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401K Employer Matching
We are a 25-person agency, and we're looking at increasing our 401(k) employer match. For those who participate in the 401(k) program, what is your matching percentage?

A/P on Visa
I was wondering if anyone uses a company Visa card to pay their vendor bills (i.e. media) to earn frequent flyer miles? If so, how do you go about posting against the I.O. and the payables in Clients & Profits?

Abuse of Sick Leave
We have one guy (out of a staff of nine) who is really abusing our personal day/sick day policy. He typically takes 1-2 sick days per month, and nobody really believes he is sick. Once he has exhausted his personal days, he moves on to using his vacation days.

Account Executive Compensation
We are in the process of reviewing/changing our compensation structure for our Account Executives (A/E). I was wondering if anyone could tell me how they were compensating their A/E's. Are you paying salaries plus bonus or commission? What are the salary ranges? How are the bonus or commissions calculated?

Administration Costs
Can anyone share with me what an accounting department should cost an agency as a percentage of revenue.

Administrative Staff
We are a full service agency in Atlanta. We have 21 employees which include, AE's, designers, media specialists and web techs. We currently have 3 FT employees and 2 FT temps in the Admin department. The Admin personnel support the entire company. All benefits are handled in-house as well.

Administrative Staffing Levels
I'd like to get some feedback from other agencies of like size with regard to adminstrative staffing levels. We are a full service agency, with primarily print production services for B-B and healthcare clients. We do not buy media. We have average annual billings of $3 million and a staff of 20.

Agency Compensation Strategy
Does anyone know of good resources for Agency Compensation Strategies? (books, speakers, websites, etc...) How can we make our advertising agency more profitable?

Agency Goals
How do other agencies define their prospects? (I suppose this would be based on the type of expertise, i.e. production company, full-service agency, Mark/Comm, etc., and what your minimum net-profit per year, per client is. Do you go after a variety of clients in different fields, stick to clients in your "industry" of expertise, clients who will bring you a whole program to implement, clients with smaller more isolated projects, or some of all of the above)

Agency Group Breakdown
Can anyone tell me how they've set up groups? We are a full service agency and we divide our services into advertising, public relations and new media.

Agency Structure
I would be interested in seeing an organization chart from any agency with 8 to 15 people. We are struggling with the proper balance of skills needed and staff focus. We are a promotion agency that offers many disciplines and we seem to need high paid professional in all areas of our company from traffic to account service to promotion management. Sales are 1.5 to 2mm with 8 staff members including 2 principals.

Any Interest in the ad hoc Reporting Training?
Anyone else out there interested in taking the ad hoc reporting training? We have two people that we would send...

Art Storage and Retreival
As you know, in the agency business, we create large graphic files. Which means we must have the server space to house these files, backup these files and archive these files for future retrieval and/or just storage. The equipment and labor costs to do this are not cheap.

Basis for Client Billing Rate
We recently ran into a situation that made us question ourselves if we are doing it right. What I would like to ask is what basis you use for charging your clients i.e. Charge by function (i.e. Creative Development, Art Direction, etc.) or Charge by Title (i.e. Creative Director, Art Director, etc.)

Basis for Hourly Rates
I was just wondering how other agencies bill their clients i.e. by task, by staff, or any other. We charge our clients by staff. For example, we charge $100 per hour for Mr. Smith regardless what tasks Mr. Smith performs.

Billing Employee Breaks
I'm trying to find out if most web design firms bill employee breaks to the client. For example, the employee is working on a client project. The employee takes a break, and then goes back to the project. Does the employee's break time get billed to the Client? What do other people do? Do you have any idea where I could look for an answer?

Budgeted hours
We have an excellent MS Excel setup for estimating jobs but the problem we are facing is that the Creative or Production people do not get the estimated/budgeted hours for a job. As a result if they go over the budget hours we do not know until we review that job for billing.

C&P vs. Quickbooks
We are curious what people use to manage their business in that we are considering an upgrade. We are currently assessing the pros and cons of using Clients & Profits ez (an old version of C&P that lacks a general ledger) with Quickbooks and trying to keep all hours accountable, billing on track, etc. Comments from former Clients & Profits ez users that upgraded to a current version of Clients & Profits especially would be appreciated.

