Author: Mariel Limboc

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Profit Isn’t a Module: Why Agencies Need Purpose-Built Financial Tools

people viewing Accountability dashboard

Ever notice how some ERPs treat profit like an optional accessory? It’s just another module, buried somewhere between “Inventory Management” and “Fleet Scheduling.” Oh sure, they’ll sell it to you—but it’s going to feel like buying cupholders for a car. Nice to have, but hardly the thing that gets you from A to B.

For agencies, profit isn’t a nice-to-have add-on. It’s the point. It’s what keeps the lights on, pays the talent, funds the brainstorm snacks, and—if you’re lucky—gets you that rooftop happy hour once in a while. Treating profit like an afterthought is like a chef treating “flavor” as an optional upcharge.

When Profit Is Just a Checkbox

Generic ERPs love to tell you they can “track profitability.” And technically, they can. But only if you’re willing to configure 47 custom fields, export three different reports, and perform spreadsheet gymnastics worthy of a Cirque du Soleil residency. Even then, you’re still not getting a true view of job-level profitability—you’re just approximating it.

And let’s be real: approximated profit is like approximated rent. You either have it or you don’t, and guessing isn’t a good long-term strategy.

The Problem Isn’t Your Finance Team—It’s the Tools

Agency CFOs and COOs aren’t asking for anything unreasonable. You want to see whether a job is making money, in real time, without needing to play detective. You want WIP and revenue recognition that actually match reality. You want to forecast based on facts, not vibes.

The trouble is, most ERPs were designed for manufacturing lines or warehouses. They’re fluent in SKUs, not scopes of work. They measure output in units, not hours or deliverables. And they’re baffled when you ask about multi-job, multi-client billing.

It’s not that your finance team can’t make them work—it’s that they have to bend the system into shapes it was never meant to take. Which, ironically, is exactly what kills your margins in the first place.

Why Purpose-Built Matters

A financial platform built for agencies doesn’t treat profit like a side hustle. It bakes it into every job, every hour, every expense, every forecast. From the moment a project is opened, you can see how the financials are tracking—and course-correct before you’re upside-down on margin.

That’s what Accountability does. We were founded by a former agency CFO who got tired of explaining to generic ERP vendors why “job” is not just another word for “project.” We built a platform that speaks the language of agencies: real-time WIP, job-level profitability dashboards, multi-entity and multi-currency consolidation, integrated time and expense (hello, Counta), and forecasting tools that actually reflect how you work.

No inventory module. No “Profitability Lite” add-on. No waiting until month-end to see if you made money. Just the numbers you need, when you need them, in a system that gets it right out of the box.

Final Word

Profit isn’t a module. It’s the mission. And if your ERP treats it like an afterthought, it’s probably time to find one that knows better.

See how Accountability makes profit part of the plan—not just a box you check on the menu.

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Time Tracking That Doesn’t Derail Teams (Meet Counta)

Let’s be honest: “time tracking” is right up there with “please reply all” and “mandatory team-building trust fall” on the list of things employees love to hate. It’s tedious. It’s boring. And in a lot of agencies, it’s so clunky that people put it off until Friday at 4:59 PM… which explains why your reports feel like they were written by an amnesiac.

The Friday Time-Entry Panic Is Real

You know the drill. Someone stares at a blank timesheet thinking, Was I on that client call Monday? Or was that last week? And did it last 30 minutes or three hours? Multiply that by your entire team and suddenly your “real-time” job costing is anything but.

This isn’t just an inconvenience. Inaccurate or late time entry means your WIP reports are wrong, your revenue recognition is off, and you’re essentially flying blind on project profitability.

Enter Counta: Time Tracking Without the Eye Roll

Counta was built to solve the problem without turning your team into unwilling accountants. It’s our mobile and desktop app designed for the way agencies actually work—fast-moving, multi-project, multi-tasking days where the last thing anyone needs is a 12-click time entry process.

Here’s why Counta doesn’t derail teams:

  • Ridiculously Simple Interface: Log time in seconds, not minutes. No hunting through a labyrinth of codes.
  • Smart Suggestions: Counta remembers your common jobs and tasks, so you’re not starting from scratch every time.
  • Works Where You Work: Whether you’re at your desk or on a shoot, Counta is right there—mobile and desktop sync instantly.
  • Expense Capture on the Go: Snap a receipt, tie it to a job, and it’s in the system before you can lose it in your bag.

