Contents

💡 Pro Tip: You can download and view a sample Fathom media/marketing company report at the bottom of this article.

Media & marketing metrics or KPIs

While Fathom has several default financial KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to choose from, you can also create custom KPIs to track for your media or marketing company.

💡 Pro Tip: Not sure what to track? For ideas, see which KPIs we recommend creative agencies track and why and the KPIs a consultant tracks for his creative agency clients.

You can create custom KPIs in 'Step 4 - KPIs' of a company's Settings. How you set up your custom KPIs depends on how your Chart of Accounts is set up in Fathom.

There are four main types of custom KPIs:

Custom KPI Type	How a media or marketing company might use it...
Non-financial KPI	Import and track data outside of your Chart of Accounts, such as: Number of Staff Billable Staff Hours Customer Lifetime Value Staff Utilisation Rate
Account Watch KPI	Track the performance of important accounts or headings at a glance, such as: Accounts Receivable Cash Recurring Revenue (if an account in the CoA)
Formula KPI	Create custom formulas using your financial and non-financial results, such as: Average Fee Rates Average Sales per Customer (if you want to calculate it in Fathom) Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) Profit per Customer Recurring Revenue Revenue Churn % Revenue per Full Time Employee
Divisional KPI	If you have divisions (e.g. classes, locations, tracking categories), then you can track the performance of a metric for specific divisions, such as: Operating Profit Operating Profit Margin (%) Net Income
Library KPI	Fathom has some KPIs included in the KPI Library by default. You can add these KPIs to your company and enter the data for them into Fathom or import the data through Google Sheets or Excel. Average Sales per Customer Conversion Rate Customer Attrition Customer Satisfaction Rating Lost Customers New Customers Number of Qualified Leads

💡 Pro Tip: You can also filter variables by division when creating a custom Formula KPI to essentially create your own custom Divisional KPIs.

Learn more about setting up KPIs for your media or marketing company by seeing our 'Step 4 - KPIs' article.

Reporting for media & marketing companies

💡 Pro Tip: You can download and view a sample Fathom media/marketing company report at the bottom of this article.

To help stakeholders and clients better understand their agency's financial performance, you may want to include data outside the financials in a report. These data can provide much-needed context for the financials.

You can use the agency's logo and brand colours in a custom Fathom report. If you are an accountant or financial advisor with media or marketing clients, this extra step is often appreciated.

For more general information on reporting in Fathom, please see the following articles:

Provide context for the financials

To provide context for a media or marketing company's financial performance, you may want to include metrics like the number of projects, staff utilisation rate, or the average profit per customer.

Before bringing these data into a report, you must create custom KPIs to track these metrics in Fathom.

After these KPIs have been created, you can report on any KPI data with:

💡 Pro Tip: If reporting for several media or marketing companies, you can copy custom KPIs and custom report templates to other companies in the same Fathom organisation.

Branding

Customise the Fathom report to the company by including the company's:

Logo
Brand colours

Logo

Import the media or marketing company's logo in the Company Profile of the Settings. Once this logo has been imported, you can add it to the header of a report.

If you want the company's logo to show up on both the online and PDF versions of the report, make sure you add it to both versions of the report.

💡 Pro Tip: If you are a financial advisor and want your firm's logo to also be in the report, you can add it to the report header by including your firm's logo in the background image for the header. Or your client's logo can be in the background image while your firm's logo takes the usual spot of the logo in the report.

Brand colours

Charts and tables can include brand colours to make the report feel truly custom to the business.

When editing a chart or table, clicking the coloured squares next to metrics or column options will reveal a colour picker menu. You can enter the specific hex code(s) to display the brand colours in the report.

📝 Note: A colour's hex code is a 6-figure code (can be made up of letters and numbers) that allows you to identify the exact colour in the RGB format.

Organisation colour

If you are using your Fathom account for one brand, you can enter one of the brand colours as the organisation's brand colour for the account.

You'll then be able to select this colour directly from the colour-picker menu when editing reporting components instead of entering the hex code.

You must be an Admin-level user to change the organisation's brand colour. Currently, you can only select one colour as the organisation's colour.

To enter the organisation's brand colour:

Select the Gear / Cog icon on the black bar in the top right corner of the My Companies page
Choose Organisation Settings from the dropdown menu
Under Organisation Profile, scroll down to Branding
Click on the Brand colour option and enter the hex code for the colour

📝 Note: This likely will not be a good option for a firm's Fathom account as the organisation colour is for the entire account, and a firm account likely has several clients with several different brands on one account. One of the firm's brand colours might be better as the organisation's brand colour.

Forecasting for media & marketing companies

Media & marketing companies often need to forecast client projects. In Fathom, the best way to forecast these projects is with microforecasts.

Microforecasts enable you to:

Forecast the expected revenue and costs of a project on their own
Forecast the expected performance of a project for key metrics
Change the expected start or end date of a project quickly
Turn the project on or off in the forecast easily as plans change

For more general information on forecasting in Fathom, please see the following articles:

Forecast client projects with microforecasts

When you forecast a project with a microforecast, the Quick Metrics bar is at the bottom of the microforecast grid. You can see how the project is expected to perform for key metrics, such as Return on Equity, with this bar.

To forecast a project's expected performance:

Select the Microscope icon on the left sidebar of the forecasting tool
Choose + Create Microforecast
Name the microforecast
Select Create
Select + Add account
1. Add an account from the Chart of Accounts that the project would impact
  1. For example, if the project has advertising costs associated with it, then you would add an advertising expense account to the microforecast
Use the green + Add account button to continue to add accounts if needed
Click on a cell for an account to add a value rule to the account
1. Use value rules to calculate your microforecast figures. You can also double-click on a cell to type in an amount.
Add timing profiles to accounts if needed
1. Timing profiles forecast when revenue or an expense will hit cash
At the bottom of the microforecast grid, click on the ^ icon to open the Quick Metrics bar and view the expected performance of the project
To add or remove metrics, select Edit metrics
1. For example, you may want to add the 'Return on Equity' metric to the bar to see the project's expected ROE.
To view the chart version of a metric's performance, click on the Chart option next to the metric's name

Additional knowledge & common questions

Sample report

Media and Marketing Fathom Report.pdf