As agencies grow, they often open new offices or acquire other businesses, evolving into multi-company agency groups. This approach is sometimes described as a multi-entity setup, but “multi-company” is the term most commonly used by agencies. While this structure offers flexibility and scale, it also introduces complexity around visibility, resourcing, and reporting.
Synergist is an agency management platform designed to support multi-company agency groups, giving agencies the project and resource management workflows they need while maintaining clear oversight and consistency across the group.
This guide explains how multi-company setups work in Synergist and how agency groups use them effectively.
Why agency groups use multi-company structures in Synergist
Agency groups typically adopt a multi-company structure to support:
- Multiple brands or specialist agencies within a group
- Regional or international expansion
- Different delivery models across companies
- Acquisitions where teams need to stay operationally distinct
Synergist supports this by giving each company clarity and independence, while still enabling shared visibility and group-level insight.
What does “multi-company” mean for agency groups?
In Synergist, a multi-company setup allows an agency group to manage multiple companies within the same system.
Each company can maintain:
- Its own clients, jobs, suppliers and workflows
- Independent billing, currency and accounts system integrations
- Separate operational reporting and forecasting
Each company in Synergist is configured separately to reflect how it operates day to day. At the same time, leadership teams can view live dashboards and reporting across the group. Making it easier to understand how different companies are performing without managing disconnected systems.
Users can have access to what they need, and the management team can run consolidated multi-company reporting. For example, a Director can access multiple company systems for a single user fee — you pay per user, irrespective of the number of trading companies. (See Synergist pricing for more infomation.)
Managing your agency resources across multiple companies
One of the biggest challenges for agency groups is managing resources across multiple companies.
Synergist allows agencies to:
Keep your resources separate. For example, resources in the UK focus on UK clients, while those in the US serve US clients.
Cross-sell your resources. Using this method, you can essentially treat each other as clients and suppliers. For example, if your US branch has won work, the job is created in their system, which raises a PO for the UK arm. The UK team would then create a job on Synergist as normal, recording time and invoicing their US counterparts. This would be treated as any other third-party cost. Special cross-charge rate cards can also be set up. So, for example, you could charge clients £90ph, but only £60ph for cross-company work.
Share your resource pool. Show all your staff on one combined scheduling calendar in Synergist and see the capacity across your business – as simple as if you’re working in one agency. Creatives can access all the job’s info, documents, checklists and comms in one central place, add comments and feedback and log their time and expenses. Time is posted for each job, so you can track utilisation and combine it into a single report for a global view – for example, looking at how much time is spent on jobs in the US versus the UK. Plus, you can set targets for individual team members in each country. Colour-coded bookings help you see what bookings belong where.
Time, utilisation, and delivery data remain visible and reportable, even when teams work across company boundaries.
How Synergist supports multi-currency settings
You can estimate, quote, invoice, and manage purchase orders and expenses in any currency using the multicurrency function in Synergist.
Set a base currency for your group and use individual currencies for each sub-company. You can even set a base currency for each client, or change currency for individual jobs.
When it’s time to invoice, you can use either your pre-set exchange rate or the latest exchange rate. You can also add the tax codes for a range of countries and states.
And you can purchase in different currencies, too. For example, if a purchase is $1000, you’ll make the payment in that currency, with the system converting it back to your base currency for reporting purposes.
Group-level reporting across multiple companies
Although companies are managed separately, Synergist provides group-level reporting and visibility across a multi-company setup.
Agency leaders can:
- See data at an individual agency level or pull in multiple companies into Synergist reports
- Build custom reports using the built-in Data Analytics tool. It converts values into the country it’s being run from, using your pre-set exchange rates. For example, if you're running it from the UK, invoice values would be converted to pounds.
Reports can be automatically emailed to each Director's inbox with department or company-wide data. Plus, you can set up custom dashboards that show live company-wide information to enable better, quicker decision-making.
Want to see how a multi-company agency group works in practice?
Navigating a multi-company agency group doesn’t need to be difficult. Synergist is designed to support the many permutations of reporting, resourcing, and international operations, giving you clear visibility at both individual agency and group level.
The result is all the benefits of operating as a global agency group — without the associated headache.
Book a demo to see how Synergist supports growing agency groups and helps you manage complexity with confidence.