Bookkeeping for marketing agencies
Agency books break in four specific, repeatable ways that a general-practice bookkeeper has never had to think about. We do agencies only, we close by the 10th, and we give you margin by client on the same page.
Bookkeeping for a marketing agency differs from general small-business bookkeeping in four ways: client media spend is pass-through and must be separated from fee revenue; retainers billed in advance create deferred revenue that has to be recognised monthly; contractor payments must be split between delivery cost and overhead per client; and multi-currency billing needs FX broken out on its own line. Get those four right and margin by client becomes arithmetic. Get them wrong and every ratio in the business is wrong.
Why do agencies need a specialist bookkeeper?
Not because agency accounting is hard, but because it's unusual — and unusual things get guessed at.
A general-practice bookkeeper serving trades, retail and professional services sees the same shapes every week. An agency doesn't look like any of them. So the pass-through gets booked as revenue, the annual retainer lands in January, the contractor bench becomes one lump in "Professional fees," and nobody notices for eighteen months because the bank reconciles perfectly the whole time.
The books are technically correct and operationally useless. You get a P&L that tells you the business made money and gives you nothing to do about it.
The four things we do differently
1. Pass-through separated at the account level
Client media and recharged production get their own accounts, distinct from fee income, so your net revenue is readable off the P&L in any month rather than reconstructed in a spreadsheet at year end. For most agencies this is the difference between looking like a 17% margin business and a 39% one. The full explanation of gross versus net is here.
2. Deferred revenue that actually runs monthly
Invoice a twelve-month retainer in January and a generic bookkeeper recognises all of it in January. Your Q1 looks heroic, your Q2 looks like the business is dying, and your cash position disagrees with both. We run a deferred revenue schedule so the P&L matches the work being delivered.
3. Contractors coded per client, delivery versus overhead
Nine 1099s, some offshore, some on retainer, some per project, half paid through Wise. Coded as one lump, delivery cost is unknowable. We split delivery from overhead and code per client, with 1099 and W-8BEN tracking running all year rather than becoming an archaeology dig every January.
4. Multi-currency with FX on its own line
Billing US clients in USD while paying a Canadian team in CAD moves your gross margin by several points, and without FX broken out nobody can tell whether a change was pricing, delivery or the dollar. We handle currency at the transaction level with realised and unrealised FX separated.
What do you get every month?
| Deliverable | Detail |
|---|---|
| Closed books by the 10th | Reconciliation has a right answer, so we hold ourselves to a date rather than a range |
| P&L, balance sheet, cash flow | On an agency chart of accounts, with net revenue readable directly |
| Margin by client | Fee income against delivery cost, per account, with hours pulled from your PM tool |
| Deferred revenue schedule | Run monthly, not reconstructed annually |
| Contractor and 1099 tracking | Maintained through the year |
| A named bookkeeper | One person who knows your file, with a reviewer behind them |
How it works
You keep QuickBooks Online or Xero — there's no migration and no new software to learn. We connect bank and card feeds through Plaid, your payroll, your payment rails and your PM tool for hours. We do a one-time catch-up on whatever's outstanding, rebuild the chart of accounts on an agency structure, then close every month.
AI carries the volume — matching the bank feed against invoices, bills and receipts, applying coding rules learned from your history, flagging anomalies. It gets no vote on judgement calls. A named bookkeeper reviews every exception and signs the close.
Pricing
| Plan | For | Monthly |
|---|---|---|
| Close | Up to 200 transactions, 3 accounts. Books right and on time. | $750 |
| Close + Margin | Up to 600 transactions, unlimited accounts, multi-currency, margin by client, deferred revenue, 1099s, AP/AR. | $1,600 |
| Operator | Unlimited transactions, 13-week cash forecast, payroll allocation modelling, quarterly review. | $3,200+ |
Catch-up work is quoted separately and billed once. Most agencies who come to us are three to nine months behind, so assume there's some. Month to month, 30 days' notice, and you leave with your ledger and every working paper.
What we don't do
We don't file or sign your corporate return, do tax planning, perform audits or act as a fractional CFO. Bookkeeping done extremely well for one industry is a real business; bolting tax and advisory onto it is how firms end up mediocre at three things. We hand your CPA a clean, closed set of books and the working papers behind them.
Common questions
What counts as an agency?−
Marketing, creative, digital, dev shops, PR, media buying, design studios and independent consultancies. The practical test: you bill on retainer or project, you run a contractor bench alongside staff, and client money moves through your accounts. Two of those three and your books have the problems we fix.
Do we have to switch accounting software?+
No. We work inside QuickBooks Online or Xero, whichever you're on. Your accountant keeps their access, your data stays yours, and if you leave there's nothing to migrate back.
How much does bookkeeping for a marketing agency cost?+
Ours runs $750 to $3,200+ a month depending on transaction volume and whether you want margin by client. That's above a generic small-business bookkeeper at $300–600 and below a fractional controller. The premium buys the four agency-specific treatments above and a monthly client-profitability report that a generic provider structurally can't produce.
We're eight months behind. Is that a problem?+
It's most of our intake. Catch-up is quoted as one piece of work up front, and the re-chart happens as part of it — so you come out with a clean structure rather than a tidier version of the same mess.
Can you tell us which clients are profitable?+
That's the point of the Close + Margin plan. Once pass-through is separated and delivery cost is coded properly, we pull hours from your PM tool, map them to loaded cost, and produce margin by client monthly. The main dependency is your time data — if hours are badly tracked the report inherits that, so we'll tell you honestly what it's worth before you rely on it.
Free books review
Send three months of statements. We run them the way we'd run them and come back with your real revenue, your real gross margin, and the two or three things your current setup is hiding. No deck. If your books are already clean, we'll say so and leave you alone.
Get a free books reviewMargin is a bookkeeping firm. We are not a licensed public accounting firm and we do not provide tax, audit or assurance services. Prices and figures on this page are illustrative.