AGENCY MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE
Agency Management Software That Connects the Work to the Numbers.
For marketing, creative, digital, design and other client-service agencies. Bikabo brings client engagements, team delivery, review, costs, billing and client visibility into one connected workflow, so you can see what the work is doing to your margins before the engagement is already over.
More Clients Should Not Mean Less Control Over the Business.
Every growing agency arrives at the same stack. Work lives on a board. Costs live in a spreadsheet somebody maintains. Client conversations live in email and a group chat. Invoices live somewhere else entirely, and what freelancers are owed lives in the founder's head until the end of the month.
Each part works. What nobody can answer quickly is whether this client, this month, is actually worth it, because the answer is spread across all five and only assembles after the work is done.
The symptom is familiar: an agency that is visibly busy, obviously growing, and somehow not making more money.
One Place for the Agency Operating Chain.
Most agencies run this chain across four or five tools, and the joins between them are where the money goes missing.
- Client
- Engagement
- Task
- Team
- Review
- Cost
- Delivery
- Invoice
- Payment
Clients and Engagements, Not Just Projects.
A retainer client with three workstreams is one Client and three Engagements, each with its own agreed value, currency, team and payment schedule.
That structure is what lets you answer questions about the relationship rather than the project. What has this client been worth this year, what have they actually paid, and what has serving them cost.
Delivery Runs Underneath It.
Every Task belongs to an Engagement, is assigned to someone with a reviewer named, goes through submission and review, and is delivered when it is ready. Reassigning work keeps the history of who held it before.
Types of Work capture the things your agency does repeatedly, so the same information gets recorded every time without anyone being reminded.
Delegate Without Losing the Business.
The point at which an agency stops being a group of people and starts being a business is the point somebody other than the founder runs part of it. That usually means handing over more access than anybody is comfortable with.
Four Admin profiles split it properly. Operations runs delivery. Finance owns billing, compensation and payouts. Client Admin owns the relationship and the portal. Full Admin does everything except appoint another Admin, which stays with the Owner.
Know Whether a Busy Client Is Becoming an Expensive Client.
Three figures, kept separate: what open work would cost if approved, what has been approved and is owed, and what has actually been paid out.
From those, two margins. Confirmed margin is what the engagement has made on settled cost. Exposure margin counts the work already in flight, and it is the one that moves first when an account is quietly going wrong.
Scope Grows. Make It Visible While It Does.
A campaign was quoted with a set of assets. Then came the resize variants, then a round of landing-page changes, then one more version for the client's other market. None of it was unreasonable, and none of it was in the quote.
Bikabo records work as Planned or Additional at the moment it is created, and unplanned items surface with their estimated cost before anyone approves them. You find out during the campaign rather than after it.
Recording extra work does not raise the client's agreed value. Whether it becomes a conversation about money stays your call, and when you do adjust the agreement, the original figure stays on the record.
Connect the Client Money to the Work.
The agreement says what the client committed to. The payment schedule says when. Invoices are raised from that schedule without retyping it, and payments recorded against them feed the same outstanding figure the engagement reports.
Partial payments, overpayments becoming client credit, credit notes for a correction, and a receivables view that ages what is outstanding by client on the plans that include it.
Give Clients a Clean View.
Clients see progress, deliveries, their conversation with you, and payment information where you permit it. They do not see who reviewed the work, how many revisions it took, what your team costs or what the margin is.
It is a separate portal with its own sign-in rather than a guest seat with columns hidden, which is why the internal picture cannot leak through a misconfigured permission.
Keep the Two Conversations Apart.
Client messages come to the people who own the relationship. Internal discussion sits on the Engagement and on each Task, open to whoever is actually working on it.
You can forward a client message internally for an answer, then send a reply you have written and approved. Nothing goes from a freelancer straight to a client, because there is no path by which it could.
Built for Different Kinds of Agency.
The shape Bikabo is built around is client work delivered through a team with at least one layer of delegation. That covers most agency models rather than one.
Marketing agencies
Retainers and campaigns running in parallel, with work spread across specialists and a lot of it discovered mid-flight.
Creative agencies
Deliverables that go through rounds of review, where the number of rounds is what decides whether the job was profitable.
Digital agencies
Mixed engagements combining build, ongoing support and scheduled work, often across currencies.
Advertising agencies
Client accounts with several workstreams, where the account rather than the project is the unit that has to make money.
Design agencies
Measurable output per project, with freelancers paid per piece as often as per hour.
Why This Is More Than a Task Manager.
Task and project tools are good at what they are built for, and an agency running one is not doing anything wrong. The point is that they are answering a different question.
| The question | A typical project or task tool Built to coordinate work | Bikabo Built to run the operation and its economics |
|---|---|---|
| What is the core question? | What work needs to happen, and who is doing it? | What is the work happening right now going to cost, and how does that connect to what the client pays and what the team is owed? |
| Where does cost come from? | Usually a separate spreadsheet, or hours exported somewhere else. | From the work itself, as it is assigned, reviewed and approved. |
| What happens when scope grows? | More cards appear on the board. | Work is recorded as Additional rather than Planned, and surfaces with its estimated cost before approval. |
| What can a client see? | Often a guest seat on the same board, with columns hidden. | A separate portal with its own sign-in, showing In Progress or Completed and nothing internal. |
| What about the team side of the money? | Generally out of scope. | Approved earnings, payout periods, advances and what has actually been paid. |
This compares Bikabo to a category, not to any particular product. Individual tools differ, and some do more than this table suggests.
Agency Management Questions
Software for running the whole client-service operation rather than one part of it: the clients, the engagements you have agreed, the team delivering them, the review that decides work is ready, the cost that delivery creates, and the money moving on both sides. For a creative or marketing agency it is the layer above project management.
Project management asks how this piece of work gets delivered. Agency management asks how the business is doing across all of it: which clients are profitable, what the team is owed, what has been billed and what is late. Bikabo does both, and this page is about the second.
Yes, and while the work is still running. You see pending exposure on open work, approved cost on work that has passed review, and paid cost, as three separate figures rather than one blended number.
Yes. Client agreements, payment schedules, invoices raised from those schedules, payments received, partial payments, credit notes, outstanding and overdue amounts, and client credit where somebody overpays.
Through a dedicated portal, where you invite them. They see their own engagements as In Progress or Completed, delivered files, their conversation with you and payment information where you enable it. They never see reviewers, revisions, staff costs or margins.
Yes. There are four Admin profiles. An operations lead can run delivery without seeing what the team is paid; a finance lead can own billing and payouts without reassigning work; a client lead can own the relationship without seeing compensation at all. Only the Owner can appoint or remove an Admin.
Yes, explicitly. Work discovered mid-engagement is logged as Additional Work with its estimated cost, so scope growth is visible while it is growing. It never changes what the client owes on its own.
No. It records what you billed and what you were paid, and it is not a general ledger, does not reconcile against a bank feed and does not file tax. Your accountant still does the accounting.