Bookkeeping & General Ledger
Clean, current books maintained on your cloud accounting platform — so you always know exactly where your business stands, without the admin.
Bookkeeping for marketing & creative agencies
Bookkeeping for Marketing & Creative Agencies in Canada
Bookkeeping for agencies — project profitability, contractor and freelancer costs, ad spend and pass-through billings — so you know which work actually makes money.
Discuss Your Books Take the Health Check
An agency can have a busy bank account and still struggle to explain which clients or projects contribute to its results. Service fees, freelance invoices, subscriptions, client media budgets and retainers need records that show how they relate.
Avora provides remote bookkeeping for Canadian marketing and creative agencies. We can maintain agreed client/project categories, reconcile bank and card activity, review supplier and customer balances, and prepare management reports. The scope depends on your software, documents and reporting needs.
A project example: separate the fee from the budget
Consider a fictional project with these amounts in CAD, excluding sales tax:
| Item | Amount | Management review |
|---|---|---|
| Agency service fee | $6,000 | Service income for the project, subject to the agreed recognition policy |
| Freelance production costs | $2,200 | Direct project cost |
| Project-specific software | $300 | Direct project cost |
| Contribution before other costs | $3,500 | $6,000 minus $2,200 minus $300 |
| Client media budget tracked separately | $5,000 | Reconcile charges and reimbursements against the agreement |
The $3,500 is not net profit: it excludes staff/owner time, overhead and other costs. The separate media row is a management view, not a direction to net revenue and expenses on financial statements. Your accountant should determine presentation and tax treatment based on the contract.
Agree the level of detail before building reports. If freelancers work across several projects, their invoices or your allocation records need enough information to support the split.
What to provide each month
Keep client agreements and changes, issued invoices, freelancer bills, platform statements and receipts accessible through the agreed workflow. For retainers, identify the work period, amounts invoiced, cash received and work still outstanding. Flag disputed invoices and unapproved expenses for the owner’s decision.
Media-platform charges may differ from invoices and bank withdrawals because of credits, timing or fees. Reconcile the relevant statements rather than treating every withdrawal as a new expense. Our credit-card reconciliation guide shows the basic checks, and the monthly checklist covers the wider routine.
Reports and responsibilities to agree
Discuss a profit-and-loss, balance sheet, customer/supplier balances and any client/project view you need. Keep a question list for missing receipts, allocation decisions, contract treatment and tax coding. Your team supplies context and approves actions; Avora maintains the agreed records; your accountant reviews accounting or tax decisions outside the bookkeeping scope.
For GST/HST, confirm the treatment of your supplies and expenses rather than applying one code to every client budget. See GST/HST bookkeeping. For platform routines, use the Xero guide or QuickBooks guide.
If agency books are behind
List the accounts, affected months and platforms before starting. Cleanup and catch-up can establish a reliable starting point, followed by monthly bookkeeping and year-end preparation.
Take the Bookkeeping Health Check, or discuss your agency’s books with the number of accounts, approximate activity and the reports you need. Arrange secure document sharing separately after the initial conversation.
Content reviewed October 16, 2026. Examples are illustrative; agree accounting presentation and tax treatment with your accountant.
What to keep an eye on
Bookkeeping considerations for marketing & creative agencies
Project and client profitability
Agencies juggle many projects and clients at once. Recording income and costs so they can be traced to projects tells you which work is profitable and which is quietly losing money.
Freelancers and contractors
Agencies lean heavily on freelancers and contractors. Those payments need to be tracked cleanly and kept separate from any employee payroll.
Pass-through costs and media spend
Track client media budgets separately for management reporting and reconcile charges, refunds and reimbursements. Your accountant should confirm whether the contract requires gross or net financial-statement presentation.
Retainers and deferred revenue
Keep agreements, invoices, work periods and advances traceable. Record retainers under the policy agreed with your accountant; receiving cash does not by itself determine revenue or GST/HST treatment.
GST/HST and reporting
Sales tax kept reconciled, and clear monthly reporting so you can see profitability and cash without waiting for year-end.
Sound familiar?
Common problems we help with
- No clear view of which projects or clients are profitable
- Ad spend and pass-through costs tangled with agency expenses
- Freelancer costs recorded inconsistently
- Retainers making a month look better than it was
- Books behind because the team is focused on client work
How we help
Services that fit
Bank & Credit Card Reconciliations
Every account reconciled and tied out to the statement — so your balances are trustworthy and your reporting holds up to scrutiny.
Bookkeeping Cleanup & Catch-Up
Behind on your books or unsure they're right? We bring months of backlog current, fix what's wrong, and reconcile every account — then keep you current going forward.
Year-End & Financial Reporting
Books closed cleanly and packaged for year-end — plus the management reporting you need to actually run the business, not just file it.
Common questions
Good to know
Can you show profitability by client or project?
Yes — we can structure your bookkeeping so income and costs are traceable to projects or clients, so you can see what's actually profitable. The right level of detail depends on your tools and how you want to work.
We pass through a lot of ad spend. How is that handled?
We track client media activity separately for management review and reconcile platform charges, credits and reimbursements. Gross-versus-net presentation and tax treatment depend on the agreement and should be confirmed with your accountant.
Our books are behind because we prioritise client work. Can you catch us up?
Yes — that's very common for agencies. See cleanup & catch-up, then we keep you current monthly.
Other business types
Contractors & Trades · Consultants · Professional Services · E-commerce · All business bookkeeping
Bookkeeping for your marketing business
Tell us where your books stand and we'll suggest a sensible next step — no pressure, no obligation.