An interior design studio doesn’t make money the way most small businesses do, and its books shouldn’t be kept like most small businesses either. Revenue can come from a flat design fee, hourly time, a markup on furniture and fixtures, or some blend of all three, often landing on the same invoice. Client deposits and vendor payments move through the bank account long before any of that revenue is actually earned, and if you’re buying and shipping product across state lines, you may owe sales tax in states where you don’t even have an office.
This guide covers CPA and bookkeeping firms with real, publicly documented experience serving interior design businesses, not firms that list “design” as one line among a dozen industries. Basta & Company, based in San Francisco, is #1 on this list. The other four firms are based in Maryland, Rhode Island, Illinois, and Oregon. It’s proof that the right financial partner for your studio doesn’t need to be down the street.
Quick snapshot
| Firm | Location | Best for | Why it’s here |
| #1. Basta & Company | San Francisco, CA | Studios that want a hands-on, year-round advisor, not just a bookkeeper | Only firm here built specifically around markup and pass-through revenue for design studios |
| #2. Graber & Associates (CPA Designers) | Baltimore, MD | Established firms wanting full CPA services — tax, CFO, payroll | Dedicated CPA Designers brand with direct Ivy-to-QuickBooks integration experience |
| #3. The Designer CPA | Warwick, RI | Designers wanting benchmark data and self-serve tools | National remote practice publishing its own design-industry profit benchmarks |
| #4. CVW Accounting | Chicago, IL | Studio Designer users wanting procurement-aware bookkeeping | Diamond-level Studio Designer partner led by a CPA with Fortune 500 development experience |
| #5. Interior Design Bookkeeping | Portland, OR | Small studios wanting affordable remote bookkeeping | Women-owned practice built entirely around Studio Designer bookkeeping |
How we built this list
We are Basta & Company, and we’re #1 on this list. We’d rather tell you that upfront than bury it in a footnote. Nothing here is a paid placement: every firm below, us included, made the cut because its own website, staff bios, or public materials show real, specific work with interior design studios. A firm that mentioned “design” once on a long list of industries didn’t qualify.
- A named interior design specialty. An actual client focus or case study built around design studios, not a “we serve many industries” page.
- Technical depth that matches the industry. Markup versus pass-through revenue, multi-state sales tax on furnishings, and Studio Designer or Ivy integration came up often enough that we treated it as table stakes.
- More than tax prep. Bookkeeping, CFO-level advisory, or purchase-order support, not just one annual return.
- Public, checkable information. Every claim here traces back to a firm’s own site, not a directory blurb.
- A real point of contact. A public office address and, in most cases, a direct phone number, not just a contact form.
#1 Basta & Company: Best CPA for Interior Designers in San Francisco Bay Area
Samy Basta, CPA, has spent more than 25 years working with project-based businesses, and San Francisco Bay Area interior design studios are one of the firm’s core client types alongside construction and architecture. That focus shows up in the everyday bookkeeping, not just the annual return.
Website: bastacpa.com
Phone: (415) 333-6262
Address: 100 Pine Street, Suite 1250, San Francisco, CA 94111
Best fit: Interior design studios of any size juggling vendor deposits, multi-state sales tax, or long procurement timelines, looking for one firm to handle bookkeeping, tax, and CFO-level advisory.
Why Bay Area interior design studios choose Basta & Company
- Bookkeeping structured around retainers, flat design fees, hourly billing, and furniture markup, so you can see which revenue stream is actually carrying the business.
- Vendor deposits and purchase orders tracked separately from earned revenue, so a client’s furniture payment never gets counted as income before it’s earned.
- Multi-state sales tax registration and filing for resold furnishings, not just in your home state.
- Per-project and per-client margin reporting, so you know which jobs to repeat and which are quietly bleeding money on procurement.
- Tax planning and fractional CFO guidance as a studio grows: entity structure, owner pay, and cash flow planning around slow furniture lead times.
#2 Graber & Associates, CPAs (CPA Designers): Best CPA for Interior Designers in Washington DC
Graber & Associates runs a dedicated interior design practice under the brand CPA Designers, with offices in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Columbia, Maryland. It offers the full range of CPA services built for design businesses — cloud accounting, outsourced bookkeeping, strategic tax planning, outsourced CFO work, payroll, and hands-on help connecting procurement platforms like Ivy to QuickBooks Online.
Plenty of firms claim design-industry experience; fewer spell out exactly how they sync the procurement software studios already run their purchasing through. That’s where CPA Designers stands out.
Website: designerscpa.com
Phone: (410) 466-3779
Address: 6210 Park Heights Ave, Suite 101, Baltimore, MD (offices also in Washington, D.C. and Columbia, MD)
Best fit: Established interior design firms in the Mid-Atlantic, or any studio wanting bookkeeping, tax, payroll, and CFO advisory under one roof.
#3 The Designer CPA (Peter Lang, CPA): Best CPA for Interior Designers in Rhode Island
Peter Lang, CPA, built The Designer CPA to work with interior design firms across a reported 45 states, positioning it as a national specialist rather than a local shop. The firm goes beyond standard tax and accounting work by publishing its own design-industry profit-margin and billing-rate benchmarks through its Resource Lab, plus QuickBooks chart-of-account templates built for design firms.
Lang also shows up regularly on design-business podcasts, walking through the financial side of running a studio — a fairly easy way to gauge expertise before you ever pick up the phone.
Website: thedesignercpa.com
Address: 4474 Post Road, Warwick, RI 02818
Best fit: Interior design firm owners who want a national specialist, are fine working remotely with a CPA, and like the idea of self-serve benchmarks and tools.
