Bookkeeping and accounting for marketing agencies
The foundation everything else stands on: accurate, current books that make your reporting, your taxes, and your CFO’s advice actually reliable.
Schedule a ConversationDay-to-day accounting, done right
Bookkeeping is unglamorous and completely load-bearing. If the underlying records are wrong, every report, forecast, and tax return built on them is wrong too. Our team handles the general ledger, categorization, reconciliations, and monthly maintenance so your books are accurate and current — not a scramble at year-end.
We set up and maintain QuickBooks around how agencies actually operate: project and client tracking, pass-through costs, retainers, and the vendor relationships that clutter most agency ledgers. The result is books that a controller and CFO can build on without redoing the foundation first.
In most of our engagements the bookkeeping and the controllership sit in the same seat — a fractional controller who codes the transactions and owns whether the financials are right. It is faster and more economical than splitting the roles, and we add a dedicated bookkeeper only when the volume genuinely calls for one.
Accounting for advertising, creative, and digital agencies
Agency accounting isn’t generic small-business bookkeeping. An advertising agency billing through media, a creative studio juggling project retainers, and a digital agency reselling ad spend each carry the same traps: pass-through and reimbursable costs that inflate revenue, retainers recognized in the wrong month, and no clean read on which clients actually make money.
We handle accounting for advertising agencies, creative studios, and marketing and digital agencies the way the work is really structured — fee revenue separated from pass-throughs, profitability tracked by client and project, retainers and deferred fees handled correctly. Bookkeeping for agencies done this way means your reporting is meaningful from the first month, not just ready for the tax return.
A clean handoff up the stack
Because the same firm staffs your bookkeeper, controller, and CFO, nothing gets lost in translation. The books are kept the way the controller needs them closed and the CFO needs them analyzed. When you grow into needing more, the people already know your business — there is no re-onboarding.
What’s included
- General ledger maintenance and transaction coding
- Bank and credit-card reconciliations
- Accounts payable and receivable processing
- QuickBooks setup, cleanup, and management
- Monthly financial statement preparation
- Vendor and expense tracking built for agencies
Who we provide this to
We work exclusively with the industries we come from:
Common questions
How should QuickBooks be set up for a marketing agency?
Around your work: a chart of accounts and class/project structure that separates fee revenue from pass-through costs, tracks profitability by client and project, and cleanly handles retainers. We set this up so your reporting is meaningful from the first month, not just tax-ready.
How is bookkeeping for an agency different from a normal small business?
Agencies carry complications most bookkeepers never see: pass-through and reimbursable costs that shouldn’t inflate revenue, retainers and deferred fees, project- and client-level tracking, and messy vendor and media spend. Books kept without that structure look fine until you try to answer whether a client is actually profitable.
How much does bookkeeping for an agency cost?
It scales with volume and complexity — number of transactions, entities, payroll, and how much cleanup the books need to start. Because your bookkeeper sits on the same team as your controller and CFO, you’re not paying separate firms to hand work back and forth, and you can add controllership or FP&A without re-onboarding anyone.
Can you take over bookkeeping from our current provider or in-house person?
Yes, and transitions are routine. We review the existing books, reconcile and clean up what’s needed, restructure the file around agency economics, and take over the monthly rhythm — with a clean handoff up to your controller and CFO so nothing is kept one way and analyzed another.
What does accounting for an advertising agency involve?
More than a standard ledger. Advertising and media agencies run large pass-through and reimbursable costs — media buys, production, freelancers — that shouldn’t be counted as your own revenue, plus retainers and deferred fees that have to land in the right period. We structure the books so gross revenue, net revenue (AGI), and client profitability are all clear, which is what makes an agency P&L actually usable.
Do you handle bookkeeping and accounting for creative and digital agencies too?
Yes — creative studios, digital and performance-marketing shops, PR firms, and production companies are exactly who we’re built for. The mechanics differ (project retainers, reselling ad spend, WIP), but the principle is the same: books structured around how your agency actually earns, kept by a team that has sat in these seats.
Let's talk about your Bookkeeping & Accounting.
Tell us where things stand today, and we'll show you what senior, agency-specific support looks like — without the full-time cost.
Schedule a Conversation