How It Saves More Than Just Time

Because Counta feeds directly into Accountability, every tracked hour shows up in WIP, revenue recognition, and profitability reports instantly. That means finance gets accurate numbers, project managers get real-time visibility, and no one has to chase people down for their timesheets.

Think of it as the end of the “Friday scramble” and the beginning of “knowing where you stand every single day.”

Your Team Might Actually… Like It?

We’re not saying Counta will turn time tracking into the highlight of the workday. But it will make it so painless that your team won’t hate it—and that’s a win in any CFO or COO’s book.

Plus, when people see the connection between the time they log and the health of the projects they care about, they’re more invested in doing it right. It’s not just admin—it’s part of winning the work (and getting paid for it).

Final Word:

Time tracking doesn’t have to be the agency equivalent of flossing—something everyone agrees is important but no one actually does. With Counta, it’s fast, easy, and connected to the bigger picture.

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Real Revenue Recognition for Agencies

For agencies, revenue recognition isn’t just an accounting exercise—it’s the backbone of financial visibility. It’s how you know what’s been earned, what’s in progress, and where cash flow is headed. Done right, it’s the difference between managing with foresight and making decisions in the dark.

But here’s the truth: most agencies struggle to get it right in real time. They either wait until month-end for a “big reveal” report, or they’re cobbling together numbers from multiple systems in a Friday afternoon spreadsheet marathon. By the time leadership gets the data, opportunities to course-correct have already passed.

Why Real-Time Matters More Than Ever

In a fast-moving agency environment, work-in-progress changes constantly. Scopes expand, timelines shift, resource allocations get rebalanced. If your revenue recognition process can’t keep up, you’re making calls based on outdated numbers.

Real-time revenue recognition means:

  • Immediate visibility into earned revenue as time and expenses are posted.
  • Accurate WIP reporting that reflects changes the moment they happen.
  • Proactive decision-making instead of reactive clean-up at month-end.

For CFOs and COOs, that’s the difference between protecting margins now and explaining why they disappeared later.

The Problem with Generic ERP Approaches

Most generic ERPs were built for manufacturing or inventory-based businesses. Their revenue recognition models assume long production cycles and static budgets—not the dynamic, job-based world of agencies.

That leads to common frustrations:

  • Delayed updates because revenue can’t be recognized until jobs are manually reconciled.
  • Complex configurations that still don’t reflect agency-specific workflows.
  • Disconnected data from time tracking, expenses, and billing systems, requiring manual re-entry.

These roadblocks aren’t just inconvenient—they actively erode the accuracy and timeliness of your financial data.

What Real Revenue Recognition Looks Like for Agencies

An agency-ready revenue recognition process is built on three fundamentals:

  1. Integration with Job Data
  2. Revenue recognition should be tied directly to each job’s scope, budget, and status—not a generic project code. When a job advances, the financials should advance with it.
  3. Real-Time Data Flow
  4. The moment someone logs billable hours, submits an expense, or issues an invoice, your revenue numbers should update automatically—no separate reporting step.
  5. Visibility by Dimension
  6. You should be able to see recognized revenue not just by job, but by client, office, service line, and even individual team member.

The Accountability Difference

Accountability was built by a former agency CFO who understood the pain of retroactive reporting. Our platform is designed so real-time revenue recognition isn’t a “nice to have”—it’s built in.

  • Live WIP and Earned Revenue: Always in sync, updated automatically as work progresses.
  • Integrated Time & Expense (Counta): Every entry flows directly into revenue recognition—no importing required.
  • Multi-Entity, Multi-Currency Support: Consolidated views for global agencies, without spreadsheets.
  • Job-Level Profitability Dashboards: See the revenue impact alongside margin performance.

With Accountability, CFOs can close the books faster, produce audit-ready reports without scramble, and give leadership the visibility they need to steer the business proactively.

