How to Set Up ClickUp for Agency Operations

When you run multiple client projects at once, small delays can stack up quickly. 

A brief that is missing key details can slow down a project kickoff, while a scattered asset trail can slow down reviews. That is why agency project management tools matter. 

ClickUp gives you a converged AI workspace that you can use for all your agency operations. You can run intake, project scoping, delivery, communication, approvals, and reporting from the same system, helping save both time and increase your team’s productivity.

In this article, we will go through a step-by-step guide on how you can set up ClickUp for your agency operations.

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⭐Featured Template

As your agency grows, delivery gets more complex. That is when agency management becomes harder to standardize, even if your people are doing great work.

ClickUp’s Agency Management Template is a strong starting point because it is built to cover the full agency loop. It covers all processes from sales pipeline and project scoping to client onboarding, project delivery, and client feedback.

Get free template

Get free template

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What Agency Operations Really Require (Before You Set Up Any Tool)

Agency operations break down when your process lives in people’s heads. As client projects increase, work starts crossing more roles and more timelines. That is when missed intake details and slow approvals turn into overdue tasks.

Before you set up any project management tool, get clear on what your agency’s workflow needs to support every week. 

✅ These are the requirements that keep agency operations steady as the agency grows:

Reliable intake and scoping

If requests arrive through chat threads and half-filled emails, project scoping stays fuzzy. Your project managers waste time extracting basics. Then your launch plan shifts midstream because the brief was never truly “ready.”

You want a definition of “ready” that is consistent across agency projects:

1. The request has a clear goal and deliverable type
2. Key stakeholders and relevant team members are named
3. Target due dates and dependencies are visible early

Visibility that works in real life

Visibility is not just about viewing your list of tasks. You need visibility across your agency operations that answers three questions quickly:

• What is shipping next across client delivery
• What is blocked, at risk, or waiting on someone
• What work is coming up that needs resource allocation now

This is where many agency project management tools fall apart for digital agencies. They show activity, but not what is actually safe to commit to.

Capacity and workload clarity

Workload management is not something you do after the week goes off track. It is a planning habit that helps you plan your entire team’s availability well in advance. 

To make this practical, decide upfront how you will estimate work. Many agencies keep it simple with:

• A lightweight effort scale tied to expected hours
• A baseline set of “standard tasks” with typical time estimates
• A weekly capacity check so you can rebalance before due dates slip

A defined approval path

Approvals stall when nobody knows what “approved” means, where feedback belongs, or who signs off. You ideally need a clear approval path with consistent steps, so your team members can move forward with absolute clarity.

A useful approval path is specific about:

• Who signs off at each stage (internal review vs. client review)
• What counts as final feedback vs. suggestions
• What happens when feedback arrives late, and how that affects dependent tasks

Accountability you can measure

Agency work moves when every task has:

• One owner
• A clear task status
• Real due dates
• A next step that is unblocked

When ownership is vague, work stalls. PMI has reported that 11.4% of investment is wasted due to poor project performance, which is why measurable execution matters even in creative work.

When you align on these requirements first, implementing operational tools like ClickUp becomes much easier. You can map your workspace structure to how your agency teams actually deliver work, instead of forcing your process to fit the tool.

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How To Set Up ClickUp for Agency Operations (Step-by-Step)

When you work at an agency, project delivery rarely follows a structured path. A campaign can change after client feedback, or a launch plan can shift when a stakeholder joins late. Additionally, your team members handle everything from client projects to new businesses while supporting last-minute requests. 

That mix is normal in agency life, but it puts pressure on how you run project management.

This is where work sprawl starts hurting delivery. It shows up when agency project management tools are split across tasks, docs, approvals, and reporting. This leads to updates getting missed and overdue tasks showing up late in the week.

AI sprawl adds another layer. If different teams use different AI tools for briefs, summaries, and meeting notes, your outputs vary by person and process. It becomes harder to validate what changed and harder to repeat what worked.