Calendar, E-mail, and Contacts Program
We are a small graphic design firm that is MAC based. We are trying to find one program that can replace the three we are currently using for calendar, email and contacts. We currently use Outlook Express for our email, Meeting Maker for our calendar and Now contacts. We looked into Microsoft Office 2001 - Entourage. Looks good on paper, but it cannot share one common database for addresses and is $500 per license. What do other MAC based firms use? Is there one program that can replace the 3 we are currently using?

Cell Phone Usage / Reimbursement
We have had a recent increase in the number employees seeking reimbursement of client/business cell phone usage. We don't have a formal policy regarding cell phone reimbursement. Can anyone share what their current policy is on cell phone usage and reimbursement. Does your policy cover a certain percentage the bill or 100% and for what type of employees. Are these costs passed on to clients?

Classified Ads
We're looking for an experienced Traffic Manager and Production Artist. Does anyone have copy that you've used successfully in classified ads (for either of these positions, or others), and that you'd be willing to share? Any advice would be appreciated.

Classifying Interns
I would love to hear feedback on how everyone classifies interns as far as taxes are concerned. Most of our interns are brought in for 3 months only. At times, we have given them a stipend for the 3 months and then 1099 them at the end of the year. Other times we put them on the payroll and treat them as an employee.

Client Billings Report
Where can I find an accurate report on how much I have billed my client this year? It would be nice if it would also break down by month and quarter. I tried the stats in the client folder, but I don't believe this number includes advance billings.

Client Only Area on the Web Site
We are in the process of developing a client only area section of our Web site and were wondering if other agencies have client only areas and if so, what information do you provide to your clients there and how do you they use it? One particular feature we are considering is credit card payments/transactions. Do any other agencies have this feature on their sites and are your clients using it?

Clients Credit History
What is the best way to research the credit history or stability of a potential new client.

Company Credit Card Mileage Points
Does your staff get the mileage points earned on a company credit card or does your Agency? I personally feel like the individual staff person should get it as a perk for traveling.

Computer / Equipment Expenses
Trying to budget computer expenses in C&P and every year our computer expenses go higher and higher. We are a mid size agency and our expenses this year are over $100,000.00. Is this normal? Can anybody give me input on what they should be?

Considering My Clients & Profits!
We are considering adding My Clients & Profits! I am interested to know how people feel about it in general. I know it has certain limitations, but is it basically useful? What are the main pros and cons?

Contact Manager Software
Wonder what my colleages at other agencies are using, for how long, and what would you say about your experience as a user, productivity improvement, etc. Do you have remote users using the database. And what platform you run it on.

Copy Costs
I am in the process of analyzing the amount to charge our clients and staff for black & white and color copies. We have charged our clients and staff $2.25 for a color copy and $.50 for a black & white copy. I am curious as to the amount other agencies charge their clients and staff for copies.

Cost Rates for Staff
What is the best way to calculate a true cost figure for an employee to use as the cost amount for billing by staff rate for determining P&L on jobs.

Counting Copies
Currently, we have handwritten logs by each printer where the artists are supposed to write down the job number and quantity of outputs they have printed. Needless to say, this is a very unreliable system and we are unable to bill a large amount of copies run each month. How are other agencies handling this issue? I have been unable to find any software or hardware which can be added to the printers. Any suggestions?

Creative Director
In the spirit of "I'll show you mine if you show me yours," we are paying him $60K per year in salary, plus a profit sharing plan where the agency principal contributes up to 15% of a person's salary per year (she has contributed the maximum for many years.) So, his total compensation package would be about $69,000 per year with the salary and the profit sharing. Is this too low??

Database / Mail List Management Software
I'd like to know how other agencies deal with (snail) mail list management needed for a variety of reasons. The data base should list and sort in a number of way. For example: Media list, by city, by type, by sales rep, by editor(s)... Clients & Profits does not really support that component of project/media management.

Digital Files of Graphics, Logos and Other Marketing Materials
We have several clients that make frequent request to have digital files of graphics, logos and finished marketing materials be located and then sent to associates or vendor partners. It can sometimes take us several hours to track the down the item, make a digital copy, burn it on a CD and then ship it out or email it (depending on file size). Does your agency have this problem as well?