The Payoff: From Month-End Surprise to Continuous Clarity

When revenue recognition is accurate and in real time, your entire financial rhythm changes. You don’t wait for a single “moment of truth” at month-end—you have truth every day. That means:

  • Spotting underperforming jobs before they spiral.
  • Making resourcing decisions with up-to-date financial context.
  • Holding client conversations with data that reflects the current reality, not last month’s.

Final Word:

Agencies don’t have the luxury of managing by hindsight. Real revenue recognition gives you the confidence to act now, not later. The sooner you can replace manual, delayed processes with a system built for your business, the sooner you can protect margins, improve forecasting, and grow without fear of hidden surprises.

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What It Really Takes to Be an AI-Ready Agency

Every week, a new AI tool promises to revolutionize creative work, automate planning, or make your forecasts “smarter.” Agencies are adopting them at record speed—often with more enthusiasm than strategy.

But here’s the truth: you can’t AI your way out of operational chaos.

AI isn’t a magic fix for disconnected tools, inconsistent data, or teams working in silos. To truly become an AI-ready agency, you don’t just need new software—you need the right foundation.

So what does that actually look like?

AI-Ready vs. AI-Overwhelmed

There’s a difference between using AI tools and being ready for AI.

  • AI-overwhelmed agencies: Plug tools into broken processes. Hope for better outcomes. Get inconsistent results.
  • AI-ready agencies: Have structured, connected data, clean workflows, and automation-ready systems. Use AI strategically—not reactively.

The Real Prerequisites of AI Readiness

1. Structured Data

AI runs on data. But if your data is locked in spreadsheets, hidden in emails, or labeled differently across every team, AI can’t help you. Agencies that want to unlock real value from AI must invest in consistent, structured inputs—especially in finance, time tracking, and project delivery.

Structured data allows AI to:

  • Predict resource needs
  • Forecast revenue accurately
  • Spot profit leaks before they escalate
  • Automate repeatable finance and ops workflows

Without structure, AI can only guess. With structure, it can actually learn.

2. Integrated Systems

You can’t bolt AI onto a disjointed tech stack and expect results. CRM, project management, and financial tools need to talk to each other—ideally through a platform that syncs data in real time.

An integrated foundation lets AI connect the dots between:

  • Sales pipeline and capacity
  • Time entries and project profitability
  • Scope changes and billing impact

The better your systems work together, the more useful your AI outputs will be.

3. Workflow Maturity

AI thrives in environments where processes are defined and repeatable. If your agency’s workflows are built on exceptions, manual interventions, or “whoever remembers to update the spreadsheet,” AI will just automate the mess.

Being AI-ready means investing in process clarity. That doesn’t mean rigid—it means intentional.

4. A Modern Financial Management Platform

A flexible, connected financial management platform gives you the operational backbone to support AI. It ensures your data is complete, clean, and centralized—so when you do introduce AI-driven insights or automation, they’re actually useful.

With a strong foundation, AI can:

  • Automate routine reporting
  • Flag anomalies in real time
  • Optimize resourcing based on live project data
  • Drive better forecasting across teams and regions

No duct tape required.

The Role of Leadership in AI Readiness

AI isn’t just an IT initiative—it’s a leadership decision. Financial and operational leaders need to guide their agencies toward structured, data-driven practices long before any AI tool is introduced.

That means:

  • Choosing tools that play well together
  • Prioritizing automation-ready workflows
  • Setting expectations for how AI will support—not replace—human decision-making

Because no AI can compensate for strategy that isn’t there.

The Bottom Line

Agencies that will win with AI aren’t just early adopters. They’re prepared adopters—the ones who’ve done the groundwork to let AI do more than guess.

That starts with:

  • Clean data
  • Connected systems
  • Defined workflows
  • The right platform to support it all

If you want AI to work for you, start by making your agency work better first.

Is your agency built for AI—or just bolting it on?

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The ERP Built by a Former Agency CFO—And Why That Matters

When your ERP is built by someone who’s lived your challenges, everything changes. Here’s why agencies benefit from a platform designed by a former agency CFO.

Most ERPs are built with a broad market in mind—manufacturers, distributors, retailers, professional services firms, and beyond. They promise to do it all, from inventory management to HR to payroll, hoping that if they throw in enough modules, everyone will find something useful. The problem? Agencies aren’t “everyone.” We operate differently. Our work revolves around jobs, scopes, deliverables, and margins—not pallets, purchase orders, or production lines. In these systems, the things that matter most to agencies are usually treated as an afterthought.