#4 CVW Accounting: Best CPA for Interior Designers in Chicago, Illinois
CVW Accounting, founded by Caroline Van Wassenhove, CPA, works exclusively with interior design firms instead of folding them into a broader creative or professional-services client list. Van Wassenhove’s background — audit and tax work, then a role at a Fortune 500 residential developer — shapes how the firm approaches the financial complexity of project-based design work.
CVW is listed as a Diamond-level financial partner for Studio Designer, the project management and procurement platform many studios already run on, and offers bookkeeping, project-level profitability analysis, procurement workflow support, and CFO-level advisory.
Website: cvwaccountinginc.com
Address: Chicago, IL
Best fit: Studio Designer users, or any interior design firm that wants a CPA-led team with direct project-accounting chops rather than general small-business bookkeeping.
#5 Interior Design Bookkeeping: Best CPA for Interior Designers in Portland, Oregon
Interior Design Bookkeeping is a women-owned, fully remote practice built around one job: day-to-day bookkeeping for interior design studios, with particular depth in Studio Designer, which the firm calls the industry’s leading project management and accounting platform
The scope is narrower than a full CPA relationship — reconciliations, sales tax filings, payroll, time billing, client invoicing, and vendor and purchase-order coordination — which fits a studio that wants clean, current books without paying for tax strategy or CFO advisory it doesn’t need yet.
Website: interiordesignbookkeeping.com
Address: Portland, OR
Best fit: Small to mid-sized design studios wanting affordable, specialized bookkeeping and purchase-order support, paired with a separate tax preparer if needed.
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Key Accounting Issues CPAs for Interior Design Firms Should Understand
Interior design firms deal with financial complexity that goes far beyond standard bookkeeping. Client deposits, purchasing activity, vendor payments, product markups, sales tax, reimbursable expenses, contractor costs, and long project timelines can make it difficult to see how profitable each project really is. A studio may have strong revenue coming in while still feeling cash pressure because significant amounts are tied up in client purchases, upcoming vendor payments, or projects that have not yet been fully billed.
A CPA who understands interior design firms should be able to connect project activity with the financial statements and help owners see where the business is actually making money. That means creating better visibility into project margins, purchasing cycles, cash flow, sales tax obligations, staffing costs, and client receivables. Some of the key areas an interior design-focused CPA should understand include:
- Project profitability and margin tracking
- Client deposits and retainers
- Furniture, fixtures, and equipment purchasing
- Vendor and subcontractor payments
- Product markups and procurement revenue
- Sales tax collection and reporting
- Reimbursable client expenses
- Accounts receivable and client billing
- Cash flow forecasting
- Employee and contractor costs
- Overhead and operating expenses
- Staffing and capacity planning
- Tax planning for the studio and its owners
CPA vs. Bookkeeper vs. Fractional CFO for Interior Design Firms
As an interior design firm grows, bookkeeping alone may no longer provide enough financial visibility to make confident decisions. Each financial role serves a different purpose, and understanding the difference can help studio owners decide what level of support they need as projects, purchasing, payroll, and revenue become more complex.
- Bookkeeper: Handles day-to-day financial records, transaction categorization, reconciliations, accounts payable, and other routine bookkeeping tasks. For an interior design firm, this may include recording client deposits, vendor purchases, reimbursable expenses, and project-related transactions.
- CPA: Provides higher-level accounting and tax expertise. A CPA can help an interior design firm with financial reporting, tax planning, business and owner tax returns, sales tax considerations, entity structure, and interpreting the financial impact of business decisions.
- Fractional CFO: Focuses on forward-looking financial strategy. For a growing interior design studio, a fractional CFO can help analyze project profitability, forecast cash flow, plan hiring, evaluate overhead, set financial targets, and understand how purchasing and project pipelines may affect the firm’s future cash needs.
For many growing interior design firms, these roles are complementary rather than interchangeable. A strong financial setup connects accurate bookkeeping with proactive tax planning and higher-level financial guidance, giving owners a clearer view of both individual project performance and the overall health of the studio.
Frequently asked questions
Is a bookkeeper enough, or do I need a full CPA relationship? It depends on your stage. A solo designer with straightforward books may only need clean, current bookkeeping. A growing studio juggling multiple large projects, vendor deposits, and multi-state sales tax usually benefits from tax planning and CFO-level advisory too, not just monthly reconciliations.
Do interior designers need to collect sales tax? In most states, yes, if you’re reselling furniture, fabric, or other tangible goods, even when it’s bundled into a broader design fee. The rules vary by state, and firms that buy and ship product across state lines can end up with sales tax obligations in more than one place.
Should client deposits and vendor payments count as revenue? No, and it’s one of the most common bookkeeping mistakes in the industry. A deposit a client pays toward furniture or a vendor invoice you’re passing through isn’t income until you’ve earned it as a design fee or marked it up as product. Booking it as revenue the day it arrives overstates profit and can create a tax bill on money you don’t actually keep.
The bottom line
Every firm on this list has real, public evidence of interior design experience, and any of them is a reasonable place to start a conversation. If your studio is based in California, is juggling vendor deposits and multi-state sales tax at once, or has outgrown a bookkeeper who can’t answer a tax question, Basta & Company would be glad to talk.
Book a free 15-minute call with Basta & Company and bring your most recent P&L, or just your biggest open question about vendor deposits, sales tax, or cash flow. You’ll know quickly whether it’s the right fit.
Related reading
If your business does the physical work of building rather than designing, our guide to the best CPAs for construction trades in San Francisco covers a different set of firms built around job costing and bonding.
Firm names, addresses, and specialties in this guide reflect publicly available information as of September 2026. This is not a paid ranking, and no firm was compensated for inclusion. Contact each firm directly to confirm current services, pricing, and availability.
