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Professional services · Agencies

The agency that knows its margin before month-end.

Brief to invoice on one stack. Toggl-grade time capture, project P&L per retainer, the client comms layer that doesn't drop balls.

Creative · digital · 5–50 staff
Project + retainer mix
Utilisation lift, typical
Opportunity cost recovered
Agencies Creative · digital · 5–50 staffRetainer-led Project + retainer mix+18% Utilisation lift, typical£42k Opportunity cost recovered
The creative & digital agencies stack

Six instruments, calibrated.

Brief to invoice on one stack. Toggl-grade time capture, project P&L per retainer, the client comms layer that doesn't drop balls.

01 · Brief intake

Scope to estimate to commitment.

Briefs captured once, scoped against the rate card, estimated honestly, signed off in writing. The fixed-fee that doesn't blow up.

  • Brief intake form
  • Estimate templates by service
  • Scope-creep flagging
  • Notion, Float, custom
02 · Time capture

Per-project hours, by client, by team.

Time tracking the team actually does. One-tap timers, daily nudges, weekly review. The data behind margin per client is the data the team gives.

  • One-tap timers
  • Per-project + per-client tags
  • Weekly approval flow
  • Toggl, Harvest, Float
03 · Project P&L

Margin per client per month, before billing.

Revenue minus loaded cost, per client, live. The retainer that quietly went underwater — flagged on day forty, not the next renewal.

  • Per-client P&L
  • Underwater-retainer alerts
  • Loaded rate by team
  • Xero, Pulley, custom
04 · Client comms

Status, approvals, change-orders.

One thread per client across email, Slack-Connect, and Notion comments. Change-orders captured before they hit the bill, not after.

  • Multi-channel client thread
  • Change-order workflow
  • Approval queue
  • Notion, Loom, Slack-Connect
05 · Resourcing

Who's free, who's heavy, who's on holiday.

Live capacity grid across the team. New brief lands — the answer to who staffs it is on the screen, not in the partner's head.

  • Per-person capacity
  • Holiday & PTO sync
  • Auto-allocation suggestions
  • Float, Forecast
06 · BrainBase

Brand voice, deliverable templates, supplier roster.

Brand guidelines, deliverable templates, the supplier roster, past pitches — searchable. Junior productivity day one.

  • Brand voice library
  • Deliverable templates
  • Supplier roster
  • AI-assisted retrieval
Sample engagement

The agency that fired its worst client.

Eighteen people. Twenty-three retainers. Margin invisible until quarter-end.

A digital agency ran on Notion for projects, Toggl for time, and a quarterly bookkeeper call for P&L. Two-week build: time-capture inside the project tool, live utilisation, per-client margin reconciliation. One quarter in: identified two clients running 31% under cost; renegotiated one, ended the other. Recovered £42k in opportunity cost across the next two quarters.

How we measure: Per-client margin reconciled monthly across Toggl time entries, Xero billing, and direct-cost allocations; utilisation = billable / available hours, rolling 8-week average across 18 staff.

+18%billable utilisation
+£42kopportunity cost recovered
2 clientsrepriced or removed
Adjacent industries

Different shape of the same problem.

If your work isn't exactly this, the nearest sectors share the rhythm. Or browse every industry we build for.

Map the agency.

Bring a recent client P&L and a Toggl export. We diagnose from the numbers.