Guides
Long-form guides by Ty
Replacing HubSpot, Harvest and PandaDoc with one agency stack
A factual comparison of the HubSpot, Harvest and PandaDoc stack against Verbial for agencies: capabilities, cost at 15 seats, and a migration order.
How to price agency retainers
Price retainers department by department from the people doing the work, target 50 to 60% gross margin on labor, and reprice at renewal from usage statements.
How to invoice retainer clients
Bill retainers in advance, send a monthly usage statement, pre-pay overages, keep pass-through costs separate, and run a dunning schedule that protects cash.
Client profitability for marketing agencies
How to measure client profitability from contracted revenue and absorbed labor cost, with worked tables, benchmarks and what to do with a loss-making account.
Agency utilization and capacity planning
How to calculate agency utilization rate, set targets by role, compute team capacity in hours, and decide when to hire or use contractors.
Blog
Posts by Ty
Time tracking for agencies: pace the retainer, don't police the team
Agency time tracking exists to pace the retainer by department: cap used, days left, projected burn. The rules per billing model, and who should see what.
Invoicing for marketing agencies: the four billing models
Retainers in advance, pre-paid overages, hourly in arrears and media pass-through. What each one needs from your invoicing, with a real sample invoice.
CRM for marketing agencies: what a generic CRM gets wrong
A generic CRM stops at closed-won. Your agency needs the scope to carry into a proposal, a project with budgets and an invoice. Here is what to look for.
How to price a marketing agency retainer (and stop giving work away)
A practical way to price drawdown retainers by department, write an overage rule that holds, and track the servicing gap so the account stays profitable.
Time tracking that agency teams actually do
Why time tracking dies in agencies, and the six settings — rounding, notes, approvals, locks, targets and visibility — that make your team stick with it.
Agency profitability: hours × rate is lying to you
Why the standard profitability report overstates your revenue and buries idle time, and how to work out real margin from contracted revenue and absorbed cost.
White-label client reporting: what 'on your own domain' really means
The checklist for reports that look like they came from you: domain, fonts, colors, footer, email identity, and the numbers a refresh must never touch.
Switching agency software: a migration checklist that doesn't lose a month
The order to migrate CRM, time and billing data, how to dry-run an import, and what to keep read-only until you are certain nothing was lost.
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