Your P&L reads like a bigger agency than you run. Most of that top line is media spend.
Marketing agencies
Which client made you money last month?
Futureproof replaces QuickBooks and the spreadsheet you run client margin in. Four agents keep the books current daily, tag every dollar to its client, get your invoices out and chased, and show margin by client every morning.
Sound familiar?
You are running the agency on a three-week-old spreadsheet.
Client margin lives in a spreadsheet, and the spreadsheet is three weeks behind the work.
Retainers and project work blend into one number, so neither can be read on its own.
Retainer invoices go out late, the follow-up goes out later, and the agency floats its clients for sixty days.
Client profitability
What you billed is not what you made.
Transactions are tagged by client as they land, so retainer fees, project invoices and media costs sit against the account they belong to. Ambiguous items wait for your approval. Drop in a monthly hours export and your team's time lands on the right clients too, so margin is a live number rather than a quarterly reconstruction.
| Client | Monthly fee | Margin after costs |
|---|---|---|
| Henderson | $18,000 | 38% |
| Bright & Co | $12,000 | 22% |
| Northline | $9,500 | -8% |
| Marlow | $6,000 | 31% |
| Pike | $4,500 | 15% |
Illustrative figures. Your table shows your clients. Henderson is the biggest account here and the third most profitable, and Northline costs money to serve.
Without that view a client gets repriced or dropped at renewal, a year after the margin turned. With it, the squeeze shows up in that client's margin the same week, while the retainer can still be renegotiated or the scope trimmed.
Getting paid
The work shipped. The invoice did not.
Most agencies do a poor job getting invoices out the door and a worse one following up on them, and when the media is prepaid that gap is your cash. Remi sends the invoices on schedule, chases the late ones on a cadence, and keeps you from ever having to be the one who asks.
Retainer invoices leave on schedule
The monthly retainer invoice goes out on the day it is due to go out, every month, without anyone remembering to raise it. Project invoices are drafted for your review.
Remi chases every late one
A reminder before the due date, one on the day, then at 7, 14 and 30 days overdue, each drafted by Remi in your voice and staged for your approval. Sent on business days, inside the hours you set, and paused the moment a payment lands.
You always know who owes you
Remi reviews your receivables every morning: which retainers are aging, which client is slipping, where media you have already paid for is still unbilled. Margo folds the payment timing into next month's cash position.
You approve the reminders from your inbox each morning. Remi never emails a client on her own, and she never forgets one either.
Media that passes through
Client media spend is not your agency's revenue.
You pass $100K a month of client ad budget through your accounts and bill it straight back. QuickBooks has no real answer. Its billable expense feature books that spend into the same revenue lines as your fees, so your top line looks inflated and your margin looks like 8 percent when your service margin is really 45. The workaround is paying a specialist bookkeeper to hand-build clearing accounts and separate income lines.
Because Futureproof owns the ledger, it fixes this at the source. A bill marked pass-through posts to that client's clearing account, and the rebill invoice credits it back, so only your fee reaches revenue and your service margin holds.
| What your books say now | 8% margin |
|---|---|
| Revenue | $121,600 |
| Media spend billed to clients | $100,000 |
| Operating costs | $11,900 |
| Net | $9,700 |
Inflated top line, buried margin.
| What is actually true | 45% service margin |
|---|---|
| Fee revenue | $21,600 |
| Client media | Tracked separately |
| Operating costs | $11,900 |
| Net | $9,700 |
Same month, correct books.
Project profitability
Whether a project made money depends on hours nobody totals.
A monthly hours export
Export the month from your time tool as a CSV and drop it in. Each entry lands on the client and the project it was worked on, so margin includes labor.
Hours while the work runs
Billable and total hours sit on the project while it is live, next to the spend still committed against it, so an engagement running long shows this week.
Retainer and project
Retainer fees and project invoices both sit under the client, so you can open one engagement and read it without leaving that client's margin.
The AI finance team for an agency
Futureproof is your books and the team that does them.
Futureproof is not another dashboard reading your accounting data. It is the general ledger itself, your system of record. It replaces your accounting software, and the agents do the daily work inside it. That shape is what an agency needs: retainers and project work side by side, media passing through, margin that lives on hours.
Vic
Bookkeeper
Categorizes and reconciles every transaction daily. Client media and subcontracted work post to clearing, never into fee revenue. Anything ambiguous waits for your approval before it posts.
