creates the row. The answer goes back by email with the number in the subject and the stamped PDF attached, and the row is updated.
monday.com's guest access starts at the Standard plan, and a guest "can only access boards you invite them to" (monday.com/pricing, October 7, 2026). If a contractor insists on live status, give them a guest seat on a board holding only their project's CA rows. Never put them on the studio-wide log or on any board that carries a fee.
Consultants who review submittals (structural, MEP) are contacts linked to the row, not users with seats, and the row's Waiting on column reads Consultant. The client sees nothing by default; a client who wants a weekly summary gets an email, not a login. No fee ever goes on the log. monday.com Pro sets permissions per board, not per column, so anyone who can open a shared board sees everything on it.
Step 7 Handle change orders and the money
A change order row carries two numbers, the proposed cost and the approved cost. Both are the contractor's construction cost for the change, not the studio's fee, so they can live on the log. Any fee the studio earns from the change stays off the log.
If a change order triggers an additional service under the owner-architect agreement, the fee for that service becomes an invoice line item. It lives on the private Payments board under the project number, as the billing by phase page describes. Give the change order row a notes field for the reason and the date the client approved it. That's the row someone reads eighteen months later.
Step 8 Run the weekly CA review
Every Monday, after the project list review, spend ten minutes per project in construction administration. Run three filters in order. First, waiting on us: what's on the studio's desk and how close it is to its due date. Second, waiting on the contractor or the agency for more than seven days: what the studio is chasing, and whether the follow-up task got done. Third, overdue.
Every row the filters turn up gets a next action before the review ends. The review answers the question the log exists for: what are we waiting on, and for how long? A log nobody reviews weekly becomes the inbox again within a quarter.
The monday.com setup, in an afternoon
Build one board, called Submissions, on monday.com Pro. Group it by project, or by status if the studio prefers to read it as a pipeline. Use the nine columns with the types in the table above, plus a link column for the document and a notes column. Add four views: By Project, By Party, Waiting On Us and Overdue. Add two automations: the seven-day follow-up that creates a task for the owner, and the overdue rule.
Add one form view for the contractor's RFIs, with fields for the project, number, question and attachment. Each submission creates a row, so nobody at the studio types it.
Pro is $19 per seat per month billed annually, as shown on monday.com/pricing on October 7, 2026. The rest of the studio's monday.com system needs Pro anyway, for private boards and time tracking. Standard, at $12, caps automations at 250 actions a month, and a log with two rules across 20 projects uses that up.
The Los Angeles variant adds the clearances. An Import Clearances button reads the city's Clearance Summary Worksheet PDF and creates one row per clearance under the right agency heading. It parsed 6 of 6 on a real City of Los Angeles worksheet and 5 of 5 on a Santa Clarita report. A second press creates nothing, and it refuses any worksheet from a jurisdiction other than the project's.
The importer is custom app work, since reading a PDF takes an app rather than an automation. We price it into the build's fixed quote. The log itself comes with Full System, from $7,000, alongside the project list, fees by phase, consultants, the pipeline, permissions and dashboards. Foundation, from $3,000, leaves it out. The full structure is in the CA log section of our monday.com guide for architects, and the Studio Yona case study shows it in production.
Compared with the alternatives
| Route | Price (October 7, 2026) | What it does | Where it stops for a small studio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Email and a spreadsheet | Free | The log as a sheet; the documents in email | No follow-up rule or owner reminder, and the sheet is a week behind the inbox |
| monday.com Pro, built as above | $19 per seat per month, annual; Full System from $7,000 | The nine columns, two rules, four views and a form, next to the project list and the pipeline | Nothing exists until built; the document stays in the file system; a PDF importer is custom code |
| Newforma (Konekt, Constructex) | Quote-based; "Book a Demo" (newforma.com) | "Simplify submittals, RFIs, and document management", in its words, with email filing and transmittals | Built for volume; it is not the project list, and it does not bill a fee |
| Procore | Quote-based; "an upfront annual fee by product and based upon your Annual Construction Volume" (procore.com/pricing) | Construction management for contractors and owners, RFIs and submittals included | Priced on construction volume, for the contractor's side of the table; most small studios are invited into the contractor's Procore rather than buying their own |
Limitations
What stays outside the log
Documents stay where they are. The stamped submittal, the markup and the RFI response PDF live in Dropbox, Google Drive or Autodesk Construction Cloud, and the log holds the link. The contractor gets a portal only if one is built, and when the contractor runs Procore, the studio works in two places regardless.
Your contract sets the review turnaround, not this page, and the Due column reproduces it, never decides it. The clearance detail is from Los Angeles; other jurisdictions have other approvals, which fit the same structure. The habit of logging comes from you: the owner makes the row the day the item goes out, or the seven-day rule counts from nothing.
Key takeaways
- One log for the studio, one row per item, nine columns and a link to the document.
- Use the contractor's and the city's numbers; never invent a second numbering.
- Statuses follow the real lifecycle, with Returned distinct from Closed.
- Seven days of silence creates a task for the item's owner at the studio, not a notification, and the whole log runs on two rules.
- The contractor needs no seat, consultants are contacts and the client gets an email. No fee ever appears on the log.
- One monday.com Pro board at $19 a seat, built in an afternoon or as part of Full System, from $7,000. Procore and Newforma are quote-based and built for a volume problem a small studio does not have.