ClickUp addresses both by acting as a converged AI workspace for agencies. It keeps planning, execution, collaboration, and AI support inside one ClickUp workspace, so client projects stay connected from intake through delivery.

✅ Here are the 10 steps for implementing ClickUp in a way that scales with your agency operations.

Step 1: Design your workspace architecture

When your ClickUp workspace structure is unclear, different teams can create different rules. That leads to uneven tracking across agency projects and confusion about where to assign tasks. 

The ClickUp Hierarchy gives you a practical way to structure delivery so your agency’s workflow stays consistent as you add more client projects. You can use ClickUp Spaces, Folders, and Lists as the building blocks for structuring agency work. 

✅ This is how ClickUp Hierarchy helps to set up agency operations:

• Create one delivery Space for client delivery, so active work stays in one place
• Create one client folder per client project for large projects, then use Lists for delivery phases like onboarding, production, review, launch, and post-launch
• For small agency client work, create one folder for small client projects, then add one List per client to keep agency management clean
• Add supporting folders for CRM, billing, scope of work, post-sale engagements, and client feedback when you need them

💡 Pro Tip: Speed up client approvals with ClickUp for Creative Teams.

Project approval delays usually have one root cause: feedback lives in too many places, and nobody knows which comment is final. You can solve this challenge by centralizing review conversations where the work is tracked so your team members can close loops faster and protect project timelines.

ClickUp’s workflow is built around keeping requested changes, approvals, and tasks connected. This ensures that client delivery stays structured even when stakeholders change direction midstream. 

✅ Here’s how it can help you:

• Keep approval discussions in ClickUp Comments and ClickUp Chat by linking tasks and tagging relevant team members, so feedback stays tied to the right work item 
• Streamline creative review with ClickUp’s feedback and markup flow, so you reduce back-and-forth and get sign-off faster 
• Invite clients as guests and set permissions, so stakeholders can review and comment without accessing internal work 

Get ClickUp for creative agencies today

Step 2: Create standardized intake and briefing systems

Once the structure is in place, the next goal is consistency at the front door. Intake is where agency operations often slow down. Requests can arrive with missing details, which tends to weaken project scoping and increase revision cycles later.

ClickUp Forms help you capture the right details upfront and route requests into the right place, so work starts structured. You can create a ClickUp Form from the Views Bar, Forms Hub, or within the ClickUp hierarchy. 

✅ A clean intake setup for agency teams should generally include:

• Scoping inputs like deliverable type, channel, launch plan context, and target due dates
• Ownership signals like account manager, requester, and relevant team members
• Production signals like priority, time estimates, and whether there are dependent tasks

📋 Here is how you can apply ClickUp Forms to agency operations:

• Map form questions to Custom Fields so every new client project arrives with structured data for filtering and reporting
• Use required questions for the details your project managers need before assigning tasks
• Use conditional logic where available so the form asks follow-ups only when needed, like adding a due date field when urgent priority is selected

💡 Pro Tip: Use ClickUp Brain to turn messy intake into a kickoff-ready brief.

Try ClickUp Brain today

Intake quality is one of the biggest drivers of rework in agency operations. Even with a solid form, submissions can still include vague goals or feedback pasted in from email threads. ClickUp Brain helps you standardize what “ready to start” looks like without asking your team to do extra admin.

Here are a few high-impact ways agencies use ClickUp Brain in this intake stage:

• Convert raw notes into a clean brief by rewriting the request into goals, deliverables, audience, channels, and acceptance criteria
  
• Pull out the missing inputs by scanning the submission and generating a short “questions to confirm” list for the account manager before work begins
  
• Draft a first-pass task list based on the request type, so project managers start with a structured plan instead of a blank slate
  
• Summarize long context into a quick kickoff block, so relevant team members can understand the job in minutes rather than reading a full thread

Step 3: Build your project templates and recurring workflows

After intake is clean, you need repeatable execution. Without templates, every kickoff becomes a custom rebuild, which creates uneven delivery and avoidable overdue tasks across agency projects.

