Industry · Ad agency
ERP & CRM for ad agencies
Time tracking, project margins, retainer contracts, creative briefings — agencies are operationally complex but software-wise often chaotic. It can be done better.
Pain Points
What companies in this industry struggle with.
- Time tracking runs via Excel or a forgotten tool — nobody sees in real time where projects are running over budget.
- Retainer contracts with monthly hour quotas are tracked manually — over- or under-hours slip through.
- Sales works in CRM, project team in Asana/Trello, accounting in DATEV — data drifts apart regularly.
- Team utilization isn't visible — who has capacity, who's overbooked?
Tech Stack
Our typical tech stack.
Zoho One OR Odoo
End-to-end: CRM, project tracking, time tracking, invoicing, DATEV
Zoho Projects / Odoo Projects
Project briefings, tasks, deadlines, time logs
Cloud telephony + helpdesk
Incoming calls and tickets assigned to the project
DATEV integration
Invoices with project assignment, clean to the tax advisor
Outcomes
What it gets you in the end.
- 01 Project margin visible in real time — per project, per customer, per team member.
- 02 Retainer hour consumption automatically tracked — customer sees live status, over/under hours clearly documented.
- 03 Team utilization per week in dashboard — capacity for new orders becomes plannable.
- 04 Invoicing from the project automated — no more Excel list for accounting.
Deep dive
Industry in detail.
What makes agency IT special?
Ad agencies are operationally complex but software-wise often chaotic. There are reasons: agency business is project-driven with high variance (every project different), team-member costs are the largest line item (every untracked hour eats margin), and customer relationships are long-term (retainer contracts with monthly quotas are the rule). Running all this in Excel is common — but at 10+ team members it gets painful.
The typical pain-point constellation: sales works in CRM, project team in Asana/Trello, time tracking in its own table, accounting in DATEV — and nobody sees the whole picture of a project. Margin is born from differences nobody calculates transparently, retainer over- or under-hours slip through, team utilization isn’t plannable.
Our typical setup
We build agencies an end-to-end system on Zoho One or Odoo — the choice falls in the discovery workshop. Both bring CRM, project tracking, time tracking, accounting, and DATEV integration into one system. What we typically add: cloud telephony for CRM calls, a helpdesk for incoming customer requests, and a cleanly-configured retainer logic with automatic hour tracking against the monthly quota.
The actual lever isn’t the tool, it’s the data modeling: every booked hour is uniquely assigned to a project, task, team member, and customer. Each hour then flows directly into margin calculation, invoicing, and utilization statistics. Excel tables die out.
When this fits
- You’re an ad agency, marketing agency, branding studio with 5–50 team members.
- Time tracking and project margin aren’t transparent or are error-prone today.
- You have retainer customers with monthly hour quotas.
- You work in 3+ tools today that don’t talk to each other.
If that fits — write to us.
FAQ
FAQs from this industry.
Zoho One or Odoo — which fits better for an ad agency? +
Zoho One typically wins for agencies with strong sales and marketing focus — when the CRM, marketing automation, and customer journey play important roles. Zoho Projects + CRM + Books + Desk fit perfectly together. Odoo wins when the project logic is more complex (phases, sub-projects, branding workflows with approval steps) or when you want open-source sovereignty. Both work — the choice falls in the discovery workshop.
How is time tracking handled in the system? +
Team members log hours directly in the project tool (Zoho Projects or Odoo Projects) — assigned to project, task, and activity type. Hours flow automatically into margin calculation (planned vs actual hours) and invoice preparation. Mobile app is mandatory — time tracking on Mac/PC gets postponed, on the smartphone it works.
How do retainer contracts work in the setup? +
A retainer is a recurring contract with a monthly hour quota in the system. Hours a team member books on the retainer customer are automatically counted against the quota. Over- and under-hours are shown monthly in a report — the account manager can clearly discuss the quota status with the customer. Renewal reminders 30 days before contract end automatically.
What does the rollout typically look like? +
An ad agency with 10–30 team members we typically set up in 8–12 weeks. Discovery 2 weeks, master-data migration and setup 3–4 weeks, project and time-tracking configuration 2 weeks, training 2 weeks, hypercare 1–2 weeks. We recommend starting with a pilot project — the rollout runs in parallel with daily business.