Proposals, contracts, team billing, project tracking, and per-client profitability — so you know which work is worth taking on.
Here's what a typical workflow looks like for creative agencies.
Create detailed proposals with deliverables, timelines, and assigned team members. Smart estimates draw from your project history.
Each team member has their own rate. Standard, overtime, and rush rates cascade from member to client to project. Every hour is billed correctly.
Software subscriptions, office rent, subcontractor fees — allocate overhead to specific clients or spread it proportionally.
Choose itemized (every team member and rate type listed) or consolidated (clean total). Minimum billing rules prevent underbilling.
See exactly what each client costs to serve. Revenue minus labor minus overhead equals the number that matters.
Proposals, contracts, time tracking, invoicing, expenses, and tax prep — all in one place.
Standard, overtime, and rush rates per team member. Rate cascading: project overrides client overrides member defaults.
Set minimums per rate type. If a team bills 0.3 hours, the invoice reflects your minimum — no more leaving money on the table.
Assign shared expenses (software, rent, utilities) to specific clients or distribute proportionally across active projects.
Set up recurring billing for retainer clients. Track hours against retainer allotments and invoice overages.
Milestone-based payments for large projects. Collect deposits, progress payments, and final balances on schedule.
Drag-and-drop kanban for your sales pipeline. Customizable stages: lead, proposal sent, negotiating, won, lost.
Save milestone sequences for repeatable project types. Website builds, brand identities, campaigns — start structured.
Revenue, labor cost, overhead, and true margin per client. Compare across your portfolio at a glance.
8 triggers, 4 actions, 2 searches. Connect Clearmargin to your CRM, project tools, and communication apps.
Explore a demo account pre-loaded with realistic creative agenciesdata — proposals, invoices, expenses, and profitability reports.
Explore the demoTrue agency profitability requires tracking three things per client: revenue (invoiced amounts), labor cost (team hours at their internal cost rates), and overhead (allocated shared expenses). Most agencies track revenue but ignore the other two, so they cannot tell which clients actually make them money. Clearmargin tracks all three and shows real margin per client.
Agencies need billing software that handles multiple team members with different rates, rate cascading (project overrides client overrides member defaults), minimum billable hours, and labor breakdowns on invoices. Generic invoicing tools lack these features. Clearmargin was built for multi-person billing with rate types, minimums, and retainer tracking.
The most effective approach is a one-click timer with client and project context, plus a quick-log strip for batch entry after the fact. Each team member should have their own rate, and the system should handle standard, overtime, and rush multipliers automatically. Clearmargin provides both timer and quick-log entry with automatic rate cascading.
It depends on the engagement: hourly billing for ongoing work, fixed-price for defined projects, retainers for recurring relationships. Many agencies use a mix. The key is tracking actual time against every project — even fixed-price ones — so you can see your effective hourly rate. Clearmargin supports all three models and shows effective rates on fixed-price projects.