That’s why Accountability exists. Our founder wasn’t a tech entrepreneur looking for a niche market. He was a working agency CFO, tasked with managing financial health in an industry where the pace is relentless and the margins can be thin. He’s been the person pulling late nights before month-end closes, only to realize key reports were already outdated. He’s been in the meetings where scope creep was obvious to everyone except the data in the ERP. He’s felt the frustration of having to manually reconcile time, expenses, and billing just to figure out if a job was actually profitable.

When you’ve lived those frustrations firsthand, you design differently. You don’t assume “job” is just another word for “project.” You know it’s the heartbeat of the agency’s revenue model, a complex structure that requires visibility into budget, progress, profitability, and WIP—all in real time. You don’t see revenue recognition as something that can wait for a month-end process; you build it to happen continuously, as the work is done. And you understand that multi-entity, multi-currency billing isn’t a “special case” but an everyday reality for global agencies.

This perspective is why Accountability doesn’t try to be an ERP for every industry on the planet. It doesn’t come with a half-dozen modules you’ll never use—no warehouse management, no retail POS, no agricultural yield calculators. Instead, it’s laser-focused on solving agency finance exceptionally well. Every feature, from job-level profitability dashboards to integrated time and expense tracking via Counta, was built to address a real pain point our founder lived with for years. There’s no “translation layer” between your agency’s workflows and the way the system works—it speaks your language out of the box.

And because our founder knew the stakes, speed to value became non-negotiable. Implementation isn’t a year-long slog. There are no external consultants billing by the hour to make the system usable. Our in-house experts—many of them former agency finance leads themselves—get agencies live in under 90 days. By the time you’re onboarding your first jobs, you already have accurate, real-time WIP and revenue recognition working in the background.

This isn’t just about convenience. When you’re an agency CFO or COO, every day you operate without clear, up-to-date financial data is a day you risk making the wrong call—whether that’s over-servicing a client, missing a revenue recognition deadline, or greenlighting a project that’s already underwater. An ERP built by someone who’s been in your shoes eliminates those blind spots. It’s designed to give you the clarity you need to make fast, confident decisions without second-guessing the numbers.

And that’s why having an ERP built by a former agency CFO matters. It’s not just software—it’s a partner in the truest sense. It understands the pressures of balancing creative excellence with financial discipline. It knows that a missed WIP update today can mean an awkward conversation with a client tomorrow. It anticipates the challenges before they happen, because the person who built it has already fought those battles.

Final Word:

If you’ve ever wished for an ERP that “just gets it,” that’s not an accident—it’s the result of designing from lived experience. Accountability was built for agencies like yours, by someone who’s been exactly where you are.

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Empowering Agency Growth Through Automation

High growth doesn’t come from working longer hours—it comes from working smarter. Modern businesses are discovering that real scalability depends on operational systems that reduce friction and eliminate repetitive manual tasks. That’s the promise of agency efficiency software, and it’s precisely why we built Accountability: to help teams unlock growth without sacrificing accuracy, visibility, or financial control.

As businesses evolve, so do the complexities surrounding revenue, approvals, reporting, and time management. Relying on disconnected tools or manual work creates bottlenecks that can hinder profits and slow down momentum. With agency efficiency software like Accountability, those barriers are replaced with automation that fuels progress and creates space for strategic thinking.

Automation Features That Drive Growth in Agency Efficiency Software

Automation shouldn’t simply replace manual work; it should redefine how operations flow. Every feature in Accountability’s agency efficiency software is designed to create measurable impact, driving both immediate wins and long-term scalability.

Automated Revenue Recognition Eliminates Uncertainty

Financial accuracy is non-negotiable for sustainable growth. Yet many teams still wrestle with manual revenue recognition, tangled spreadsheets, and error-prone reconciliations. Accountability’s agency efficiency software tackles this challenge through automated revenue recognition that ensures income is recorded in compliance with accounting standards and financial schedules.

By removing the guesswork, our platform accelerates month-end closings and reduces the risk of costly mistakes. Teams gain timely visibility into margins and profitability, which means more confident forecasting and better resource allocation. Instead of reacting to financial surprises, businesses can plan proactively and drive profitability forward.

