CPA-led books that separate your agency fees from the media spend you place for clients, track profit by client and by project including freelancer time, and keep contractor 1099s clean, so you can see which accounts actually make money.
We separate your agency fees from the media spend you place for clients, track profit by client and project, and keep retainers and contractor 1099s clean, so you can see which accounts actually make money and price the next one on real numbers.
What it is. A CPA-led team keeps your books current every month: transactions categorized, every account reconciled, revenue and cost tracked by client and project, and financial statements delivered on a fixed date.
Who it is for. Marketing, advertising, PR, design, and creative agencies past the do-it-yourself stage: firms running retainers, project work, and media spend that need to know which clients and projects actually make money.
What generic bookkeeping misses. Agency books have to separate pass-through media spend from agency fees, recognize retainers as work is delivered, and cost freelancer time against each client. Generic bookkeeping blends all of it and inflates revenue that never belonged to you.
Corviniti provides monthly bookkeeping to marketing, advertising, PR, design, and creative agencies. The service is flat-priced: we categorize your transactions, reconcile every bank, credit card, and loan account, book payroll from your provider, and deliver financial statements on a fixed date, with revenue and cost tracked by client and project so the numbers show where the money is made. The team is led by a CPA with Big Four experience.
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How we keep marketing agency books
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Bookkeeping for marketing agencies, in three minutes
3 min
How we separate pass-through media spend from agency fees, track profit by client and project, recognize retainers as work is delivered, keep contractor 1099s clean, and what onboarding and cleanup look like.
0:00Why agencies need specialized bookkeeping
0:40Pass-through media spend versus agency fees
1:25Profit by client and by project
2:10Retainers, deferred revenue, and 1099s
2:55Our satisfaction guarantee
Transparent Pricing
Marketing agency bookkeeping: pick a plan
Flat monthly pricing sized to your agency. Each plan keeps the books current and reconciled; the higher tiers add client and project profitability, KPI reporting, and hands-on support as the firm grows.
Basics
Simple, accurate bookkeeping every month. Best for solo owners with < $50k monthly expenses.
Every plan is flat monthly and month to month, with no long-term contract. Catch-up and cleanup, if you need it, is a separate one-time project quoted up front. Volume above the Professional tier is quoted to scope, so contact us for a specific number.
How We Help
What you get
On a marketing agency engagement, you get books that separate your fees from pass-through spend and tell you where the profit is, kept current every month by a CPA-led team.
Monthly books, reconciledEvery bank, card, and loan account reconciled to the statement, transactions categorized, and statements delivered on a fixed date.
Pass-through spend separatedMedia and ad budgets placed for clients tracked as pass-throughs so your revenue and gross margin are real.
Client and project profitabilityRevenue and cost, including freelancer time, tracked by client and project, synced from your time and billing tools.
Retainers and deferred revenueRetainers and prepaid packages recognized as work is delivered, so monthly margin stays honest.
Contractor and 1099 trackingW-9s and freelancer payments tracked all year, coded to clients, for a painless 1099 season.
Raise and sale-ready financialsAccrual-clean, correctly stated records an investor, partner, or buyer will accept.
When companies bring us in
Your revenue looks big but your margin is thin because media spend is booked as income.
You cannot tell which clients or projects actually make money once freelancer time is counted.
Retainers and deposits are booked as earned the moment they are invoiced, so your numbers swing.
You are raising, bringing in a partner, or selling, and need books diligence will trust.
The revenue question
Gross or net: media pass-through vs agency fee
Agency books turn on one question: when a client pays, is it media pass-through or your agency fee? Ad and media spend bought on the client’s behalf is not agency revenue; it is reported net, or gross with a matching cost, and booking it as revenue inflates the top line and flatters gross margin. Your fees and retainers are the revenue, recognized as the work is delivered and deferred until earned when prepaid. Once media is separated from fee, profit by client and by project becomes visible, and contractor payments get clean 1099s. This is the most common way agency books mislead, so we keep pass-through spend in its own lines from the start.
Gross versus net revenue for a marketing or advertising agency. Illustrative.
This is for you if
Your revenue looks big but your margin is thin because media spend is booked as income.
You cannot tell which clients or projects actually make money once freelancer time is counted.
Retainers and deposits are booked as earned the moment they are invoiced, so your numbers swing.
You are raising, bringing in a partner, or selling, and need books diligence will trust.
What you get
Monthly books, reconciled Every bank, card, and loan account reconciled to the statement, transactions categorized, and statements delivered on a fixed date.
Pass-through spend separated Media and ad budgets placed for clients tracked as pass-throughs so your revenue and gross margin are real.
