In our third year the studio billed 412,000 pounds and I paid myself less than our most junior designer. It took a very uncomfortable afternoon with a spreadsheet to understand why: our utilisation was 54 per cent, our average hourly recovery was 61 pounds against a target of 95, and two retainers were quietly losing money every month.

I am Isla Fraser and I run Vurrle Studio, a small design practice. This site is where I write about the business side of running a studio, from the inside, with our own numbers. How we price projects and why we stopped quoting by the hour. What a retainer needs to contain to be profitable. Utilisation, recovery rates and the gap between the two. Hiring a first employee versus a freelancer. Cashflow when a client pays at sixty days and payroll is at thirty.

Everything is worked in pounds from our real books, with client names removed. I have got a lot wrong, and those mistakes are in here in full: the fixed-price rebrand that ran 140 hours over, the year I did not put money aside for corporation tax, the client I should have fired eighteen months earlier.

Each post closes with what I would do now, not with a suggestion to hire a consultant. Vurrle Studio is an independent UK publication, and nothing here is advice for your business; it is what happened in mine.