Best Accounting Software for Advertising Agencies in 2024

Accounting software for advertising agencies is essential for sustainable and healthy business finances.

Cloud-based accounting software is designed to support your project budgeting, expense tracking, and cash flow management. But finding the best project accounting option can be complex — what is the software best for? Which features does it have? And what do user reviews say?

We’ll cover all of this and more in our guide for marketing agencies, so keep reading to learn more.

Before we head over to our software comparison, here are the top features to look out for when searching for the best cloud accounting software for marketing professionals.

Time tracking is the at basis of marketing agency operations. Accurate and reliable time tracking improves project estimation, supports project schedules, and streamlines resource scheduling. By using timekeeping software for instead of spreadsheets, compiling this data is quicker and more reliable.

Managing your agency rate cards ensures that your pricing data is up-to-date and consistent across projects. Refreshing your information at least annually ensures that your agency can stay competitive in the professional services landscape. Software makes rate cards easier to set up, manage, and share with potential clients.

Effective budgeting tools allow agencies to plan and allocate resources efficiently. They also help monitor expenses and budget burn during the project execution phase. Integrated project billing is another crucial feature, which allows this data can be used to create professional invoices and manage the accounts payable and receivable process.

Revenue recognition is important for recording income accurately and in line with accounting standards. This ensures compliance and accurate financial reporting and provides comprehensive insights into your creative agency’s financial items, revenue, and profit.

Finally, your software should provide key features for creating and sharing reports. Ideally, it should include a library of templates with accounting reports, including data on revenue, profit, expenses, invoicing, and other financial reports. The right software can also translate your data into visualizations and provide dashboards to share project outcomes with team members and clients.

Productive is one of the best all-in-one agency management software solutions. Why? It’s designed specifically to support workflows for professional services, including marketing and advertising, creative agencies, development companies, and more.

You’re not only getting a tool for tracking project costs, business expenses, and managing your budgeting. Productive also supports your project and task management, team collaboration, and resource allocation.

Check out how a creative agency uses Productive for improved clarity and strategic planning.

Here are Productive’s key features for advertising agency accounting:

Productive’s Time Tracking simplifies time entries for both project managers and their teams. Hours can be tracked directly from tasks with an integrated timer, or added manually later. Managers can approve or reject single entries, or do it in bulk.

There’s also a desktop widget for Windows and Mac, so team members can manage their timer without browsing through their tabs. With the Google Calendar integration, you can also convert calendar events into time entries and link them to your projects.

With Productive’s Budgeting, you can set up your agency rate cards, create and send estimates to potential clients, and use this data to build budgets of various types. Productive supports T&M, fixed-price, and retainer budgets. For long-term projects, you can also split up your budgets into separate phases for easier cash flow management.

Productive provides integrated Billing features. Data is pulled from your billed hours, or uninvoiced amounts on fixed-price projects, in order to generate invoices quickly. Invoicing reports help you manage amounts invoiced, to be invoiced, and overdue.

Productive also provides built-in QuickBooks and Xero Integrations. You can copy your invoicing data from Productive to these tools to connect your tech stack.

Productive provides in-depth insights into your revenue and profitability. You can manage revenue recognition and view profit margins and budget burn in real time. By using Productive’s Resource Planning feature and scheduling employees, you can also forecast these metrics to make more informed decisions.

Learn more about managing the digital marketing agency profit margin.

With Productive’s Reporting, you can use the library of 50+ agency-focused templates or create your reports fully from scratch. These templates include accounting reports, budgeting and invoicing, resourcing, project management, time tracking, and other data — in short, all your essential marketing project management activities are covered.

You can also build custom dashboards with widgets, and set up automatic sending to Slack or email with Productive’s Pulse.

Productive also offers a range of additional features, including:

Productive offers a wide variety of integrations with HR, accounting, and collaborations tools.

This includes Slack, Google Calendar, and Outlook for scheduling and updates; Xero and QuickBooks for accounting; BambooHR and Breathe for HRM; Jira and Memtime for time tracking, and more.

You can also try a 14-day free trial before committing to a paid plan.