ClickUp Templates help you codify your best delivery approach and reuse it across agency projects. ClickUp also supports recurring tasks, which are useful for routine client delivery.

✅ Here is how to set up templates for agency project management:

• Save project templates with task status, assignees, due dates, and task dependencies so project planning stays consistent across client projects
• Build recurring tasks for routine delivery, like weekly updates and monthly reporting, so your agency’s workflow does not rely on memory
• Set a default task template for a List when the work repeats often, so new tasks start with the same structure

💡 Pro Tip: If your agency builds client delivery workflows from scratch each time, small differences in setup create avoidable confusion.

The ClickUp Agency Management Template gives you a structured starting point for agency management, so you can standardize how you run client projects and improve the system over time without redesigning your delivery space.

Get free template

🌻 Here’s why you’ll like this template:

• Standardize your delivery space structure so every new client project starts organized
• Keep project templates, recurring tasks, and client delivery steps consistent across different teams
• Improve workflows faster by updating one baseline system instead of fixing scattered setups

Get free template

Step 4: Set up resource and workload management

Once workflows are standardized, capacity becomes the pressure point. Even strong processes break when resource allocation is off, especially across ongoing projects with dependent tasks. 

ClickUp Workload View helps you plan resource allocation by visualizing workload across team members. You can measure workload using task counts, time estimates, sprint points, or Custom Fields, and view it by day, week, or month.

✅ Here is how Workload View supports workload management for agency teams:

• Plan capacity using time estimates so project timelines reflect real effort, not best-case guesses
• Group by assignee to spot overload early and rebalance before due dates slip across ongoing projects
• Set capacity limits so it is clear when someone is over or under capacity, and you can make better resourcing calls 

Step 5: Implement a clear approval workflow

Once your intake and templates are in place, work starts moving faster. That is when approvals become the next constraint. If reviews happen across scattered threads, your team spends more time reconciling feedback than making progress.

This is especially true for projects dealing with visuals, where it is generally difficult to leave detailed feedback, like a video file or a group of new designs with multiple elements in them.

ClickUp Proofing helps you collect clear feedback on images, videos, and PDFs by letting reviewers add comments directly on the file attachment. You can also assign comments, which can be turned into trackable action items to keep accountability clear during review.

✅ Here is how ClickUp Proofing supports agency operations during review cycles:

• Centralize review feedback on the task attachment so your team members can act on precise input and reduce revision cycles
• Assign comments to owners so fixes move forward with clear responsibility instead of vague “someone update this” notes
• Connect sign-off to task dependencies so dependent tasks move forward in the right order after approvals are complete

Step 6: Organize assets, docs, and client deliverables

After you define how work moves and who approves it, the next risk is context loss. This is especially true for briefs and deliverables, which often end up spread across folders and tools.

ClickUp Docs gives you one place to store briefs, SOPs, and delivery notes alongside your agency projects. You can also use Docs Hub to organize, search, and create Docs and wikis from a centralized location.

✅ Here is how ClickUp Docs supports agency management for client work:

• Keep each new client project brief in ClickUp Docs and link it to execution tasks so delivery stays aligned to the source material
• Use Docs Hub to keep SOPs and reference docs easy to find during active work, so team members don’t waste time searching
• Share Docs with controlled permissions so clients can review the right deliverables without getting access to internal work

💡 Pro Tip: Once your briefs, SOPs, and deliverables live in ClickUp Docs, the next challenge is speed. People still lose time rereading long threads or trying to remember why a decision was made. ClickUp Brain MAX helps agency teams pull the right context fast, then turn it into the next concrete step using the same workspace data your client’s work already runs on.