Remi
Invoices & Collections
Gets every retainer and project invoice out on schedule, drafts the reminder at each stage of the follow-up, and knows what each client owes you before you ask.
Theo
Bills & Payments
Captures the media invoices and vendor bills, preps payment runs for your approval, and keeps payables visible.
Margo
Forecasting & Margins
Margin by client and project after media and hours, plus the 13-week cash forecast that carries your retainer inflows.
The bookkeeper math
You are paying more each month for less of the work.
| What you have now | What it costs | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Part-time bookkeeper | $800 to $1,500/mo | Books weeks late, no analysis |
| Outsourced firm | $1,000 to $3,000/mo | A monthly PDF and an invoice |
| Futureproof for agencies | From $300/mo | Books closed daily, plus invoicing, bill pay, margin by client, and cash forecasting |
The four agents do the work the bookkeeper does not: Vic reconciles daily, Remi chases the invoices, Theo preps the payment runs, and Margo says which clients need repricing.
In the product
Hours, contracts and receivables in one ledger.
Time
Your team's month: 766 entries imported in batches, 3,627.8 of 3,914.8 hours billable and still unbilled.
Contracts
Retainer notice windows surface before they open. Here, three inside the next ninety days.
AR Aging
$101,479 outstanding, $33,229 of it past thirty days, and DSO sitting at 61 days.
How it works
Connect the bank and QuickBooks. The agents take over.
01
Connect QuickBooks and your bank
Connect in one sitting. Your history migrates in and is reconciled against your prior books before the agents start, and then Futureproof becomes your books.
02
The agents get to work
Daily reconciliation, invoice follow-up, tagging by client and project, and client media kept out of your fee revenue.
03
One dashboard
Margin by client and project, cash position, and what happened while you slept.
Pricing
Four agents on your agency's books, from $300 a month.
Agencies under $1M in annual revenue start at $300 per month, with no per-seat fees and no modules.
Your monthly statementDaily reconciliation, tagged by clientIncluded
Invoices, collections and billsIncluded
13-week cash forecast with retainer inflowsIncluded
Margin by client and by projectIncluded
Total, monthlystarting at $300.00
Starting price for agencies under $1M in revenue. No per-seat fees, no modules, nothing metered.
FAQ
The questions agency owners ask first.
Pricing starts at $300 per month for agencies under $1M in annual revenue: all four agents, the ledger, no per-seat fees and no modules.
A bill marked pass-through posts to that client's clearing account, and the rebill invoice credits it back, so only your agency fee reaches revenue. In a month where $121,600 passes through the books and $100,000 of it is client ad budget, revenue reads $21,600 and service margin 45 percent instead of 8.
Yes, as the starting point. You connect QuickBooks and your bank, your history migrates in, and Futureproof becomes your general ledger from there. QuickBooks is where your books came from, not the system you keep paying for.
Most agencies do. Every client's margin reflects everything tagged to them: retainer fees, project invoices, your team's hours, and everything passed through on their behalf. A project sits under the client, so one engagement can be opened and read on its own. Scope creep shows up in that client's margin instead of a blended average.
Futureproof maintains accrual books for operations and cash-basis books for tax, both kept current all year. Your CPA gets clean cash-basis financials at filing time instead of a year-end conversion scramble. Most service firms file cash basis but need accrual to understand the business; today that means paying for a conversion or living with one distorted view. Here you get both, always in sync.
Yes. Retainer invoices go out automatically on their schedule, and project invoices are drafted for your review. Remi then follows up on every unpaid one: a reminder before the due date, one on the day, and again at 7, 14 and 30 days overdue, each drafted in your voice and staged for your approval. Reminders go out on business days inside the hours you set, and pause the moment a payment lands. You stop being the one who has to ask.
Your data is encrypted in transit (TLS) and at rest (AES-256), hosted on SOC 2 compliant infrastructure with strict access controls. Bank connections are read-only, through the same connection providers your bank already uses.
Your Numbers. Your Answers. Smarter Moves.
Stop guessing which clientsare worth the hours.
Fourteen days inside your own ledger. Connect the bank, import a month of hours, and read margin by client before you decide anything.
Books closed daily, not monthlyMedia spend out of fee revenueHours land on the right clientAccrual and cash books in sync