Porter
Porter Design

Your clients' money is not your profit. Your books should know that.

Porter is the finance team and accounting software for interior design studios. We separate client deposits from your fees, keep vendor orders filed to the right project, and tell you in plain English what your studio actually earned.

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The problem

Most design studios run a business inside a pass-through account, and their books can't tell the two apart.

What Porter does

A finance team that speaks procurement.

  • Keeps client money separate from yours.

    Client deposits for furniture and product are held apart from your earnings, so your P&L shows only what you earned: design fees, procurement fees and hourly work.

  • Splits every client payment the right way.

    When a client pays a procurement invoice, your fee is counted as income and the rest is set aside as client money for vendors.

  • Reads your vendor mail so you don't have to.

    Porter sorts vendor email from noise, files quotes, order confirmations, shipping and delivery updates to the right project, and drafts vendor bills from invoices.

  • Catches vendor bill surprises.

    When an invoice doesn't match what you agreed to, or a refund never shows up on your card, Porter flags it before you pay or forget.

  • Tells you what you can safely pay yourself.

    Cash in the bank, minus client money, minus card balances, minus a cushion for overhead. A clear number, with the math shown.

  • Closes your books every month.

    Statements matched, cards sorted, personal charges kept off the business, and a plain-English review of fees, overhead and cash.

  • Answers questions by email.

    Ask "what did we actually spend on overhead last month?" and get the vendor-by-vendor answer, not an accounting report.

The software

More than a service. It's where your finances live.

Porter is your daily interface for all things finance-related, no matter where you are. You can access Porter's knowledge via the app, Claude, Slack, or email.

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Porter scales with you

From your first transaction to an entire finance department.

When you're small, Porter keeps your books simple and clean, and your cash flowing. As you grow, your team grows with you to cover collections, vendor management, payroll, schedules, controls, and planning, all without you ever hiring, onboarding, or managing a finance department. You scale the function in a click, not a hiring cycle.

The proof

What we do for companies like yours.

01 · CASE
Residential interior design studio

Client furniture deposits were being counted as profit, and vendor orders lived in an inbox. Porter separated client money from fees, cleaned up a year of books, files vendor quotes, orders and deliveries to the right project, and tells the partners what they can pay themselves.

Common questions

Everything you'd want to know about Porter.

Does Porter understand procurement and markup?
Yes. Porter tracks each client payment as two things: your procurement fee or markup, which is income, and the client's money for the product itself, which is set aside until you pay the vendor. Your P&L shows only what your studio earned.
How does Porter handle client deposits and retainers?
Client deposits for product are held as client money, not income, until they're spent on the vendor order. Design fees and retainers count as your earnings when billed. You always see how much of your bank balance is actually yours.
Can Porter handle flat fees, hourly billing and procurement fees on the same project?
Yes. Design fees, hourly work, procurement fees and trade fees stay as separate income lines, so you can see which kind of work pays.
Do I have to change how I work with vendors?
No. Keep ordering the way you do. Connect your email and Porter picks up quotes, order confirmations, shipping notices and vendor invoices and files them to the right project.
We already use design software for specs and client invoices. Does Porter replace it?
No. Keep your spec and invoicing tool. Porter sits underneath it as your finance team and accounting system, connected to QuickBooks, your bank and your cards, and catches what those tools miss, like client payments that were recorded but never matched to a deposit.
Our books are a mess. Can you fix past months?
Yes. Client deposits counted as income and card charges that never made it into the books are among the most common problems in design studio books. We start with a free audit, then clean up the year so your numbers are ones you can trust.
Will Porter tell me what I can pay myself?
Yes. We take cash in the bank, subtract client money, upcoming card payments and a cushion for overhead, and give you a clear number with the math shown.
Is my financial data secure with Porter?
Porter encrypts traffic in transit, relies on managed providers with platform encryption at rest, encrypts sensitive integration credentials at the application layer, and enforces company-scoped role-based access controls. We do not sell customer data, and our AI providers are contractually prohibited from training models on customer information. Read our full Security Policy and the list of sub-processors for details.

Find out how much of your bank balance is actually yours.

Connect QuickBooks and get six plain-English findings about your books, each with the evidence behind it. Free, and yours to keep.

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