ERP for Marketing Agencies | CanTicket
Marketing Agency ERP

Stop Running Marketing Campaigns in Spreadsheets

CanTicket gives marketing agencies live campaign budget tracking, retainer management and margin visibility without rebuilding your entire tech stack.

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Xero Compatible Native two-way integration
$2,880/wk
Average scope creep cost for marketing agencies
3 weeks
Avg delay before margin bleed is noticed
22% to 31%
Margin improvement with CanTicket
40+
Campaigns tracked simultaneously
The Problem

Why Most Small Businesses Struggle With This

Running your business on disconnected tools creates gaps that cost real money. Here is what we hear from businesses before they switch to CanTicket.

Campaign Budget Tracking

Running multiple campaigns for multiple clients in spreadsheets creates a constant risk of over-spending a budget or missing a billing milestone. Marketing agencies need a live view of spend vs budget across every campaign, every client and every channel simultaneously. CanTicket provides that view without requiring a full-time financial controller.

Retainer Management

Monthly retainer clients are the backbone of most marketing agency revenue, but managing them is surprisingly complicated. Hours need to be tracked against the retainer cap, overages need to be flagged and billed, and the client needs clear reporting on how their retainer was used. CanTicket handles all of this automatically so you are never guessing on retainer status.

Reporting Chaos

Marketing agencies spend hours every month compiling reports from multiple tools: time tracking in one app, budgets in another, invoicing in Xero and campaign metrics in yet another platform. CanTicket consolidates the financial and operational reporting into one place so end-of-month reporting becomes a 30-minute task instead of a two-day exercise.

Features

Everything You Need, Nothing You Don't

CanTicket is purpose-built for service businesses that need real-time visibility without enterprise complexity or price tags.

Campaign Budget Control

Set campaign budgets at the project or deliverable level and track actual spend in real time. CanTicket fires alerts when a campaign is approaching budget so you can have the conversation with the client before overspending happens. Every hour logged and every supplier cost entered reduces the remaining budget instantly.

Retainer Tracking

Each retainer client gets their own monthly bucket in CanTicket. Team members log time against the retainer and the live remaining balance is visible to everyone. When the retainer approaches its cap, the project manager is notified. Overage hours are flagged automatically for billing in the next invoice cycle.

Live Margin Dashboard

See gross margin on every campaign, every retainer client and across your whole agency portfolio in real time. CanTicket calculates margin by comparing billed value against actual labour and supplier costs so you always know which clients are profitable and which are costing you money.

Xero Integration

Invoices, client records and financial data flow automatically between CanTicket and Xero. Your accountant sees accurate data without any manual data entry from your team. Campaign costs can be mapped to specific expense categories in your Xero chart of accounts for clean financial reporting.

Xero Certified Integration

Marketing Agency Finances Finally Under Control, With Xero Always Accurate

CanTicket sits between your team and your accountant. Your team tracks campaigns, retainers and time in CanTicket. Your accountant sees everything in Xero automatically. Invoices created from completed campaign milestones or monthly retainers push to Xero in one click. GST is calculated correctly, payment terms are applied and your books stay clean without anyone doing data entry twice.

  • Campaign invoices generated in CanTicket sync to Xero automatically
  • Retainer billing summaries export to Xero with itemised time detail
  • Supplier costs and media spend tracked in CanTicket and reconciled in Xero
  • Client records and contact details maintained in both systems simultaneously
  • GST and tax settings carried from Xero into every CanTicket invoice

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do marketing agencies need dedicated ERP software?
Marketing agencies manage multiple clients, campaigns and retainers simultaneously, often with teams working across different projects at once. A dedicated ERP like CanTicket brings financial visibility to that complexity: every campaign has a live budget, every retainer has a consumption tracker and every team member's time is connected to billing. Without that visibility, agencies routinely undercharge, overbuild and miss margin targets.
How does CanTicket handle campaign budgets that span multiple months?
CanTicket supports multi-month project budgets that can be viewed in aggregate or broken down by month. You can set a total campaign budget, allocate monthly spend targets within it, and track actual spend against both the monthly and total budget simultaneously. This makes it easy to see whether a long-running campaign is on track without manually calculating cumulative totals from a spreadsheet.
Can CanTicket track media spend as well as agency time?
Yes. CanTicket lets you record supplier and media costs against specific campaigns as well as labour time. All costs, whether internal labour or external media spend, roll up into the campaign's total cost and are compared against the campaign budget and billed value. This gives you a true view of campaign profitability rather than just tracking internal hours.
Does CanTicket help with client reporting for marketing agencies?
CanTicket provides financial and operational reporting on every campaign and client. You can generate a summary of hours worked, costs incurred and budget consumed for any project or time period. Many marketing agencies use CanTicket reports as the basis for their client billing reports because the data is already structured by campaign and deliverable.
What is the best way to handle scope changes in marketing campaigns?
CanTicket handles scope changes by letting you log variations against the original campaign brief. When a client requests additional work, you create a variation in CanTicket that captures the additional scope, estimated hours and agreed value. The variation sits alongside the original project so both you and the client have a clear record of what was originally agreed and what was added. This makes scope conversations straightforward and well-documented.

Give Your Marketing Agency the Margin Visibility It Deserves

Book a free demo and see how CanTicket connects your campaign tracking, retainer management and Xero accounting in one platform.

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Related Resources

ERP for Agencies ERP for Creative Agencies Real-Time Margin Tracking Project Profitability Software Xero ERP Integration