Expense tracking for creative and marketing agencies

Agencies live and die by per-campaign profitability. If you can't see the media-buy receipts, the production receipts, and the travel receipts rolling up against a campaign budget in real time, you're flying blind right up until invoicing.

The shape of agency expenses

A creative agency on a retainer plus three project-based campaigns has four parallel cost stacks open at once. Each campaign has its own producers, its own freelancers, its own media buy, its own travel days. Receipts come in from everywhere — printers, courier services, hotels, props, location fees, Ubers, dinners with clients.

The mistake most agencies make: tracking it in one big Trello card per campaign, or in the producer's personal spreadsheet, or in Slack DMs that get screenshotted before invoicing. Then it's someone's Sunday to chase down a missing TIFF of a receipt from three weeks ago that the photographer might have on her phone.

How ProjScan fits

One project per campaign

Each campaign — including the retainer — is its own ProjScan project. Producer creates it, sets the budget, shares the invite code with the people working on it. Freelancers and crew can be added as contributors and removed when they're done; their receipts stay attached to the campaign forever.

Categorization that matches how you bill

The AI extraction tags each receipt's category — meals, travel, lodging, supplies, other. Manager can override at any time. End of campaign, the dashboard shows you the split: 47% media, 22% production, 19% travel, 12% other. That's the breakdown the invoice line items want.

VAT extracted per line

Printers and venues invoice with mixed VAT rates. ProjScan reads the line-item breakdown so a €450 venue receipt isn't just "€450, 21% VAT" — it's "€380 venue rental + €70 catering + correct VAT per line". Matters for VAT recovery at quarter-end.

Excel that imports cleanly

The XLSX export has the merchant, tax ID, date, total, VAT, and category in the columns most accounting software expects (Xero, QuickBooks, Sage, FreshBooks, and the like). Drop it into accounting once the campaign closes.

A typical workflow

1. Account director wins a campaign. Producer creates the ProjScan project, "Brand X — Q2 launch", budget €18,000.
2. Six people get the invite code: two creatives, the producer, a photographer (freelance), a stylist (freelance), a location manager (freelance).
3. Shoots happen. Receipts upload from phones during the day. The producer doesn't have to chase them at midnight.
4. Account director checks the burn weekly. Sees media is tracking 10% over plan halfway through — adjusts the second-half spend.
5. Campaign ends. Producer exports. Finance reconciles against the client invoice. Done before the post-campaign retro.

Recommended plan

Mid-sized agencies typically start on Pro (€29/mo, 200 receipts) — campaigns generate more receipts than people expect once you count freelancers. Annual billing knocks 20% off if you're committing for the year. Larger agencies running ten-plus active campaigns will want Business (€99/mo, 1,000 receipts). See the full pricing comparison.