Direct Labor
Do you include labor in your WIP costs? Or do you write it off as O/H expense? In other words - direct costs would never include internal labor costs.

Do you use Project Managers?
Can anyone tell me if they use Project Manager's within their firms. Also, if you do, can you tell me if you have job descriptions for them and do your pm's handle any billing for their clients.

E-mail / Internet & Tuition Policies
A recent situation has made me realize we need an email/Internet use policy for our office. Does anyone have samples they can provide?

Employee Benefits
Our company is looking at our benefits package. It would help me a lot at the bargaining table if I had some idea of what is being offered out there. Do you pay 100% of your employee's health ins. premium? if not, what percentage? How about dependant coverage?

Employee Recognition / Reward Programs
I am interested in finding out what companies are doing to recognize and reward their employees. What types of employee motivational programs/ideas do you use? Do you recognize employees on their anniversary dates with the company?

Employee Reimbursements
Please inform me of the different types of expenses along with any limitations the employees' are allowed to be reimbursed for and the overall procedures these expenses are handled with.

Employee Stock Options
I'm curious as to what other agencies are doing for employee stock options. We are wanting to offer something, but we want to see what is the norm.

Employee vs Independent Contractor in California
I'm looking for a census on how other agencies classify employees in the state of California. I assume many of you use "freelance" creative, epro and Print Production help. Do you 1099 them or put them on payroll? Has anyone ever been through an EDD audit?

Encouraging use of Print Specs
Any suggestions for encouraging our production department to use the print specs in C&P? Our production department keeps everything in their heads, or on PO's.

Errors & Omissions Insurance
Hopefully some of you will be willing to share information on whether you carry Advertisers Liability Insurance (errors & omissions coverage), your coverage and annual premium.

Errors and Omissions Insurance
We are in the process of reviewing our errors and omissions policy. As most of you know there has been significant increases in the insurance industry over the past year after the September 11 incidents. Does anyone know any other companies/brokers that sell this type of insurance?

Estimate Disclaimers
I'm hoping to get some insight on disclaimers that some of you may put on your estimates. Our plan is to have something that outlines a contingency fee of 10%-15%, yet at the same time we don't want to scare the client with possible overages.

Exempt vs Non-Exempt
We've had some discussions internally regarding exempt and non-exempt employees as defined by Wage and Hour and how we compensate our lower level agency resources (account coordinators, etc.)......

Fees for Admin Costs
We are considering adding Administrative fees to our invoices and I am curious as to what everyone else is doing to recoup their Admin costs.

Financial Documents Used for Decisions
Of the myriad of reports that Clients and Profits produces, which do you find the most helpful in making decisions regarding the financial state of your agencies.

Finders Fees
Somebody please help? What is the typical agency standard for a finders fee (getting new business)? We were thinking about giving $1,500 to $2,000.

Fixed Assets
We are currently conducting a reconciliation of our fixed asset general ledger to our depreciation worksheets and are looking for ideas on how to keep track of additions/retirements as well as serial numbers.

Freelance Artist
Does anybody know if there are any problems (legal, etc) with someone who is an employee part-time and then also contract them on a job by job basis as a freelance artist?

Freelancers
We have certain independent contractors that we pay hourly and also bill out hourly. They submit an invoice and a time sheet to us.....

Graphic Standards Manuals
We've been asked to create a graphics standards manual for a client. It seems that there is a wide range of what that could include. What do people typically include in the project specifications for something like this?

GSA Schedule
We are currently working on getting on the GSA schedule, so that we would be eligible to work on government contracts. I wanted to know if there were any other C&P users who have government clients....

Hiring A C&P Expert
I was wondering if anyone has had any experience with hiring a C&P-knowledgeable individual through any of the online job search sites. Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Holidays and Dependant Health Insurance
How many paid holidays do you give each year? Do you cover dependent health insurance? If so at what percentage?

Hourly Employee Cost
Would like to know what the general consensus is in obtaining hourly employee cost. We have been given a suggestion, using a formula to obtain the employee cost and then enter the result into staff cost per employee.