Streamlined Approvals Accelerate Workflow Efficiency

Inefficient approval chains often create silent bottlenecks that stall progress and frustrate teams. Traditional methods like scattered email threads and spreadsheet logs waste valuable time. Accountability solves this with streamlined approvals embedded into our agency efficiency software, allowing clear, configurable workflows for tasks like vendor invoices, budget changes, and expenses.

Approvers receive real-time notifications, and all activity is tracked within the system for transparency and speed. No more guessing who has the ball; no more delays holding up deliverables. With Accountability, processes move forward seamlessly, keeping operations nimble and responsive.

Integrated Time Tracking Simplifies Billing and Planning

Accurate time tracking underpins healthy revenue and transparent client relationships. Yet it’s often treated as a necessary chore rather than a strategic tool. Accountability’s agency efficiency software transforms time tracking into a seamless process by integrating it directly into financial operations.

Employees log time effortlessly, and entries feed automatically into billing and reporting workflows. This integration not only saves teams hours each month but also guarantees invoices are precise and defensible. Businesses gain confidence knowing that every billable hour is captured and accounted for without the burden of manual consolidation.

Automated Reporting Turns Data into Action

Data is only powerful if it’s timely, relevant, and easy to interpret. Many businesses suffer from outdated or fragmented reporting that leaves leaders operating in the dark. Accountability changes the game with automated reporting built into our agency efficiency software, delivering real-time insights tailored for strategic decision-making.

Visual dashboards offer a holistic view of financial health, resource allocation, client profitability, and more. Reports update automatically as transactions occur, removing the delays and errors of manual data crunching. Leaders can spot trends early, mitigate risks, and pivot quickly, all thanks to instant access to accurate information.

Task Automation Frees Teams to Focus on Growth

Routine admin work shouldn’t be an obstacle to creativity or strategic execution. Accountability’s agency efficiency software introduces task automation that takes the burden off staff by handling repetitive tasks like invoice creation, budget reconciliations, and vendor payments.

This automation empowers teams to invest their time where it matters most: nurturing client relationships, optimizing services, and innovating for the future. New hires also ramp up faster, since workflows are predefined and consistent within the platform. Efficiency stops being a vague goal and becomes an everyday reality.

Smarter Operations Drive Agency Growth with Agency Efficiency Software

Scalability doesn’t come from working harder, it comes from eliminating the friction that slows teams down. Accountability’s agency efficiency software provides businesses with a unified, automated foundation for operations, ensuring financial accuracy, operational clarity, and faster decision-making.

Automation doesn’t diminish people’s roles, it enhances them, enabling teams to contribute more strategically and creatively. Accountability’s approach replaces complexity with transparency, and uncertainty with confidence. The result is an operation built to grow sustainably, without being shackled by outdated systems or manual inefficiencies.

Investing in agency efficiency software isn’t just a technological upgrade, it’s a strategic decision that empowers sustainable growth. Businesses that harness automation not only protect their margins but also position themselves to seize opportunities and deliver extraordinary client value.

Curious how Accountability can drive your efficiency and growth?

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Bright Sparks: Avoiding Financial Fizzles with Better Reporting

Missed forecasts. Overrun budgets. Revenue gaps that appear without warning. These aren’t just unfortunate events, they’re often the result of a reporting process that can’t keep up with the pace of agency life. For teams handling fast-moving accounts and juggling multiple financial touchpoints, even a short delay in visibility can spark long-term consequences. That’s why choosing the right agency financial platform is not just a backend decision but a forward-thinking move that defines operational resilience.

At Accountability, we’ve seen how the difference between profitable growth and flatlining margins often lies in the clarity of your financial data. Precision reporting doesn’t just help agencies understand where the money went; it helps them steer where it’s going. That’s why our platform was designed with finance-first reporting tools that support smarter decisions, tighter controls, and sharper forecasting.

How Accountability’s Agency Financial Platform Improves Financial Reporting

Financial reporting in agencies shouldn’t be a tangle of spreadsheets and pivot tables—it should be a natural output of how the business operates. Accountability is an agency financial platform that transforms financial data into a strategic asset through tools that deliver not just information, but timely and contextual insight.

