businesses & Industries
Accountants for Marketing & Digital Agencies in Brisbane
Running a marketing or digital agency in Brisbane comes with a financial profile that most accountants aren't set up to handle well.
Empire Accountants works with marketing, branding, and digital agencies across Brisbane, providing accounting, tax, and advisory support tailored to the way agencies operate day to day. Since 2015, our team has supported service-based businesses at every stage of growth, helping owners get a clearer picture of their numbers, reduce their tax, and grow with confidence.
We support a broad range of marketing, creative, and digital businesses across Brisbane, including:
Whether you're a boutique studio with a small team or a growing agency managing multiple client retainers and a roster of contractors, our approach is built around the financial reality of running a creative service business.
We provide financial reporting that gives you visibility over margins, utilisation, and overall performance
We provide financial reporting that gives you visibility over margins, utilisation, and overall performance
Stay ahead of retainer gaps, late client payments, and ad spend pass-through, so a strong month doesn't turn into a tight one.
We handle your BAS and tax returns, and plan ahead before 30 June to legally reduce what your agency owes.
We manage payroll, super, and Single Touch Payroll, and get your contractor versus employee classifications right before it becomes a problem.
Practical advice for growing agencies — from pricing reviews and retainer structuring to planning your next hire or service line.
Marketing and digital agencies face pressures that are distinct from product-based businesses and even from other professional service firms. We regularly assist agencies dealing with:
We work with marketing, branding, and digital agencies across Brisbane, with a strong presence in the inner-city areas where most agency activity is concentrated:
Since 2015, Empire Accountants has worked with service-based businesses across Brisbane at every stage of growth. Led by four partners, our team is hands-on, commercially minded, and straightforward to deal with.
As Xero Platinum Partners, we help agencies get the most out of their systems like integrating with the project management and time tracking tools you already use.
GST applies to most digital marketing services at the standard 10% rate. The treatment gets more complex when an agency manages ad spend on behalf of clients, particularly for international platforms like Google Ads and Meta, where the GST treatment of the underlying platform fees differs from the agency's service fee. Getting this right takes careful bookkeeping and clear invoicing structures. We help agencies set their systems up correctly from the start to avoid GST compliance issues down the track.
Getting contractor versus employee classification wrong is one of the most common and costly mistakes agencies make. The ATO has strict rules around worker classification, and the consequences of misclassification include back-paid superannuation, PAYG withholding, and penalties. We help agencies structure their arrangements correctly from the start, so there are no surprises if a worker's status is reviewed later.
Xero is the platform we recommend and use for agency clients. It integrates well with project management, time tracking, and invoicing tools, and gives agency owners real-time visibility over cash flow and financial performance. As Xero Platinum Partners, we handle setup, optimisation, and ongoing support so your system reflects how your agency actually runs.
Profitability in an agency usually comes down to understanding which clients and services are genuinely making money once delivery costs are factored in. We help agencies build reporting that shows margins per client and per service line, then work through pricing and cost structures to lift overall performance. Most agency owners are surprised by what the numbers show once the reporting is set up properly.
We work with agencies at every stage, from small studios getting their structure right and wanting to support to grow, through to established agencies managing significant teams and client portfolios. Empire Accountants has been supporting service-based businesses across Brisbane since 2015, and our support is always tailored to the size and stage of your business.
If you run a marketing, branding, or digital agency in Brisbane and you want clearer financial visibility, stronger systems, and practical advisory support, our team is here to help.