Implementing Clients & Profits
I joined my firm January 2, 2002. The company had purchased Clients & Profits last year but did not fully implement it. We are looking to "go live" wihin the next few months. Does anyone have suggestions, recommendations or lessons learned on doing this? Did anyone hire a consultant to help with the implementation? If so, any recommendations on a consultant?

Industry Head Hunters
We are looking for a good headhunter. Has anyone used a head hunter that is good at finding candidates for the advertising industry?

Integrating Technology & Design People
We have been slowly refining the process and steps we undertake to integrate our web/technology people with our traditional design/creative group...Although we are making progress it seems to be like mixing water and oil. Does anyone have any interesting/innovative ways they've overcome these issues?

Internal Job Ticket for Administrative / Non-Billable Hours
Does it make sense to create one job ticket for each employee to use for non-billable administrative tasks/time?

Internet Connection Costs
We are currently evaluating our costs for Internet connectivity. I'm just curious about other Agency's cost-per-user. It would also be helpful to know location and number of employees.

Language Translation
Has anyone ever taken a brochure from the English language to an alternate language? If so, what is the best way to do it?

Looking for a Good Agency Association
The Agency Management Roundtable is the best organization I have found to help small to mid-size agencies become more profitable.

Managing Client Retainers
I am looking for suggestions/ways others manage client retainers. We seem to spend a lot of time outside C&P keeping track of the actual use by the client. Each month we calculate what the client has used for that month manually according to their agreement and then apply the retainer to those jobs we decide on.

Markups?
1) Do you mark up on the gross amount or net amount? 2) What % do you typically mark up?

Maternity Benefits
I'm interested in knowing what your policy is on these benefits; length of leave, paid/unpaid, flex-time, telecommuting, etc. It would also be helpful to know the size and location of your agency as well as annual net income. (And not to leave out the men I'd be interested in paternity leave as well)

Maternity Leave
I have a question unrelated to C&P but perhaps of interest to other small-medium design firms. We are currently a firm of 9 employees but growing quickly. We're about to hire a designer who's currently pregnant.

Media Department Staffing
I am trying to find out how other agencies staff their media departments. We are a heavy broadcast agency.

Medical Leave Policies
We are a small agency (about 20) in North Texas and are in the process of reviewing our medical leave and maternity/paternity leave benefits.

Mileage Reimbursement
What is the standard gas reimbursement for trips over 100 miles. 100 miles is arbitrary, but I expect to pay less for the longer trips than our city mileage reimbursement. What do you use?

Monthly Billable vs Unbillable Time Analysis
What is your opinion of a fair industry average for account service and creative personnel percentage of unbillable time on a monthly basis?

New Business Commission Structure
I'm looking for different ways to handle new business commission structures. Any input would be appreciated. I have an AE who is now salaried. His position will be changing to 90% new business efforts. I'm trying to come up with a fair commission/bonus plan, in addition to his existing salary.

New Business Compensation
We are an agency that has 30 people and are now hiring a new position-- A New Business Person. (for a long time we had the owners doing it but it took too much of their time)

Offering Medical Benefits?
In this economic slump we are looking for ways to cut costs without letting more staff go. We are contemplating employee contributions to medical benefits. What would your reaction be (or your staff), if you had to make this decision?

Overhead Allocation Worksheet / Client P&L Analysis
Do any of you use the Overhead Allocation Worksheet and Client P&L Analysis report to determine client profitability on a monthly basis?

Part-Time Employee Benefits
We recently have run into some employees starting to work part-time and are curious as to what other agencies do as far as benefits go. I will be one of the employees going part-time and plan to work only about 15 hours per week after I have my baby.

Part-time Employee Policies
We have several employees who are interested in going part-time. We currently do not have a policy regarding part-time employees.

Paying Your Bookkeeper
I am wondering what other shops pay for a full time bookkeeper. Ours handles all A/P, A/R, disbursements and the G/L, as well as some administrative duties.

Paying Your CPA?
How much do you spend on tax and financial statement reviews? We have about 50 employees in a typical agency located in Southern California. Our CPAs only prepare our tax returns (owner and S corporation) and do an annual review of our financial statements (not an audit).

Payroll, Raises, & Bonuses
Do most employees get performance reviews and raises at the employees anniversary each year? If review is not given by the mgr until a few months past the employees anniversary date does the employee get back pay to the anniversary dates?