Here’s how agencies typically use it right after they set up ClickUp Docs:

• Capture deliverable notes instantly with Talk to Text, then turn them into a clean summary inside the Doc so the team has the latest context without extra typing
• Ask questions across Docs and connected work with Enterprise Search to find decisions, requirements, and “why we chose this” context, so new team members ramp faster, and account manager handoffs don’t create gaps
• Pull client-facing updates from the same Doc, so status notes match what is actually approved and in progress, which reduces back-and-forth during review cycles
• Use one place to access top AI models (including ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini) so different teams are not bouncing between separate tools for summaries, rewrites, and analysis

Try ClickUp Brain MAX today

Step 7: Set up Dashboards for PMs and leadership

With intake, workflows, approvals, and assets organized, you can now locate your work across ClickUp. Now you need reporting that helps your team make decisions quickly, without manual status-chasing, and without rebuilding the same update every week.

ClickUp Dashboards help you turn your delivery data into role-based reporting, so each group sees what they need without rebuilding the same view every week.

✅ Here is how to set up dashboards that support agency operations:

• Build a PM (project manager) dashboard for task status, overdue tasks, blockers, and due dates across client projects
• Build a strategist dashboard for project timelines, launch plan progress, and what is in review vs. ready to publish
• Build a leadership dashboard for capacity trends and delivery health across ongoing projects, including time tracking where relevant

💡 Pro Tip: Make Dashboards meeting-ready with ClickUp AI Cards.

ClickUp Dashboards give you visibility, but agency meetings still get bogged down when someone has to translate charts into an update. ClickUp AI Cards help by generating an AI-powered status layer directly on your Dashboards and Overviews, using context from your team’s actual work.

Here’s how agency owners and project managers typically use AI Cards:

• Add an AI Executive Summary card to pull key accomplishments, next steps for creative operations, risks, and blockers, so leadership gets the story without hunting through multiple cards
• Use an AI StandUp-style card for weekly PM or delivery meetings, so updates are drafted from real task activity, and overdue tasks don’t get missed
• Create AI Cards for specific slices of agency operations, like one Dashboard view per service line or account manager, so each group sees what matters without extra manual reporting

Step 8: Automate handovers, notifications, and routine work

Once your workflow is visible, patterns appear. The same handoffs keep repeating. The same reminders get missed. This is where automation helps most, because you can standardize follow-through and keep tasks moving without relying on project managers to push every step manually.

ClickUp Automations help you standardize routine follow-through by triggering actions when something changes, like when a task status updates or a task is created.

✅ Here are some high-impact automations for agency teams:

• Auto-assign work when a task moves to a new stage, so handoffs don’t rely on someone remembering
• Auto-add followers or notify relevant team members when tasks enter review, so approvals don’t stall
• Auto-apply a template or checklist when a new client project is created, so setup stays consistent

📽️ Watch a video: Want a quick visual on how automation fits into agency operations? Here is a walkthrough you can follow and copy into your own delivery space.

💡 Pro Tip: Use ClickUp Super Agents to reduce follow-through gaps across your team.

Automations are great for predictable steps, but agencies also deal with messy work where the next step depends on context.

ClickUp Super Agents help when you need structured follow-through that still respects nuance. Here’s what they can do:

• Route work to the right owner when a brief comes in, based on service line, client, or priority
• Ask for missing details before work starts, so project scoping is not guesswork
• Keep tasks moving by nudging owners when due dates are at risk, without requiring a project manager to chase every update
• Standardize how work gets closed out, like confirming links, assets, and final approvals are attached before marking delivery complete

Try ClickUp Super Agents now

Step 9: Create client-friendly views and sharing protocols

After you stabilize internal operations, client visibility becomes the next layer. You want clients to stay informed, but you don’t want them dropped into your entire delivery space.

ClickUp lets you share the right Folders, Lists, and tasks, while ClickUp Permissions lets you control what clients and stakeholders can do inside what you shared. That is how you protect internal work while still giving clients a clear view of client delivery.

✅ Here is a simple sharing standard you can apply across accounts:

• Share only the client-facing locations and views needed for review, so clients see what matters
• Set permission levels by role, like view-only for stakeholders and comment access for reviewers
• Standardize what each account manager shares, so every client list follows the same rules

Step 10: Operationalize continuous improvement

Once the system is running, the work is not finished. Agency operations change as your service line grows and your delivery approach evolves. This step is about using what you learn from real project delivery to refine your setup, so your process gets better without becoming messy again.

