Professional Services
Architecture firms, engineering firms, marketing agencies, and design studios. You sell expertise by the hour. We help you understand which hours actually make money.
The Industry
A marketing agency lands a $50,000 branding project. The scope seemed clear. Then came the quick tweaks and one more round of revisions and the client calls that ran 90 minutes instead of 30. The team put in 600 hours instead of the 400 they estimated. At their loaded cost per hour, they barely broke even. But the invoice said $50,000 and the client was happy, so everyone assumed it was a win.
Professional services firms sell time. Architecture, engineering, marketing, design. The product is expertise delivered by people. Revenue depends on hours billed. Profit depends on what those hours actually cost you versus what you charged. Most firms know their billing rate but have no idea what their true cost per hour is once overhead gets factored in.
Who This Covers
Who This Covers
Architecture firms, civil and structural engineers, marketing and PR agencies, graphic and web design studios, UX consultants, and branding firms. Creative and technical businesses where the deliverable is expertise and the revenue is tied to your team’s time.
What Makes It Complex
What Makes It Complex
Project-based billing with milestones. Retainers that run month to month. Time tracking that needs to reconcile with invoices. Overhead allocation across multiple clients. Principal compensation that blurs the line between salary and profit distribution. Cash flow timing where you finish work in January and get paid in March.
What We Handle
Project accounting for professional services means tracking every hour and every expense against the client or job. You need to see not just revenue per project but true profit after allocating overhead. This tells you which clients are worth keeping and which project types to pursue more aggressively.
QuickBooks needs proper job costing enabled and configured for how your business actually operates. Time tracking software needs to feed into the books cleanly. Retainers need to be tracked as liabilities until earned. None of this happens automatically. It requires a system designed for project-based work.
Project Profitability Tracking
Project Profitability Tracking
Every hour coded to a project. Direct costs allocated. Overhead distributed. You see actual margin per engagement, not just revenue. Reports that show which clients and project types generate real profit versus those that keep your team busy without making money.
Cash Flow and Retainer Management
Cash Flow and Retainer Management
Retainers tracked properly as unearned revenue and recognized when work is performed. Milestone billing aligned with actual project progress. Cash flow forecasting that accounts for the gap between completing work and receiving payment. You stop being surprised when the bank balance doesn’t match your invoice total.
Common Problems
The biggest issue is overhead blindness. Firms know what they charge per hour but not what each hour costs. Rent, software, insurance, benefits, admin time. All of it adds up. If your billing rate is $150 and your true loaded cost is $130, that $50,000 project might be generating solid profit or almost nothing depending on how efficiently the work got done.
The other problem is the appearance of profitability. Busy firms feel successful. Invoices going out. Clients paying. But without project-level tracking, you cannot see that one client takes twice the effort for the same fee. Or that certain project types consistently run over scope while others stay clean.
No Project-Level Visibility
No Project-Level Visibility
Total revenue looks healthy. But you have no idea which projects made money and which lost it. That great client who refers everyone might actually be the least profitable engagement in your portfolio because of how much extra time they demand and how often scope creeps without additional billing.
Cash That Disappears
Cash That Disappears
Profitable on paper but the bank account is always tight. Work gets done in advance of payment. Payroll happens every two weeks regardless. Client payments arrive 45 or 60 days after invoicing. The mismatch creates stress even when the business is fundamentally healthy underneath.
What Changes
You start seeing real numbers. True cost per hour. Actual profit per project. Which clients generate margin and which consume it. This changes how you price new work. You stop guessing at proposals and start building estimates from historical data that reflects what things actually cost to deliver.
You also get strategic clarity. With project profitability visible, you can decide which service lines to expand and which to phase out. Partner distributions can be based on contribution rather than gut feeling. Decisions about hiring, growth, and client selection become grounded in data instead of hope.
Confident Pricing
Confident Pricing
Historical project data shows what similar work actually costs to deliver. Proposals become accurate. You stop underpricing complex work that always runs over. You stop leaving money on the table on straightforward projects where you overestimated the effort involved.
Strategic Focus
Strategic Focus
You know which clients and project types generate the best margins. Growth becomes intentional. You pursue more of what works and pull back from what just keeps people busy. When an opportunity comes along, you can evaluate it against real data instead of assumptions.
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The Next Step:
A Short Conversation
Tell us about your business and what you're dealing with. We'll listen, ask a few questions, and give you a clear price for the work.