Per Diem for Employee Travel (Account Execs, Production, Creative Staff)
We are in the process of defining per diem rates for employee travel (billable to the client). We are seeking suggestions that will help us calculate a daily rate of expenditures (i.e., how does everybody else do it!!!).

Performance Reveiws
Does anyone out there have "performance review" forms they could share? We too, like many of you, are doing them twice a year, but are considering changing that to some degree.

Physical Job Bags
nybody out there using physical job bags with any degree of success toroute project materials internally? If so, which works for you: 1) acentralized location for the bags, 2) account managers keep bags in theiroffice for their current jobs, 3) job bag resides with the staff member mostcurrently active in the job (i.e., designer, producer, etc.),

Policy On Employee Freelancing
I would like to know your policies on employees freelancing? We have recently written our "EMPLOYEE POLICY MANUAL" and there are concerns about the freelance section. The owners (there are 3 of us) have agreed that the employees can freelance but with certain restrictions.

Printer Tracking Software
Do any of you use software to track your printer costs (especially color prints)? If so, what software do you use?

Production Task
We are in the process of re-thinking our production task for Broadcast and was wondering what other users are using as task for any broadcast production.

Proofreaders Assignments
We are currently working on reorganizing/restructuring our proofreading department. Right now, we have 2 full time proofreaders and one freelancer that comes in as needed. Each proofreader reads anything and everything that comes in and is not specifically assigned to one or two particular clients.....

Proofreading in a Paperless World
I would like to know how proofreading and signoffs are handled in different environments. Do you use a job bag or a file folder to keep copy revisions together with the job?

Raises & Flow Chart
This is for Admin folks, we are currently reviewing our operational procedures. With this in mind, regarding raises, do any of you have a magic formula? do you tie it to performance? any type of point system?

Rate Analysis
We are currently going through an analysis of our rates, both net and bill. We're trying to get an "industry" feel for typical net-to-bill ratios for account service, creative and production. Has anyone conducted this type of study and, if so, what are the prevailing ratios?

Reporting by Task by Job
In our older version of C&P we ran reports for each job we were billing, and broke down the time spent for each task. For example, all the CPR (computer production) time, including all staff, was listed separate from PAD (project administration) time. We have a new employee running reports now, and we can't seem to figure out how to pull these reports. Can anyone help?

Retainers
Our agency currently does not bill any of our clients a retainer, but we are considering it. We would bill outside services at cost, and the retainer would cover everything else. I would like to know how other agencies are handling retainers. Do you do monthly, quarterly, or annual evaluations for the client of the retainer amount vs. actual time spent?

Salaries vs Sales
Just wondering if anyone has any knowledge on what percentage in general should salaries be compared to sales. Also wondering what percentage rent/lease should be compared to sales.

Salary for Account Executive
We are a smallish (10 people) agency in Houston, Texas, specializing mainly in print with virtually no broadcast. We were wondering what you think the salary range is for an account executive with good general ad agency/marketing background (around 10 years), but with only two year's experience as an actual AE.

Salary Survey
We use the Reubel survey to get a range of salary per title. Is there any other survey that we can use to base somebodies salary?

Sales Commisions
How do you guys figure out commission for your sales staff? What reports do you use? How do you pull everything billed in a particular month even when the job has been ongoing for several months?

Sales Commisions in NYC
I am researching how agencies in New York City pay sales commissions to new business sales staff. What is the percentage and how is it paid?

Sales Expense Cap
Do you have an expense cap on your sales dept.? For example on client entertainment, gas, travel, etc.? I guess I do have more than just one ?

Samples for Freelancers
I am interested to know other company's policies on giving a freelancer who worked on a part of a job a sample of the finished piece for their portfolio.

Scheduling Program
For the past several months, my company has been looking into various scheduling programs to help us better manage our many meetings, conference calls, conference rooms, etc. (We are 25 person agency all on MACS.) We have honed in on two programs: Now Up-to-Date & Contact and Webevent...

Software Package for New Business, & Calendar
Our agency currently uses Now Contact for its client database, and Now Up-to-Date as its agency calendar. We are in need of upgrading, and I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions for alternatives that are able to support the New Business functions of tracking sales calls, notes to file, automatic email notification to relevant team members about a particular prospect, AND a calendar function... all rolled into one.