ClickUp Custom Fields help you track consistent delivery signals, so you can improve your agency’s workflow using real data.

✅ Here is how Custom Fields support continuous improvement:

• Standardize information like service line, priority, account manager, and client delivery stage, so reporting stays consistent across different teams
• Enable better project scoping, like effort estimates and complexity tags, so project timelines stay realistic
• Help identify areas where delivery slows, like approvals, handoffs, and revision cycles

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Best Practices for Running Agency Operations in ClickUp

Once your ClickUp setup is live, consistency is what keeps it useful. The goal is to create a delivery space your agency teams can actually follow when client projects get busy and multiple stakeholders are involved.

✅ Use these best practices to keep agency operations stable as your agency grows:

Assign clear workspace owners, not “everyone owns it”

Your setup will drift if nobody owns the system. Pick 1–2 workspace owners (often an ops lead and a PM lead) who are responsible for keeping your delivery space consistent as agency teams grow.

Give them a clear mandate:

• Approve any new Spaces or major hierarchy changes
• Maintain the canonical status template and core Custom Fields
• Own the template library and update cadence

This keeps your ClickUp implementation from turning into five different interpretations of “the right way” as new team members join.

Lock your standards into reusable status templates

Even when teams mean well, status changes creep in over time. The easiest way to keep your task status consistent across client projects is to save your status flow as a reusable status template and then apply it wherever needed.

Here are some best practices that agencies can follow:

• Maintain one primary delivery status template (your default workflow)
• Maintain one optional “lightweight” template for small agency work if you truly need it
• Avoid creating client-specific status sets unless the client has a genuinely different delivery model

Treat clients like guests, and manage access on purpose

Client collaboration works best when you decide what clients should see and do before you share anything. ClickUp permissions vary by role (owner/admin/member/limited member/guest), the location or item, and your plan settings, so it’s worth making this intentional.

Here’s a practical approach that can be followed:

• Create a simple “client access standard” for your agency: what gets shared, what stays internal, who can comment vs. view-only
• Use private locations when needed, and confirm who can access what before inviting guests
• Review guest access at key points, like the end of a project or a retainer pause

Build an internal agency playbook inside ClickUp, then keep it current

A ClickUp setup stays usable when your “how we work” rules live in one place and are easy to follow. You should keep your knowledge current and connected to work so it doesn’t turn into a stale wiki.

Here’s what to include in a lightweight agency playbook:

• Where new client projects go in the hierarchy
• Your intake definition of “ready to start”
• Your status meanings and approval rules
• Your file and deliverable naming conventions
• Your client communication and sharing rules
• Your monthly system review checklist

Create a training path for each role, not one generic onboarding

Adoption problems usually look like “people forgetting steps,” but the root cause is often role confusion. A PM needs different ClickUp habits than a designer or an account manager.

Use ClickUp University role-based learning paths to onboard people faster and keep ClickUp usage consistent across different teams.

Also try out these best practices: 

• Give new hires a first-week checklist by role (PM, account manager, creative, leadership)
• Include a short “how we use ClickUp here” video or doc and make it part of onboarding for specific roles and departments
• Run a 30-minute live walkthrough for the delivery space once per month for new joiners

Pro Tip: You can create a Super Agent in ClickUp to set up and autonomously run role-specific onboarding workflows for clients as well as employees.

Run a monthly “system hygiene” routine so the workspace stays fast

Even great agency work creates clutter. Without a cleanup routine, your client list grows messy, searches get harder, and people stop trusting what they see.

ClickUp supports archiving at multiple levels (tasks, Lists, Folders, Spaces), and archived items remain searchable, which is ideal for agencies that need historical context without daily clutter.