Client and project profitability Revenue and cost, including freelancer time, tracked by client and project, synced from your time and billing tools.
Retainers and deferred revenue Retainers and prepaid packages recognized as work is delivered, so monthly margin stays honest.
Contractor and 1099 tracking W-9s and freelancer payments tracked all year, coded to clients, for a painless 1099 season.
Raise and sale-ready financials Accrual-clean, correctly stated records an investor, partner, or buyer will accept.
The Detail
The gaps, and how we close each one
Service 01
Pass-through media spend separated from agency revenue
The media, ad, and production budgets you place for a client flow through your accounts, but they are not your income. Booked as revenue, a $50,000 ad buy makes your top line look large while your actual gross margin quietly collapses, and you end up managing the agency off a number that was never yours to keep.
How we handle it
We separate pass-through spend from your agency fees so your revenue reflects what you actually earn. Client media budgets, ad platform charges, and production costs you front and bill back are tracked as pass-throughs, not income, and your profit and loss shows agency fee revenue against agency cost. That gives you a real gross margin, a clean basis for pricing retainers and markups, and a top line you can hand a lender or a buyer without an asterisk. For most agencies this is the single view that changes how they read their own numbers.
Service 02
Profit by client and by project
Some clients look big and barely break even once you count the hours poured into them; some quiet accounts carry the firm. A single monthly total hides all of it, so you keep chasing revenue that costs you money and underprice the work that actually pays.
How we handle it
We track revenue and cost by client and project, including the freelancer, contractor, and staff time booked against each. That shows true margin per client and per project while you can still renegotiate a scope or fire an account, instead of discovering the loss at year-end. Many agencies run time tracking and project management in tools like Harvest, Toggl, Asana, or Monday; we bring that time and cost data into your accounting file so profitability reconciles to the systems your team already works in every month.
Service 03
Retainers and deferred revenue recognized as work is delivered
Monthly retainers, prepaid packages, and project deposits are collected before the work is done, so the cash in your account is not all earned. Book it as revenue when it lands and your income swings month to month, your margin looks inflated in the months you invoice and empty in the months you deliver, and your cash position becomes a false signal.
How we handle it
We recognize revenue as the work is delivered, not when the invoice clears. Retainers are earned across the service period, prepaid packages and project deposits sit in deferred revenue until the work is done, and each month your profit and loss reflects the value you actually produced. That smooths out the swings, keeps margin honest, and separates the cash you are holding for future work from the profit you have genuinely earned, which is exactly the distinction an investor or an acquirer checks first.
Service 04
Contractor payments and clean 1099s
Agencies live on freelancers: writers, designers, developers, media buyers, and production help. Pay them all year with no system and January turns into a scramble to find W-9s, reconcile who was paid what, and file 1099s under deadline, with penalties waiting for the ones you miss or file wrong.
How we handle it
We track contractor and freelancer payments all year with the W-9s on file, so 1099-NEC filing at the end of January is a routine export rather than a reconstruction. Payments are coded to the right clients and projects so the same data feeds your profitability reporting, reimbursable pass-throughs are kept out of reportable amounts, and when a freelancer is being treated in a way that looks like an employee, we flag it, because worker classification is exactly the kind of question that draws scrutiny.
Not sure which clients are actually paying and which are costing you? Talk to us, and the first clean month will show you.
Agency tools, time tracking, and billing kept in sync
Most agencies use a stack: a project management tool, a time tracker, a billing or proposal system, a payment processor, and a payroll provider. When none of it reconciles to the accounting file, hours logged, invoices sent, and cash collected all live in separate systems that never agree, and the books drift from what the team actually did.
How we handle it
We connect the pieces that feed the books. Invoices and payments from tools like QuickBooks Online, Xero, HubSpot, or your billing platform reconcile to the bank, time and cost from your tracking tool map to clients and projects, and payment processor deposits post net of fees so your revenue is not overstated. The result is one accounting file that ties back to the systems your team lives in, so the numbers you report and the work you delivered are the same story every month.
Service 06
Monthly bookkeeping and reconciliations
Most agency books fail in the same two places: transactions categorized wrong, and accounts that never get reconciled. Both compound, and by the time a pitch for financing or a tax deadline forces the question, the profit number you have been steering the agency by all year is wrong.
How we handle it
We run your books on QuickBooks Online or Xero on a monthly cycle. Every transaction is categorized against a chart of accounts built for an agency, with pass-through spend, agency fees, and contractor cost in their own lines, every bank, credit card, and loan account is reconciled to the statement, and payroll from your provider is booked correctly, including the employer taxes owners routinely miscount as profit. You get a profit and loss statement, balance sheet, and cash flow summary on the same date every month, with a short note on anything that moved and one batched question list instead of a drip of emails.