Pre-Built Report Templates for Faster Insights

Every agency has core financial questions that require quick, reliable answers. That’s where our report templates come in. Built around the metrics that matter most—like revenue recognition, billing efficiency, utilization, and WIP balances—these templates reduce the time between asking a question and finding the answer. No need to rebuild layouts from scratch or chase down scattered data points. With templates ready to deploy from day one, leadership and finance teams can begin drawing insight almost immediately after onboarding.

These templates are more than time-savers—they’re structure. They guide teams to track the right KPIs consistently, ensuring no one misses red flags hidden in plain sight.

Customizable Reports for Agency-Specific Metrics

While templates give you a strong starting point, no two agencies define success exactly the same way. Whether your model is retainer-based, project-billed, or somewhere in between, you need financial reporting that fits your framework.

That’s why Accountability allows for deep customization of reports across business units, regions, service lines, or client portfolios. You can easily adjust how revenue, expenses, and time are segmented, reported, and analyzed without exporting to a third-party system. From gross margin views to deferred income breakdowns, everything stays within one secure, intuitive environment.

What’s more, these customizations persist across reporting cycles, making it simple to maintain continuity in how performance is assessed and compared.

Real-Time Data Integration for Accurate Results

Too often, financial reporting is based on outdated snapshots, reflecting yesterday’s numbers in a today-sized decision. With Accountability, data flows into your reporting environment in real time, so your numbers never lag behind your operations.

Whether it’s invoices, timesheets, media billing, or purchase orders, our platform integrates these elements into a live financial dataset. You can monitor profitability as it evolves, not just during month-end close, and adjust as needed without waiting for back-office processing. This immediacy ensures that decision-makers aren’t operating on stale figures or speculative trends.

It also eliminates the delays caused by cross-platform syncing. With built-in APIs and integrations, Accountability connects to your existing tools so your reporting remains cohesive across your entire finance stack.

Automated Alerts for Critical Financial Changes

When something’s going wrong financially, you shouldn’t have to dig through reports to find out. Accountability includes alerting features that notify teams when key thresholds are crossed, like overspending against a client budget or sudden dips in utilization.

These alerts act like sentries on the edge of your margins, detecting irregularities before they become embedded issues. And because they’re customizable, you decide what matters most: missed billing milestones, budget drift, unapproved vendor costs, and more.

With this proactive layer in place, financial control becomes a shared responsibility, not just a finance team function.

Visualized Reports for Better Understanding

A wall of numbers can’t always tell a compelling story, but a clean, interactive visualization can. Accountability transforms static data into visualized dashboards that highlight patterns, peaks, and problem areas at a glance.

From client profitability to department-level performance, our platform makes it easy to see trends and variances in ways that are clear, compelling, and easy to share. These visuals are especially powerful during leadership meetings, where speed and clarity are essential for strategic discussions.

Reports aren’t just more understandable, they’re more actionable. Teams can shift from reviewing what happened to strategizing what to do next.

Keeping Financial Performance on Track with the Right Agency Financial Platform

Smart reporting isn’t about having more numbers. It’s about having the right numbers, delivered at the right time, in the right format, so that every team member, from CFO to account lead, knows exactly where things stand and where they’re headed.

That’s the kind of control Accountability was built to deliver. We don’t just house financial data; we help turn it into insight, decisions, and action. Whether you’re identifying underperforming revenue lines, preparing for audits, or refining future forecasts, our tools keep you two steps ahead of the numbers.

And when reporting becomes intuitive instead of intimidating, your financial performance doesn’t just stay on track, but accelerates.

Ready to experience what next-level financial reporting feels like?

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Why Generic ERPs Fail Agencies (and What to Use Instead)

The Problem with Generic ERPs

Most agencies are running their finances on systems never designed for them. NetSuite, SAP, and other “big box” ERPs are powerful—if you’re a manufacturer or retailer. But agencies live and breathe differently: projects instead of products, time instead of units, and margins that are razor-thin and client-dependent.

That mismatch creates friction:

  • Endless customizations and workarounds just to mirror agency workflows.
  • Reports that require a “translation layer” between system logic and agency reality.
  • Implementation timelines that drag on for 6–12 months, often requiring costly outside integrators.