Here’s a simple monthly hygiene checklist you can use:

• Archive completed client folders or Lists that are no longer active
• Archive tasks that should not clutter active views anymore
• Review naming consistency and fix obvious outliers
• Remove or consolidate unused views that confuse new team members

Keep templates and docs on a real update cadence

Templates and SOPs are only helpful when they reflect how your agency actually delivers today. Set an update cadence and treat it like a product release, and not as an ad hoc fix.

Try these as best practices:

• Quarterly template audit: Assess what templates are used, what aren’t, what needs an update
• Monthly SOP refresh: Update only the pieces that caused delivery friction that month
• Single owner for each major template or SOP section, so updates do not stall 

See how marketing agencies boost team productivity with ClickUp!

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Common Mistakes Agencies Make When Setting Up ClickUp

When setting up agency operations in ClickUp, most implementation issues come down to inconsistency. The ClickUp workspace becomes harder to manage when each team sets up client projects differently or when reporting depends on manual cleanup. 

Here are some common mistakes creative agencies make when they set up ClickUp operations:

Letting structure sprawl before usage patterns settle

When you create lots of Spaces, Folders, and Lists early, you don’t get “more organization.” You get fragmented reporting and inconsistent habits across agency teams. ClickUp’s agency hierarchy guidance is built around keeping the structure simple and consistent, then expanding only when your delivery pattern is clear.

✅ Here’s what to do instead: 

• Keep one primary delivery space until your client delivery flow is stable
• Add new spaces only when they solve a real access, reporting, or workflow need

Treating permissions as an afterthought

Agencies often invite clients and contractors quickly, then spend weeks undoing accidental edits or visibility issues. ClickUp permissions differ by role, location, item type, and plan, so a loose sharing approach creates avoidable risk.

✅ Here’s what to do instead: 

• Decide what “client visibility” means in your agency workspace before inviting guests
• Standardize access by role, then reuse the same approach across client projects

Using Custom Fields as a dumping ground

Custom Fields are useful only when people actually maintain them. When you add too many, updates get skipped, and reporting stops being reliable. This is a common adoption issue in project systems because teams stop updating metadata that does not clearly affect decisions.

✅ Here’s what to do instead: 

• Keep a small core set tied to decisions like priority, service line, account manager, delivery stage, and effort
• Review field usage regularly and remove what is not being used

Allowing scope creep to enter through “quick requests”

Scope creep is a classic project failure driver, and agencies see it constantly through last-minute change requests and “just one more version” asks.

✅ Here’s what to do instead: 

• Define how change requests are logged, reviewed, and approved
• Require a clear impact check on due dates, workload, and dependent tasks before committing

Building dashboards before the data rules are real

Dashboards only reflect what your team members keep current. If task owners, due dates, and task status rules are inconsistent, the dashboard will mislead, and project managers may lose trust in reporting. ClickUp’s dashboard approach assumes your workspace data is maintained because cards pull directly from that data.

✅ Here’s what to do instead: 

• Make ownership and due dates non-negotiable for client delivery work
• Standardize statuses and a small set of fields first, then build dashboards

Automating a workflow that is not stable yet

Automation can save time, but it can also scale confusion if teams are still changing statuses, templates, or routing rules. This mistake shows up across project environments as “over-reliance on tools” instead of clear process ownership and monitoring.

✅ Here’s what to do instead: 

• Stabilize the workflow first, then automate repeatable handovers and notifications
• Review automations after a few cycles to confirm they match how work actually moves

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Run Client Delivery and Agency Operations in One ClickUp Workspace

When you set up ClickUp for agencies with a clear structure, you give your team members a system they can rely on. It reduces approval delays and keeps client projects organized. You also make project management easier to run across ongoing projects.

The best part is that the system scales with your agency. As your agency grows, you can add service lines, onboard new team members faster, and keep agency management measurable across ongoing projects. 

When your delivery space, docs, dashboards, and automations work together, client delivery becomes easier to repeat and easier to improve over time. Sign up for ClickUp for free ✅.

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