Agency Management Software
Three numbers decide whether an agency is healthy: what is in the pipeline, how loaded the team already is, and what the work costs to deliver. In most agencies those live in three different places and only meet at the end of the quarter. SUNAGO Matrix keeps them in one.
The spreadsheet in the middle is where agencies lose money
Most agencies end up with a CRM for new business, a resourcing spreadsheet somebody maintains by hand, and time tracking that feeds invoicing. Each is fine on its own. The problem is the joins.
New business promises a start date without knowing the studio is already full. The resourcing sheet is only correct on the day it was updated, and the commitment made in yesterday's client call never made it in. Time gets logged a week late and reconstructed from memory, so the project that felt tight turns out to have been unprofitable a month after it shipped.
None of those is a discipline failure. They are the predictable result of three systems that do not talk. Putting the pipeline, the capacity view and the project economics in one product removes the joins rather than asking people to be more diligent about them.
A worked example: the account that looked fine
A retainer plus two projects on the same senior designer, on a 37-hour week at full capacity, so 7.4 hours a day. This is what the heat map shows as each commitment lands.
| Commitment | Allocated as | Daily load | Utilization | Heat map |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Retainer, ongoing | 40% of daily capacity | 2.96 h | 40% | Green |
| Campaign build | 35% of daily capacity | 2.59 h | 75% | Yellow |
| Pitch support, 3 weeks | 60 hours fixed | 4.00 h | 129% | Red |
Each of the three was a reasonable commitment made by somebody with partial information. The third takes the designer to 129 percent, and the square turns red as it is entered rather than in the week the campaign starts slipping.
The retainer and the campaign are percentages of a day, which is how ongoing agency work behaves. The pitch support is 60 fixed hours spread across the business days of a three-week range, which is how a defined piece behaves. Both are supported and both resolve into the same utilization figure, so the total is comparable.
It also costs more than it looks. Cost per billable hour is salary over the hours a person actually bills, so a studio running at low utilization carries a higher cost on every hour it does bill - which is why the same figure drives project margin and not just the schedule.
What an agency runs on
One plan, every module included, no seat minimum.
Leads, a Kanban deal pipeline and a weighted revenue forecast, with proposals and compliant digital signature built in. A signed contract converts into a project.
Learn moreEveryone on one allocation heat map across day, week and month views, with anything past 100 percent in red. Retainers as a percentage of a day, projects as fixed hours.
Learn moreWeekly timesheets against a project and its phases, billable and non-billable split at entry, through approval before anything reaches an invoice.
Learn moreReal cost per hour, live profit and loss, Forecast at Completion and danger warnings, with a drill-down across time, materials, external services and expenses.
Learn moreProduction costs, travel and freelance invoices recorded with receipts, with billable status and markup set by the approver rather than by whoever paid.
Learn moreUtilization per person and team against their own targets, project margin across the portfolio, revenue per employee and the pipeline, on one dataset.
Learn moreRetainers are a capacity commitment, so treat them like one
A retainer is not a project with a start and an end. It is a standing promise of people's time, and it quietly sets the ceiling on everything else the studio can take on. Agencies that plan projects carefully and treat retainers as background noise are the ones that keep discovering they have no capacity left.
So a retainer is allocated the same way it behaves: as a percentage of a person's daily capacity, across a date range. Two days a week on an account is 40 percent, and it sits on the same heat map as everything else. The moment project work pushes that person past 100 percent, the square turns red - which is the conversation you want to have before the campaign starts, not during it.
The hours logged against the retainer still price at that person's real cost, so you can see whether the fee is covering the time it actually consumes rather than the time it was scoped for.
If you are comparing tools
The agency market is well served and several of the alternatives are good. Scoro is broader on work management and includes quoting and supplier bills. Productive is built for agencies specifically and publishes its pricing. Both are worth a look, and both cost several times more per seat than this does.
Where SUNAGO Matrix differs is the cost rate underneath everything else: each hour is priced from salary, capacity, holiday and real utilization rather than a number somebody typed into a settings page, so the margin on an account is true rather than flattering. Side-by-side comparisons with published prices and read dates are on the Scoro and Productive pages.
Further reading: how to calculate a true cost per hour and project profitability tracking.
Agency management software: common questions
Retainers, capacity, markup and what it costs.
What does agency management software need to do that a project tool does not?
How does it handle retainers?
Can we see whether we can staff the work we are pitching?
How do billable expenses and markup work?
Does it replace our CRM?
What does it cost for an agency of ten?
Pipeline, capacity and profitability in one place
EUR 3 per seat per month billed yearly, every module included, free onboarding and data transfer. 14-day trial, no credit card required.