PROJECT MANAGEMENT FOR AGENCIES
Project Management Built Around How Agencies Deliver Client Work.
Plan and assign agency work, manage submissions and review, track scope as it changes, keep clients informed and see what delivery is costing, all inside the client engagement where the work belongs.
Why Agency Project Management Gets Complicated.
Agency work is not one project at a time. It is several clients, each with more than one thing running, delivered by people who are on three other jobs, reviewed by somebody senior, and changing while it happens.
Generic project tools handle the first half of that well. Where they strain is everything specific to client work: that a deliverable has to pass review before a client sees it, that half the work was never in the brief, that the client wants a view but not your view, and that every hour of it costs something.
The four that generic tools leave to you
- A review step that is a record, not a comment.
- Work that appeared after the brief was signed.
- A client view that is not the internal board.
- What delivering it is costing right now.
Client, Then Engagement, Then Task.
Agency work is not a flat list of projects. It is clients you have relationships with, engagements you have agreed, and the work that delivers them. Bikabo structures it that way, so a Task always knows which client and which commitment it belongs to.
- Client The account.
- Engagement A campaign, a retainer, a build.
- Task The deliverable somebody is doing.
- Assignment Who has it, and who reviews it.
- Review Approved, or back with a reason.
- Delivery What the client actually receives.
Assign Work Without Losing History.
Each Engagement can name a Primary Assistant and a Default Checker, so new Tasks arrive already assigned and already have a reviewer. Override either on any individual Task.
When an assignment does not work out, the person can turn it down with a reason, which flags the Task for a decision instead of leaving it stalled. Reassigning keeps everything the previous person did: what they were given, what they submitted, how it was reviewed.
A Task that has been through three people can still tell you what each of them did.
Build Review Into Delivery.
Work is submitted, not finished. A named Checker approves it or sends it back with a reason, and it resubmits through the same assignment rather than restarting as something new.
Approved is not delivered. Work can pass review and wait to go out, and the client sees it as In Progress until it actually does.
Catch the Work That Was Not in the Brief.
The extra round. The resize nobody quoted. The change the client asked for in a meeting. On most agency projects this is where the profit went, and it is invisible until somebody adds it up.
Work is recorded as Planned or Additional when it is created, and unplanned items surface for review with their estimated cost attached. You see scope growing during the project.
Logging it does not change what the client owes. That stays a decision, recorded deliberately against the agreement.
Ongoing and Scheduled Client Work.
Retainers are Engagements that keep running rather than projects with an end date, and the work inside them behaves the same way as everything else.
Work that happens at a specific time, such as a client call or a live session, is a Task with a schedule on it, kept in the timezone it was agreed in, with any access credentials it needs held in an encrypted field rather than a note.
See What Delivery Is Costing, While It Is Being Delivered.
Because work is assigned, reviewed and approved in the same system, the cost of delivering a project is a consequence of running it rather than a separate exercise.
Open work carries a pending figure. Approved work carries a confirmed one. Together they answer whether the project is still worth what you quoted, at the point where you can still do something about it.
Keep Clients Informed, Separately.
Clients get their own portal: their engagements, work as In Progress or Completed, delivered files, and a thread with your business. Not your board with columns hidden.
Discussion about the work stays internal and stays attached to the work, so somebody picking a Task up next week reads the thread that goes with it.
How Different Agencies Run the Work.
Agency project management software has to survive the way each discipline actually delivers, which is rarely the neat sequence a board implies. These are the delivery patterns Bikabo is shaped around.
Marketing agency project management
Campaigns and retainers running at the same time, work spread across specialists, and a steady stream of items nobody scoped. Additional Work keeps that stream visible instead of absorbing it.
Creative agency project management
Rounds of review are the job. Every submission, revision and approval is recorded against the same assignment, so round four is visible before it becomes round six.
Digital agency project management
Build work, ongoing support and scheduled sessions inside one client relationship, each behaving the same way and rolling up to the same engagement.
Advertising agency project management
Several workstreams under one account, where the client rather than the individual project is what has to hold together.
Design agency project management
Measurable output per project, delivered by freelancers paid per piece as often as per hour, and priced from the work rather than from a timesheet.
Need to Run More Than the Projects?
This page is about delivering the work. If the question you are actually asking is which clients are profitable, what has been invoiced, what is overdue and what your team is owed, that is the agency management layer above it.
It is the same system. Most agencies arrive through project delivery and grow into the rest.
Agency management
Clients, engagements, costs, margins, billing, receivables and team payouts across the whole book.
Agency Project Management Questions
Somewhere to plan and assign the work, a real review step before anything reaches a client, a way to see scope growing while it grows, a client-facing view that is not your internal board, and a link between the work and what it costs. Everything else is preference.
Yes. A Client can hold as many Engagements as you need, each with its own team, agreed value, currency and payment schedule, and work rolls up per Engagement and per Client.
Yes. Work found mid-project is logged as Additional Work rather than being folded into the plan, and it surfaces for review with its estimated cost. Who can declare work as Planned is restricted, so scope cannot quietly redefine itself.
Yes, and review is a recorded decision rather than a message. Work is submitted, a named Checker approves it or sends it back with a reason, and every pass through that loop is kept.
Yes. Open work carries a pending cost figure, approved work carries a confirmed one, and the two produce a margin you can read today rather than after the project closes.
Yes, a separate one with its own sign-in. Clients see their work as In Progress or Completed, plus delivered files and their conversation with you. They do not see reviewers, revisions, costs or margins.
Yes. The shape it is built around is client work delivered through a team with review before delivery, which covers marketing, creative, digital, advertising and design work equally well. Its language is deliberately industry-neutral rather than assuming one kind of deliverable.
Project management is about delivering the work. Agency management is about running the business around it: which clients are profitable, what has been billed, what the team is owed. Bikabo does both, and this page covers the first.