In short: generic ERPs force agencies to fit into their mold, rather than flexing to fit the way agencies operate.

The Reality of Agency Finance

Agency CFOs and COOs face unique challenges:

  • Tracking work-in-progress (WIP) with real-time revenue recognition.
  • Managing multi-client and multi-job billing.
  • Forecasting revenue and staffing with accuracy.
  • Handling multi-currency, multi-entity consolidation across global offices.

Generic ERPs weren’t built to solve these. That’s why finance leaders end up patching together spreadsheets and manual processes—losing valuable time and risking costly errors.

What Agencies Actually Need

Agencies don’t need “another module.” They need a platform built from the ground up around agency finance. That means:

  • Real-time visibility: Profitability dashboards at the job, client, and portfolio level.
  • Seamless integration: Playing nicely with CRM, project management, and media tools—not competing with them.
  • Fast, focused implementation: Go-live in under 90 days, not a year.
  • High-touch partnership: An extension of your team, not just a vendor.

Why Accountability Works

Accountability was founded by a former agency CFO who lived these frustrations firsthand. Our purpose-built platform solves one problem exceptionally well: agency finance.

With features like structured data for automation and AI, in-house onboarding (no third parties), and a mobile app designed for time and expense tracking, Accountability is trusted by agencies from Wieden+Kennedy to Crossmedia and Barkley.

We don’t ask you to bend your business around our system. We built our system to fit your business.

The Bottom Line

Generic ERPs fail agencies because they weren’t built for them. Accountability was.

Agency finance isn’t a module—it’s our entire platform.

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You Don’t Need an ERP with Everything. Just One That Gets You

Picture this: you walk into a diner, open the menu, and it’s 28 pages long. They’ve got pancakes, sushi, tacos, lasagna… and somehow, an “authentic Thai” section right between the omelets and the steak. Sure, it’s impressive. But do you trust them to do any of it well?

That’s what shopping for ERPs feels like.

Most platforms promise to do everything for everyone. Need HR? Got it. Inventory management? Absolutely. A built-in weather app? You bet. But here’s the thing: the more an ERP tries to be everything, the less likely it is to do your thing well. And if you’re an agency CFO or COO, your thing is not stocking warehouses—it’s keeping job margins healthy, WIP accurate, and your team away from dangerous spreadsheet habits.

When “Everything” Becomes the Enemy of Good

The all-in-one ERP approach sounds tempting—until you’ve signed the contract, kicked off the implementation, and realized that your new system speaks fluent manufacturing but is completely lost when you mention billable WIP.

Suddenly, you’re explaining to a consultant why “jobs” don’t just mean “projects,” why revenue recognition needs to happen in real time, and why your team doesn’t want to wait until month-end to know if a client’s work is profitable. You’re paying for modules you’ll never use, like warehouse inventory or asset depreciation for forklifts, while the features you do need require months of customization and a glossary of “agency finance” terms your vendor has never heard before.

It’s like buying a Swiss Army knife when all you really needed was a sharp, reliable chef’s knife. Sure, the fish scaler is cute, but is it helping you close month-end faster?

The Problem Isn’t You. It’s the Fit.

A lot of agencies blame themselves when ERP implementations drag on or reporting falls short. Maybe we didn’t give the vendor enough detail. Maybe our processes are too weird. But here’s the truth: your business isn’t weird—it’s specialized. And generic ERPs aren’t designed for that specialization.

When your tools don’t fit your business, you end up building “workarounds.” A custom report here. A shadow spreadsheet there. A three-hour Friday ritual of manually reconciling numbers from three different systems. Over time, your ERP becomes the expensive, overly complicated middleman you tolerate because switching feels too painful.

What “Getting You” Really Means

A platform that gets you doesn’t need a six-month crash course in agency finance. It already knows that a “job” is the atomic unit of your revenue model. It understands the urgency of WIP tracking, the nuances of multi-entity billing, and the art of balancing scope changes without destroying profitability.

It also knows what not to include. You don’t need inventory management for pallets of goods. You don’t need a manufacturing line scheduling tool. You don’t need “warehouse space optimization.” You need job-level profitability dashboards, real-time revenue recognition, structured data that plays nicely with your CRM and project management tools, and an implementation team that can get you live in under 90 days—not 9 months.

