Trimline gives $1–10M independent agencies CFO-level firepower without the $300K salary. Margins fixed. Cash flow you can see coming. A business worth buying.
Because every finance role looks at a different point in time.
Most $1–10M agencies have the first two covered. Almost none have the third. So you know exactly where the money went.. and no idea where it’s going.
The Trimline System™ helps ambitious agency founders fix margins, stabilise cash flow, and scale without chaos.
Get the Fundamentals Right
A deep dive into your numbers, benchmarked against 125 independent agencies. You get a ranked list of the changes that will actually move profit.. and the plan is yours to keep.
Make Smarter Moves, Faster
Dashboards, client profitability tools and the Trimline Profitability Project™. We find where your margin is leaking and plug it, starting with pricing.
Scale with Confidence
Monthly CFO guidance, 8–12 weeks of cash flow visibility, and a sounding board for the big calls.. hiring, firing clients, restructuring, exiting.
From break-even to 26% net profit in six months.
A $3M Melbourne creative agency came to us breaking even. Charge-out rate stuck at $100 an hour. No time tracking. Senior salaries sitting in the wrong seats, doing low-value work. And two of their biggest clients quietly being over-serviced into losses.
Six months later: rates at $180. Strategy work priced at $15K instead of $5K. The wrong-seat senior roles cut. The big unprofitable clients they’d been relentlessly over-servicing.. gone.
Revenue stayed at $3M. Profit went from zero to 26%. Fewer clients, better clients, real margin.
Our Australian Independent Agency Report found 30% of agencies run below 10% net profit. Only 26% clear the healthy 20% mark. The difference isn’t talent or revenue. It’s financial control.
Two or more hit home? You’re exactly who we work with: independent digital, creative, marketing, dev and consulting agencies doing $1–10M across Australia and New Zealand.
Pre-revenue, or just need BAS lodged? You don’t need us yet.. a good bookkeeper and accountant will do.
The diagnosis lands in month one. Quick wins.. usually pricing and client profitability.. inside three months. Structural change over six to twelve. That’s the honest timeline. Anyone promising faster is guessing.
Here’s the maths on waiting, though. A $3M agency stuck at 8% net margin instead of a healthy 20% is leaving around $360K a year on the table. That’s $30K every month the problem goes undiagnosed.
Every engagement starts as a three-month sprint: kickoff, your Agency Roadmap, and your reporting dialled in. Find 1–2% of margin and it pays for itself.. and the Roadmap usually finds a lot more than that. After the sprint there’s no lock-in. We earn the next month, every month.
A fractional CFO is an experienced chief financial officer who works inside your agency part-time. You get the same strategic firepower a big company gets from a full-time CFO: forecasting, margin analysis, pricing and growth decisions, sized and priced for an independent agency.
Agency owners facing the problems growth creates: revenue is climbing but profitability isn’t following, you don’t know when to hire or who to let go, cash flow keeps surprising you, or you’re staring down a restructure and need to make tough calls with confidence. If you’re pre-revenue or just need your BAS lodged, you don’t need us yet. A good bookkeeper and accountant will do.
Your accountant manages the past: compliance, BAS and tax. A fractional CFO manages the future: margins, pricing, forecasting and the decisions that grow profit. Most agencies need both. They do different jobs.
No. We work alongside them. Your bookkeeper keeps the data flowing, your accountant handles compliance, and Trimline turns those numbers into decisions. Everyone stays in their lane. Your finance function just gets a leader.
More profit, more cash in the bank, and an agency that runs with less of you in the weeds. That’s the outcome we’re accountable for. Everything we deliver exists to get you there.
It’s anchored around a monthly call where we make decisions together, backed by two core deliverables. First, your management reporting pack: KPI analysis against agency benchmarks, graphs, commentary, and progress against the goals we’ve set together. Second, a tailored profit and loss forecast: the year ahead, how profit is tracking, what it means for your cash, and when you can afford to hire.
Behind those sits a deep toolkit we pull out as you need it: client profitability analysis, team and headcount modelling, frameworks for price increases and reinvesting profit, a rapid profitability project for agencies tight on margin and cash, and exit-readiness checklists for owners building towards a sale. Most clients also get ad hoc access between calls, so decisions don’t wait a month.
One client grew revenue 66% while streamlining cash flow. Another lifted profits 26%. Every agency is different, but the pattern is the same: find where margin is leaking, fix pricing and capacity, then scale what’s working.
We ask for a three-month initial commitment. That’s how long it takes to do the setup properly, and it’s front-loaded with value: a kickoff call, a full financial diagnosis, and getting your reporting dialled in. After that, support scales up or down with what your agency needs.
Less than the profit it should find. A full-time CFO can cost your business $300K a year. That’s $25K a month before they’ve made you a dollar. Our fees are a fraction of that, scoped to your agency’s size and stage.
And we’d rather you think of it as an investment than a cost. If we lift your profit margin by 2 to 3%, it pays for itself. So why not try it for three months? We bet you’ll learn something about your agency worth more than the fee. Book a call and we’ll give you a real number.