Space Planning
We are considering moving to larger space, but we don't know how much space we will need, or what the best configuration would be. Does anyone know of industry standards for how many square feet marketing communications agencies need for each full-time equivalent employee?

Staff Rates
We recognize (do we ever!) the importance of having a great receptionist. Our current receptionist has been with us a while and while she isnít interested in moving on to other areas of the business, weíd like to keep her motivated. As usual money talks....

Starting A New Database
We have input the table of accounts, tax, clients, vendors, tasks, production and billing status, members and billing. We are wanting to start using the software by June. Do I have enough info inputted and should I only add new jobs?

Summer Interns
We are considering a summer intern this year. Does anyone have a good feel for what to pay an intern (southeast). This would be primarily an admin gopher.

System / Accounting Problems
I would really appreciate some feedback from other agencies that have been using C&P for some time, like ourselves, with regard to system posting errors - where only one side of an A/P or A/R transaction posts to the GL. Ever since we purchased C&P we have been experiencing this problem and after 5 years the answer is still the same "check your networking" or "electrical power interruptions"....

T1 line expense
Can anyone provide current cost information for internet provider T1 line access? I want to make sure our current rate is competitive.

Tracking Agency Project Hours
We are taking a fresh look at how we track employee hours on client/billable projects and internal/unbillable projects. We are trying to get an accurate view of actual billable hours per task for each employee....

Traffic Coordinator Job Description
We are a small (8 person) graphic design, advertising and public relations agency in the Sacramento, CA area. We need to hire a traffic coordinator for the first time. Does anyone have a job description that they would be willing to share?

Transitioning Out an Old Relationship
We have just lost a major client with whom we had a longstanding retainer-based relationship over several years. They gave us 3 weeks notice. They are now asking us for a great deal of information - all our media contacts, specs for publications and copies of all the ads done recently.

Turnaround Time on Jobs
We are a small agency with 15 people in one office and 10 people in our second office in another state. Our account staff recently raised a concern that they feel jobs should be moving through the creative shop faster. Creative, however, feels that they don't get enough time to do the jobs, so we have a real dichotomy between departments.....

Using C&P for PR (Public Relations)
We've used C&P at the agency for years as an excellent creative and accounting side tool. I've had much difficulty trying to figure out how to best integrate it into the PR operations.

Using Free-lance Artists
If you are using a Freelance Artist on a particular job for a client do you have the freelancer sign a non compete or some form of documentation? Is there ever a concern that the Freelance Artist may contact the client directly to do additional work for the client after the original project is completed?

Vacation Pay Upon Termination
Looking for policies on paying out unused vacation at termination. This would depend on the vacation policy itself. (Are vacations granted during first year of employment or only upon completion of a year of service.) Andhow are vacation years counted? - based on anniversary date or something else.

Vacation Time
We are a company of 25 with the majority of people having been employed for over 5 years but with a few over 10. We now have our first employee who has reached 15 years and was wondering about revising our vacation policy to 5 weeks for 15 years.

Vendor Gift Policy
Is there an industry standard on how vendor gifts are handled? Production and the media department deal with vendors that give "gifts" that range from cookies, lunches, sports event tickets and more. We are trying to develop a policy that is fair to relationship building necessary for these positions but also does not by appearance or otherwise compromise the responsibility the agency has to represent our clients best interest. Does your company have a vendor gift policy? What gifts are acceptable?

Window Envelopes
We have just started using C&P. For statements and invoices, has anyone found a good double window envelope that shows the agency's return address and the client's address? We are trying to get away from hand-writing envelopes.

Windows 2003 Server Terminal Services
We are investigating the use of Terminal services (Window 2003 Server) and are looking for input of existing users. If anyone would like to give me their insight, it would be greatly appreciated. We currently have a 20-user licenses for C&P Pro 5.

Work to do
How do other agencies use Clients & Profits to provide a view of overall agency work to do (in a visual vs. verbal or report style format) for a range of dates (a month, a week, etc.) so that we can see whether multiple people have multiple tasks due in the same time period.