A monthly retainer looks like the easy contract until nobody counts the hours going into it. The month you find out you are underwater is the month after it started. Track time against the retainer itself and the warning arrives while you can still do something.
Start for freeNever in one step. A few hours over each month, nobody counting, and within a year the overrun is simply what the client expects for the price.
Set the included hours and the overage rate, and the balance resets itself every month without anyone remembering to do it.
Recorded against the work as it happens rather than reconstructed on the last Friday of the month.
At eighty per cent of the allowance the retainer flags itself — early enough to have a conversation instead of an invoice dispute.
The client can see their own remaining hours, which turns overage from an argument into an expectation.
The allowance resets, work is logged against it, and the remaining balance drops in real time. At eighty per cent it flags. Anything beyond the allowance queues up as billable overage. At month end there is nothing to calculate — only something to send.
Six months of actual utilisation tells you whether to raise the hours or raise the rate. Without it, renewal is a guess dressed up as a discussion.
Account managers see their own retainers, the principal sees utilisation across all of them, and clients see only their balance.
No code. Set the included hours and the next task logged already counts against them.
Start for free