That’s why we built Accountability—a financial management platform created by a former agency CFO who spent years wrestling with ERPs that didn’t fit. We didn’t strip down a generic platform and rebrand it for agencies. We built it from the ground up for the workflows, pressure points, and expectations you live with every day.

The Relationship Test

Your ERP should be like a great partner. It listens. It understands your quirks. It doesn’t expect you to change who you are just to make the relationship work. It shows up when you need it, pulls its weight without being asked, and doesn’t cause unnecessary drama.

A partner that gets you doesn’t suggest “just create a custom field” every time you hit a roadblock. It doesn’t hide the good reports behind a paywall. And it certainly doesn’t make you feel like you’re doing something wrong because your business isn’t like their “average customer.”

Accountability gets you because we are you. Our founder has sat where you sit, balancing P&Ls, battling scope creep, and trying to explain to a CEO why net margin slipped even though billings were up. We know that every extra click, every delayed report, and every workaround erodes the efficiency and clarity you need to make smart decisions.

You Deserve Better Than a “Kitchen Sink” ERP

If you’ve ever been told you need an ERP with “everything,” ask yourself: everything for who? If the answer is “every industry except mine,” it’s not going to help you win.

The agencies that thrive are the ones that use tools designed for how they actually work—tools that make data flow cleanly, reporting happen instantly, and decisions get made while there’s still time to change the outcome.

And those tools? They don’t need to do everything. They just need to get you.

Final Word:

If you want an ERP that does everything, you’ll spend your time teaching it what you actually do. If you want one that just gets you, you’ll spend your time running a better business.

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WIP Tracking Without the Workaround: Accountability Does It

For agencies, Work-in-Progress (WIP) is more than a report—it’s a real-time indicator of the agency’s financial health. It tells you exactly how much work is underway, how much has been earned, and where revenue might be slipping through the cracks. When WIP is clear and current, CFOs and COOs can make faster, better-informed decisions about resourcing, billing, and margins.

The problem is that most generic ERP systems were never designed with agency WIP in mind. Instead, they bury WIP data behind complex exports, manual reconciliations, and pivot tables that take hours to prepare. By the time the numbers reach decision-makers, they’re often a week—or even a month—out of date. This forces finance leaders to manage by hindsight rather than foresight, reacting to issues after the damage is already done.

True WIP tracking should work differently. It should update in real time, reflecting changes the moment a team member logs time, submits an expense, or invoices a client. It should be tightly connected to each job’s budget, scope, and profitability so you can see not just what’s in progress, but whether it’s on track to deliver the margin you planned for. And it should be able to roll up across jobs, clients, offices, and currencies without anyone having to rekey data or manipulate spreadsheets.

That’s why Accountability puts WIP at the core of the platform—not as an add-on module. Built by a former agency CFO, Accountability understands that WIP visibility is only valuable if it’s accurate, timely, and actionable. Every tracked hour and expense flows directly into WIP through our integrated Counta app, removing the need for importing data or running separate reports. Real-time revenue recognition ensures that WIP and earned revenue are always aligned, while multi-entity and multi-currency capabilities let global agencies see a consolidated view without workarounds. And because WIP is tied to job-level profitability dashboards, you can spot underperforming jobs early enough to intervene.

For CFOs and COOs, this changes the game. You no longer have to wait until month-end to uncover revenue recognition issues or discover margin erosion. Instead, you can address scope creep the moment it appears, adjust resourcing before costs spiral, and give your leadership team access to the same up-to-the-minute numbers you see. The result is faster, more confident decision-making—and a finance function that drives, rather than follows, agency performance.

Implementation doesn’t have to be slow or disruptive, either. While traditional ERP deployments can drag on for six to twelve months, Accountability’s in-house team gets agencies live in under 90 days, configured to your specific workflows from day one. That means you start seeing accurate, real-time WIP on your very first jobs, without the months of painful setup or customization.

If your WIP process still relies on spreadsheets, manual workarounds, or reports that are already stale when you open them, it’s time for a change. Accountability delivers the clarity, accuracy, and speed agencies need to keep jobs, margins, and revenue firmly on track.

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