By the Books: Insights From a Finance Manager to Top Design Firms

July 11, 2026 - 02:41

A finance manager who has worked with some of the industry's leading design firms is pulling back the curtain on why many of them struggle to turn a healthy profit. Tamir Shuster, a veteran money manager, says the problems are often not about a lack of talent or clients, but about basic financial discipline.

Shuster points to a few common factors that consistently hurt firm profits. The biggest issue is poor project scoping. Many firms agree to work without a clear, detailed budget for each phase of a project. This leads to "scope creep," where designers add extra work for free to keep a client happy. Another major problem is slow billing. If a firm waits until a project is done to send an invoice, they lose leverage and cash flow suffers.

The solution, according to Shuster, is to install simple monitoring processes now. He recommends breaking every project into small, billable milestones. Firms should track their "realization rate" -- the percentage of billable hours they actually collect on. He also advises a strict policy: stop work when a client is late on payment. "It sounds harsh," Shuster says, "but it is the only way to teach clients that your time has value." For design firms used to focusing on aesthetics, he argues that learning to watch the numbers is the single most important step to staying in business.