Service 07
Books ready for a raise or a sale
Raising capital, bringing in a partner, or selling the agency all put your books in front of someone who knows exactly what to look for. Inflated revenue from pass-through spend, retainers booked as earned before the work was done, and a messy contractor ledger are the first things a buyer or investor discounts, and they cut your valuation or kill the deal.
How we handle it
We keep accrual-clean records with agency fee revenue stated correctly, deferred revenue tracked, client and project margin visible, and contractor cost documented, so due diligence confirms your numbers instead of unwinding them. When you are ready to raise, add a partner, or sell, the financials are already in the form the other side expects, and the same practice that handles technical accounting for venture-backed and public companies stands behind them.
Service 08
How we work with your agency, month to month
A fair question before hiring any bookkeeper: what does the month actually look like from your side, and how do you reach us when something comes up?
How we handle it
The work is done in QuickBooks Online or Xero, read-only bank feeds, connections to your billing and time tracking tools, and a shared inbox for the statements and bills we need. You get a fixed monthly delivery date, a standing way to reach us, video calls when a conversation beats an email, and a CPA who answers within one business day. You also get a CPA-led team at a flat monthly price a solo bookkeeper cannot match on depth, keeping your books to the standard the rest of our practice works to.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Do you do bookkeeping for marketing agencies specifically?
Yes, agencies are a core part of what we do. That means separating pass-through media spend from your agency fees, tracking profit by client and project including freelancer time, recognizing retainers and deferred revenue as work is delivered, and keeping contractor 1099s clean. We also bring your billing and time tracking tools into the accounting file so the books reconcile to the systems your team uses.
How do you handle pass-through media and ad spend?
We separate the media, ad, and production budgets you place for clients from your actual agency fees, so your revenue reflects what you earn rather than what flows through you. Pass-through spend is tracked as a pass-through, not income, which gives you a real gross margin and a top line that holds up in diligence. Getting this wrong is the most common way agency books mislead.
Can you track profit by client and by project?
Yes, and it is usually where the value is. We track revenue and cost, including contractor and staff time, by client and project, so you can see which accounts actually make money and which quietly drain the firm. We map data from time tracking and project tools like Harvest, Toggl, Asana, or Monday so profitability reconciles to what your team logged.
How do you recognize retainers and deferred revenue?
We recognize revenue as work is delivered rather than when cash lands. Retainers are earned across the service period, and prepaid packages and project deposits sit in deferred revenue until the work is done. That keeps monthly margin honest and separates cash you are holding for future work from profit you have actually earned.
How do you handle our freelancers and 1099s?
We track W-9s and contractor payments throughout the year and code them to the right clients and projects, so 1099-NEC filing in January is routine rather than a scramble. Reimbursable pass-throughs are kept out of reportable amounts, and we flag any freelancer being treated in a way that raises worker classification questions.
How much does bookkeeping cost?
Flat monthly pricing based on your transaction volume, number of accounts, and whether you need cleanup first, not an hourly meter. Plans start at $350 a month. Tell us about your business and we will send a specific number, usually within one business day.
Which accounting software do you use?
Most of our clients are on QuickBooks Online, and it is what we recommend when a business is choosing a platform. We also work in Xero, and for larger or more complex companies, NetSuite and Sage Intacct. If you are on desktop QuickBooks, spreadsheets, or a shoebox, migrating to QuickBooks Online is part of setup, and you keep full ownership of the file.
Can you catch up books that are months or years behind?
Yes, and it is one of the most common ways engagements start. We rebuild from bank and credit card records, reconcile every account, and bring you current through the last closed month, then keep it current monthly. Cleanup is quoted as a one-time project alongside the monthly price.
What is your satisfaction guarantee?
If you are not fully satisfied in your first month, we refund that month’s bookkeeping fee, no hassle. That is up to a full free month to decide we are right for you. One-time catch-up and cleanup fees are non-refundable. See terms for details.
Our Guarantee
100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
If you are not fully satisfied in your first month, we refund that month’s bookkeeping fee, no hassle. That is up to a full free month to decide we are right for you. One-time catch-up and cleanup fees are non-refundable. See terms for details.
Why Choose Us?
More Time for You to Run Your Business
Running a business means your time is best spent serving customers and growing, not reconciling accounts or chasing down last month’s numbers. We handle the day-to-day bookkeeping so you can stay focused on the work, with clean, reliable financials whenever you need them.
We understand how small businesses actually operate: uneven cash flow, job or project-based income, and expenses that do not fit neatly into a box. Our approach is practical and built around that reality, giving you numbers that reflect what is really happening in your business.