QuickBooks is a cloud accounting software for small businesses and accounting teams.

Key features:

QuickBooks Online is a popular accounting software option in the US, so if this is where your clients are mostly from, it’s good to keep in mind to streamline the cash flow process. However, if this is not a factor for you, keep in mind that some users have issues with QuickBooks’ usability and customer support.

Source: G2

You can check our article on Netsuite vs QuickBooks to learn more.

Productive offers a native QuickBooks integration, so you can seamlessly connect your tech stack. Track time and generate invoicing data in Productive, and then copy it over to QuickBooks.

Xero is another popular accounting app for small businesses, accountants, and bookkeepers.

Key features:

Users online usually recommend using Xero over QuickBooks if possible, due to factors such as user interface, usability, and customer support.

Source: Reddit

Productive offers a native Xero integration, so you can seamlessly connect your tech stack. Track time and generate data invoicing data in Productive, and then copy it over to Xero.

FreshBooks is a marketing agency accounting tool that’s also suitable for construction, legal, and IT industries.

Key features:

Users online comment that FreshBooks is a solid tool for essential accounting needs, for example, basic invoicing and time tracking. However, some advanced features are not as well developed. For example, reporting may not be suitable for complex business needs, but it can provide basic expense reports and bills overviews.

Overall, FreshBooks can be a solid QuickBooks or Xero alternative. You can also check out how it fares as one of the top Bonsai alternatives.

Zoho Books is an accounting platform for startups, small businesses, accountants, and non profits.

Key features:

Zoho Books is usually praised for its simple interface and easy-to-use capabilities. Users enjoy that it helps them simplify their basic accounting tasks. As a potential disadvantage, a user review on Capterra states that:

Zoho Books is a lesser-known tool, but it can be a good alternative to Xero or QuickBooks.

You can also find some options for freelancers and small businesses in our list of the top HoneyBook competitors.

Sage Intacct is the accounting platform from Sage, a leading provider of ERP software solutions.

Key features:

Sage Intacct is usually described as a more robust solution, especially in comparison to options such as Xero and QuickBooks. However, the pricing can be a bit opaque, and there are many potential add-ons to consider, which makes decision-making harder. Overall, users recommend Sage Intacct for medium-sized businesses due to its complexity and pricing.

We also covered Sage Intacct in our list of the best consulting ERP solutions.

FunctionFox is a work management tool designed to support creative projects.

Key features:

Users enjoy FunctionFox for its simplicity and ease of use: “It had everything I was looking for in the most simple way possible” (Source: Capterra). However, FunctionFox doesn’t list any integrations on its website, and users note that this is one of its biggest downsides. So if you want to integrate your accounting tools with project management software, you’d best consider an alternative such as Productive.

After you’ve reviewed your options, how do you choose the best digital marketing agency platform?

Alongside the essential considerations, which are industry, pricing, and key features, you should also consider the following: usability, scalability, and customer support.

Usability means that the tool feels good to use, and is not too difficult to pick up. All-in-one tools will naturally be more complicated, but they should make up for it with intuitive design, helpful tutorials, and responsive customer support. This promotes adoption and helps you really get the most out of your software.

Scalability is also important. This means that the tool is regularly updated for quality-of-life features and new capabilities. This will ensure that you’re getting the best possible support and that you don’t have to switch to more robust options when your agency grows.

If a tool offers a free trial, you can use this to get a first glimpse of its design and layout. For scalability and customer support, check review sites and the vendor’s website. It might have something like a roadmap or page that shows the latest updates.

Accounting software helps business owners:

To summarize, we’ve listed some great options for accounting for marketing and creative teams. A popular choice for billing in professional services is QuickBooks, though there are great alternatives such as Xero, Zoho Books, or Sage Intacct for larger businesses.

If you’re looking for a powerful tool that combines financial management with end-to-end agency operations, Productive is your best choice.

As a tool designed specifically for service-based businesses, it can help you reduce your tech stack, get consolidated insights, and make workflows more efficient.

Book a demo with Productive today to learn more.