Accountants for digital marketing agencies
Your digital marketing agency is busy. But is it giving you the income, security and freedom you started it for? If not, find out how Barnridge Accountancy can help.
While there are many great accountancy firms out there, they don’t always get how agencies run. At Barnridge, we only work with agencies, so we understand your challenges, ambitions and frustrations.
Our dedicated accountants can help you gain more control of your finances and bring your goals into sharper focus.
We understand digital marketing agency finances
As an owner-manager of a digital marketing agency, it can be hard to know where to focus your attention next. Between client acquisition, managing teams, maintaining quality and actually doing the work, there’s not much time to spend on the numbers. Which is why more work and more revenue doesn’t always translate into more profit.
In our experience, the big culprits include scope creep, overservicing, underpricing and late-paying clients. They eat into margins, put pressure on cash flow and make business growth a slog.
Working together, the Barnridge team can help you put processes and systems in place to give you a clearer view and more control over your finances.
While we offer all the basic compliance services you need, we add the most value at a strategic level. We’re here to look at the bigger picture and help you answer the questions directly related to growth:
Which clients and services are genuinely profitable?
Are we pricing our services correctly?
Can we afford another hire?
What do the next three years look like?
What happens if we lose our biggest retainer?
With greater financial control and strategic insight, you can make more profitable decisions and start moving in the right direction.
How we help digital marketing agencies
You spend your time obsessing over client data, whether that’s clicks, leads, ROAS, rankings or conversions. Your agency deserves the same visibility.
Understanding your margins
Every hour you don’t charge for is eating into your profit, and website builds can easily overrun. With project tracking, management reporting, and profitability analysis, we can identify which clients are consistently overserviced and where scope creep is squeezing your margins.
Managing cash flow
Late payments and gaps between project invoices are common in agencies. But salaries, overheads and contractor costs won’t wait, so those gaps put pressure on cash flow. Staged project payments and rolling cash flow forecasting help you avoid shortfalls.
Get your pricing right
A retainer agreed a year ago might now involve twice the work. We can review your pricing strategy as your business evolves, so your fees stay competitive and reflect the work involved. If you’re project-based, we can help you track costs and structure an appropriate follow-on retainer.
Digital marketing agencies we work with
We work with all kinds of digital marketing agencies. While they differ, many agencies share the same goals: better clients, bigger margins and more certainty over the future.
Many SEO clients are on fixed monthly retainers, but search engine updates often make the work unpredictable. We can help you track time against fees to ensure you are not consistently overservicing clients.
Between ad budgets across social media platforms and creator fees, a lot of money can move through your agency without adding to your earnings. We separate pass-through costs from your agency fees, so you can see how much income you keep and what’s left after the cost of delivering each client’s work.
With client media spend flowing through your agency accounts, it can make your top line look far healthier than it actually is. We can help you separate management fees from spend and set payment terms so you’re not funding clients’ campaigns.
Research, discovery and design work is often sold in sprints or phases, and delays in client feedback or extra rounds of testing can push out sign-off and invoicing. We help you price each phase properly, track time against it and bill as milestones are reached, so your senior designers’ time is fully recovered.
Most website builds start as a fixed-price project, then move onto ongoing support, maintenance and hosting once the site goes live. We track time and costs against the build so you can see whether it made money, then help you structure the follow-on retainer so it brings in steady monthly income and covers the hosting and licence costs you pay out.
Accounting services built around your digital agency
Whether you outsource the core aspects of compliance or your entire finance function, Barnridge can adapt to meet your needs as you grow.
Annual compliance
We can prepare and submit your year-end accounts, corporation tax and self-assessment returns, with advance notice of what you’ll owe. Regular tax planning identifies relevant reliefs and allowances to help your agency avoid unnecessary tax.
VAT
International clients, cross-border costs and recharges can make VAT less straightforward for digital agencies. From VAT registration to quarterly returns, we handle the admin, advise on the VAT treatment of transactions and review whether your scheme still suits your agency, including opportunities to reduce the pressure VAT puts on cash flow.
Payroll & benefits
We manage payroll calculations, PAYE and National Insurance deductions, alongside benefits reporting. We’ll also help your agency claim available employer allowances and understand which tax-efficient benefits could help you attract the best talent.
Management accounts
Our management accounts provide insights into profitability and cash flow to help spot trends, emerging issues and opportunities. We deliver them monthly via our bespoke interactive platform, which is easy to use and gives you a clear view of your agency’s performance.
Budgeting & forecasting
We build an annual budget around your agency’s targets, then update rolling forecasts using actual results and your pipeline. You’ll have a clearer basis for controlling spend, planning recruitment and assessing future funding needs.
Outsourced finance function
As your agency grows, keeping records up to date takes more time. We can run part or all of your finance function, including daily tasks like bookkeeping, accounts payable and strategic tasks like management reporting.
Outsourced CFO/FD
As the business scales, decisions begin to carry more weight. Our outsourced CFO/FD support gives you senior financial guidance to shape your growth strategy and plan ahead with confidence.
See our entire range of accounting services for agencies.
At Barnridge, we only work with agencies
Our founder‘s expertise in senior agency finance roles means we understand the unique challenges you’re facing. Barnridge was set up to work exclusively with agencies like yours, and we have a strong track record in helping them make stronger decisions based on reliable numbers.
We are an experienced team, an ICAEW member firm and Xero-certified advisers, so you can be sure your accounts are in the best hands.
Give us a call
020 3997 6165
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Frequently asked questions about our accounting services for digital marketing agencies
What accounting services does a digital marketing agency need?
Most need bookkeeping, annual accounts, corporation tax, VAT and payroll. Growing agencies benefit from management accounts, forecasting and strategic finance director support.
When should a digital marketing agency consider an outsourced finance director?
Usually when decisions move beyond routine compliance, such as significant hires, pricing changes, funding or improving margins. An outsourced FD gives you strategic input without the cost of a full-time hire.
Do you only work with digital marketing agencies?
We work across the wider marketing and communications sector, including digital, branding, PR and creative agencies; however, digital marketing makes up much of our client base.
Not sure where to start? Get in touch with the team today and one of our accounting experts will be able to help.