Marketing agencies: what each client's monthly fee covers

A CRM for marketing agencies makes each client's account show what the monthly fee includes, where each campaign stands, which approvals are still pending and which expenses the agency paid on the client's behalf. With that in view, the agency can bill what was not included without arguing about it at month end. Ads, metrics and social scheduling stay in the tools the team already uses for them.

Picture the last day of the month at an agency that runs eight accounts. A client writes in, annoyed: the invoice has a line for ad spend and another for a seasonal campaign, and she understood everything was covered by the fee. The account executive knows it was not, but what was agreed sits in an email from five months ago, the ad spend went on the agency's card, and the approvals for each piece are spread across three chats. She is right and cannot prove it.

What a CRM for marketing agencies keeps

In AgentticCRM each client has a record in Clients and contacts that leads to their contacts, notes, proposals, projects, tasks, expenses, invoices and files. For a marketing agency, it should hold:

• Who approves the pieces on the client's side and who receives the invoices, often two different people.
• The accepted proposal with what the fee includes.
• One project per campaign, with its phases and tasks.
• The expenses the agency paid for the client.

The record's Profitability section shows that client's invoiced, collected and pending amounts, expenses and net, and the statement of account prints from there.

The monthly fee, written in a proposal

The month-end argument almost always starts because nobody wrote down what the fee covers. In Proposals, each line takes a description with paragraphs and lists, which is the place to state, for example, how many posts a month, how many rounds of changes per piece and what is left out.

When the client accepts in their portal, the acceptance is kept with their name and date, and the proposal can no longer be changed. If the scope changes next year, you duplicate the proposal and send a new version, leaving the original intact.

The fee is then scheduled as a recurring invoice every month or every few months, on the day you choose from the 1st to the 28th. You can let it be generated and sent on its own, or review it before it goes out. We cover it in invoicing a monthly retainer without missing a payment.

Each campaign as a project, each approval as a client task

A seasonal campaign has phases that repeat: strategy, creative, ad spend and wrap-up. In Projects each phase has dates and a person in charge, and each task has an owner and a due date. The time the team logs on those tasks adds up in the project, so you know how many hours the campaign took even when they are not billed separately.

Approvals are what slow a campaign down the most. The task "Approve week 2 creative" is assigned to the person on the client's side who decides. They get a notice in their portal and an email with a link to confirm it, even without an account, and when they respond the task closes. Task comments are internal by default, and the client follows in their portal only the progress you marked as visible.

The ad spend the agency pays for the client

Many agencies pay for ads with their own card and then bill the client. If that payment is noted in a separate spreadsheet, it sometimes never reaches the invoice. In Expenses you record it with its amount, date, the client and the campaign's project, and tick Billable to client.

From then on it waits. When you open a draft invoice for that client, a notice tells you how many expenses are waiting and what they add up to, and Add to invoice brings them in as lines. An expense loaded onto an invoice cannot be billed again, and if you discard that invoice, it goes back to waiting. The step by step is in rebillable expenses.

When the client asks for something the fee does not include

It might be an extra video, a landing page for an event or a round of changes nobody planned for. There are two ways to handle it. If it is a fixed-price job, you prepare a separate proposal and, once the client accepts it, turn it into an invoice with the same lines. If it is billed by time, you open a billable task with its hourly rate and invoice the hours from the project. How to do that without giving time away is in billable hours in agencies.

Either way, the client from the last day of the month finds in her portal the proposal she accepted and her invoices, with the fee and the extras on separate lines.

What stays in your ad and social tools

AgentticCRM does not run ads, does not schedule social posts and does not pull metrics from ad platforms. It organizes the client's account, the work, the approvals and what gets invoiced. The page for digital marketing agencies spells out that boundary. Each campaign's results reports still come from your measurement tools, and you can keep them as files in that campaign's project.

Frequently asked questions

Does AgentticCRM manage campaigns on ad platforms?

No. Campaigns are created and measured on their platforms. AgentticCRM holds the agency's work around each campaign: the tasks, the approvals, the expenses and the invoice.

Can the client approve a piece without a portal account?

Yes. When you assign them the task in the project, they get an email with a link to confirm it even without a Client portal account.

How do I know whether a client's fee still leaves me a margin?

In the client record, the Profitability section shows what was invoiced and collected, the expenses and the net. If you also log the hours on the tasks the fee covers, you see how much work it really pays for.