Retainers
Where to find it: Sidebar > Money > Retainers
Retainers are ongoing client engagements with monthly hour allocations. Unlike one-time projects with a fixed scope, retainers provide a recurring block of time each month for client requests.
This page is only visible to managers (Admin and PM roles).
What Makes a Project a Retainer
A project becomes a retainer when it’s set up with retainer-specific fields:
| Field | What It Means |
|---|---|
| Monthly Hours | The number of hours included in the retainer each month |
| Monthly Amount | The dollar amount the client pays per month |
| Overage Rate | The hourly rate charged when the client exceeds their monthly hours |
| Max Rollover | The maximum number of unused hours that can carry forward to the next month |
Viewing Monthly Usage
The Retainers page shows a month-by-month breakdown for each retainer client:
- Hours Used — How many hours your team has logged against this retainer this month
- Hours Remaining — How many of the allocated hours are still available
- Rollover Hours — Unused hours from previous months that carried forward (up to the max rollover cap)
This helps you keep an eye on utilization — you want to make sure you’re delivering the value clients are paying for without consistently going over.
Retainer Billing
The retainer billing view helps you prepare monthly invoices. It shows what each client owes based on their monthly amount plus any overage charges.
If a client used more hours than their allocation, the overage is calculated at the overage rate. For example, if a client has 20 monthly hours at a $5,000 monthly amount and uses 25 hours with a $200/hour overage rate, their bill for the month is $6,000 ($5,000 base + 5 hours x $200).
Retainer Reports
Retainer reports give you a longer view of utilization trends. You can see patterns like which clients consistently use their full allocation, which ones underutilize, and which ones regularly go over.
Work Items
On retainer projects, each client request becomes a work item. Work items let you track individual pieces of scope within the retainer’s monthly hours. This keeps things organized when a client sends multiple requests in a month — you can see exactly where the hours went.