Illinois agency accounting that tells you which projects and retainers actually pay.

Profitability tracking by project, client, and retainer using billable utilization; retainer revenue recognized separately from project revenue; pass-through media buys kept out of margin; clean 1099-contractor classification, payroll, and reporting; Illinois net income tracked for the PPRT; and Chicago’s lease/cloud tax handled separately — all in your own QuickBooks file across all 102 counties.

We structure the books so revenue and cost attach to the project, client, and retainer they belong to, then track billable utilization so labor cost is matched to billable work. Pass-through media buys are recorded so they flow through without inflating margin. The result is a monthly view of which projects, clients, and retainers actually pay — not just top-line revenue.

Agencies run on freelancers, designers, and developers, so contractor-versus-employee classification is one of the riskiest areas in the books. We keep classification, payments, payroll, and 1099 reporting clean and consistent so the figures are supportable and audit-ready. Illinois adds a payment rule through the Freelance Worker Protection Act: for contracts taking effect after July 1, 2024, a freelancer whose work for you is worth $500 or more in a 120-day period (multiple contracts count together) is entitled to a written contract with the rate, method, and due date of payment, and to full payment by that date, or within 30 days of completing the work if no date is set. We set each freelancer up with those terms in QuickBooks so a late payment shows in the AP aging before it becomes a dispute. Your CPA confirms the correct tax treatment and files; we keep the underlying records right.

When you buy media on a client’s behalf, that spend is a pass-through cost, not your margin. We record media buys so they flow through the books cleanly — reconciled against the platform spend summaries — and stay out of your gross margin, so a high-media-spend month never reads as a high-profit month. It keeps both revenue and margin accurate.

Most agencies operate as S-corps, LLCs, or partnerships. Illinois has a flat 4.95% personal income tax, and the Personal Property Replacement Tax hits pass-throughs at 1.5% at the entity level — even pass-throughs owe it, which surprises owners new to Illinois. The Pass-Through Entity (PTE) election lets the entity pay a 4.95% entity-level tax as a federal SALT-cap workaround; the statute (35 ILCS 5/201(p), as amended by SB 1911, Public Act 104-0453, effective December 12, 2025) sets no end year, and the election runs for taxable years ending on or after December 31, 2021 while the federal limit on individual state-and-local-tax deductions applies. We track Illinois net income cleanly and structure the books so your CPA can compute the PPRT, model the PTE decision, make the election, and file.

Probably in two directions. Agencies run on SaaS — design suites, project tools, ad platforms — and the City of Chicago’s Personal Property Lease Transaction Tax (the “cloud tax,” 15%) applies to cloud and software used in Chicago, so that cost shows up on the expense side. Separately, if your agency sells digital or cloud services to Chicago customers, you may have a collection obligation of your own. We track it separately from Illinois sales tax in QuickBooks, because it’s a City of Chicago tax administered by the Department of Finance, not a state tax. Your CPA confirms how it applies to you.