FCCA
Mohammad Azam
Founder & CEO
Founded the practice and still reads client accounts himself. FCCA is the fellowship grade of the chartered certified qualification, which takes years of practice beyond the exams to hold.
Bookkeeping for marketing agencies The close date decides what you can charge.
If the month closes on the 25th, then for three weeks of every month you are quoting new work on numbers from the quarter before.
( Where it costs you )
What this is actually costing
- ( 1 )
The month closes on the 25th, if it closes at all.
Every price you quote in the first three weeks uses a cost base that has already moved.
- ( 2 )
Scope creep is invisible until the quarterly review.
By then it has eaten the retainer margin and you have quoted two more projects the same way.
- ( 3 )
Contractor and freelancer costs swing hard month to month.
Nobody checks them against the project budget until the project is finished and the margin has gone.
- ( 4 )
The founder is still, in practice, the bookkeeper.
Hours that should go into pipeline go into reconciling a bank feed at 11pm.
- ( 5 )
You outgrew spreadsheets two years ago and never replaced them.
Manual entry eats hours and quietly introduces errors nobody catches until year end.
What changes
Bookkeeping, and what it does to your numbers
Bookkeeping for a marketing agency is not really about clean books. It is about the close date and the tagging. Books closed by the 5th mean every quote uses this month's cost base. Costs tagged to client and project at entry mean scope creep shows up in week three, not month four. Clean books are the byproduct.
We keep your books current in QuickBooks Online or Xero and close them by the 5th. Every cost is tagged to a client and a project as it lands.
Close by the 5th, every month
You price new work on this month's cost base instead of last quarter's guess.
Costs tagged to client and project at entry
An overrun surfaces in week three of a project, while a change order is still a normal conversation.
Contractor and freelancer spend tracked to budget
The freelancer who has quietly doubled their hours is visible before the project wraps.
Pass-through media kept out of fee income
Your revenue line reflects what the agency earns, not what passes through the account.
AP and AR run properly
Invoices go out the day the milestone lands, and chasing starts before a client is 45 days late.
Reconciliations and monthly statements
You get a P&L you can act on by the 5th, not a folder of receipts in April.
Multi-entity and multi-currency handled
A second company or an overseas client stops being the reason the close slips a week.
Run the numbers
What a few points of margin is worth
Worked example
Run the numbers on a project scoped at 200 hours that quietly ran to 260.
- Hours over the brief
- 60
- At a $110 blended delivery cost
- $6,600 of unbilled work
- Across six projects a year
- $39,600
The point is when you see it, not the size of the number.
( Compare )
Books kept in-house against books kept by Aprecity
| In-house or founder-kept | Aprecity | |
|---|---|---|
| Typical close date | The 25th, or later | The 5th |
| Costs tagged to client and project | Rarely | At entry, every time |
| Scope creep visible | At the quarterly review | Week three of the project |
| Who reads the numbers back to you | Nobody | Your CFO, weekly |
| Founder hours per month | Eight to twenty | Close to zero |
Bookkeeping, tax and CFO work from one team start at $997 a month. See what sets the price.
Questions
The things agency owners ask first
01Do we have to switch off QuickBooks or Xero?
No. The team is certified on both and works in whichever you already use. We would rather restructure your chart of accounts than move you onto new software.
02Our books are months behind. Is that a problem?
It is common and it is fixable. Catch-up work is quoted once and separately, so it never hides inside the monthly fee. We bring the books current before anything else starts.
03We already have a bookkeeper. Why change?
If they close by the 5th and tag costs to client and project, do not change. If they close on the 25th and hand you a balanced file with no answers, that is the gap.
04How do you handle client ad spend running through our account?
It gets separated from fee income, so your revenue reflects what the agency earns. Otherwise a $2M top line can hide a much smaller business underneath it.
05What do you need from us each month?
Bank and card feeds connected, receipts in the shared folder, and an answer when we query something unusual. That is normally under an hour of your time.
If your clients sit in one vertical
The numbers change with the clients you serve
Interior design clients
Build timelines run 4 to 12 months, so unbilled work piles up against a project stage nobody is checking.
eCommerce clients
Ad spend runs through your account and revenue tracks your client's sales season, not your cost base.
Real estate clients
Production costs get fronted and reimbursed on a lag, while listing cycles swing revenue month to month.
Go deeper
Frameworks you can run on your own numbers
5 min read
The scope creep audit: a 15 minute check on your last three projects
Scope creep does not show up as a line on your P&L. It shows up as a margin that quietly fell and nobody can explain. This audit compares scoped hours against delivered hours on three finished projects, and usually finds the leak in one sitting.
8 min read
How to calculate your agency's effective hourly rate
Your effective hourly rate is the total fee on an account divided by every hour your team put into it. It is almost always lower than your rate card, and the gap between the two is what scope creep costs you. Here is how to work it out in an afternoon.
6 min read
What are the 5 main types in a chart of accounts for your agency?
A chart of accounts has five main types: assets, liabilities, equity, income and expenses. Your agency needs the last two split further. Separate fees from pass-through billing, and delivery costs from overheads, or your books cannot show what your work earns.
6 min read
What happens during month-end close at your agency?
During month-end close, your accountant matches every account to its statement, moves fees and costs into the month the work happened, and locks the month. For your agency, that turns a list of bank transactions into a profit figure you can price and hire from.
5 min read
How to account for pass-through costs at your agency
Keep pass-through costs such as media spend in their own income and cost accounts, tagged by client, and judge your agency on gross income. Mixed in with your fees, they shrink your margin on paper, hide which clients pay, and tie up cash you front for clients.
5 min read
Why your agency has cash flow problems when it is making a profit
Most agency cash flow problems come from the gap between paying your team and collecting your fees. Every day a client takes to pay ties up another day of fees. Work out how much cash that gap holds, then shorten it, and the profit starts reaching the bank.
Who does the work
A named lead, not a queue
ACCA
Asad Riaz
Managing Partner & Fractional CFO
Runs the CFO engagements, from profitability by client through to investor-ready reporting for a raise. If you are repricing a retainer or sizing the next hire, this is the person on the call.
ACCA
Syed Faheem Basit
Fractional CFO & Business Analyst
Builds the models behind the pricing and hiring calls, and the reporting that makes them readable. Utilization, effective hourly rate and the 13-week cash forecast come from here.
Those are the three who lead the practice. Behind them is the wider team that keeps books current, prepares returns and builds the reporting packs. What does not change is who owns your account. One of the three above leads it and answers when you ask why a number moved.
Next step
Find out which client is costing you money
A call is 20 minutes. Bring your last twelve months and you will leave knowing whether bookkeeping is the piece you are missing.