While financial and business management may not steal the spotlight in the world of marcomms, it's an indispensable foundation that contributes to the overall success of your work – whether you’re a business owner, consultant or handle budgets from the agency- or brand-side. We dove into this topic in our webinar on financial and business management for marcomms pros, led by Heather Purcell, CEO of Fiscally Professional Corporation. With both agency and brand-side experience, Heather shared some of the key financial and biz management tips she expertly crafts for marcomms agencies and professional service firms. 

The takeaways: 

• It’s crucial to understand your capacity, or what is possible for your firm if you are recovering time at best practice rates
• Working to understand your capacity shows you care about your team’s wellbeing as far as workloads and balance 
• Budgeting and forecasting is meant to act as a guide, not to be restrictive 
• When a business plan is translated into a financial plan, it is easier to test for reasonability (is my plan too conservative, ambitious, etc.?)
• When it comes to bookkeeping for a marcomms firm, find someone with experience in project-based businesses and who understands your structure (do you bill hourly? Ask for 50% up front?)
• Making financial results visible: regular reporting is a must (usually monthly) so you can understand profit and losses (P&L), revenue by client, time spent versus fees recovered, etc. 
• Along with P&L, you want to understand what’s going on from a client and employee level (should be easy for your accounting team to produce for you a schedule that shows your net revenue by client month-over-month so you can identify patterns and/or trends)
• Hiring a professional to set your financial management systems up properly gives you and your team’s time back while ensuring you have reliable data