How to track a retainer before the client runs over

A retainer looks simple on paper: the client pays a fixed amount each month, and you agree how much work that buys. In practice, retainers are where agencies lose the most money without noticing. Requests arrive a few at a time, each one small, and nobody adds them up until the month is over.

This guide is a routine you can run with any set of tools. It takes a few minutes a week and tells you, while there is still time to act, whether a retainer is on track.

Why retainers run over without anyone noticing

Projects have a finish line, so an overrun shows up as a late launch. Retainers do not. The work keeps flowing, the client keeps asking, and the only signal is a gut feeling that the account is "busy".

The agreed allowance usually lives in the contract, the requests live in a task board or an inbox, and the hours live in a time tracker. Because the three never meet, the comparison only happens at the end of the month, when the hours are already spent.

Step 1: write the allowance down where the work happens

Put the agreed allowance, in days or hours, next to the list of work for that client. If your team plans in a board, the allowance belongs on that board. If it only exists in a signed PDF, nobody planning the work will see it.

Use one unit and stick to it. Many agencies agree retainers in days; if you do, decide how many hours make a day (8 is common) and convert everything with the same rule.

Step 2: log time against the work, not against the client

Time logged against a vague "Client X" entry tells you how much was spent, but not on what. Time logged against the actual task tells you both, and it lets you see which kinds of requests eat the allowance.

Make it easy: a timer people can start from the task itself, and the option to add time by hand for meetings and workshops away from the screen.

Step 3: compare finished work with the plan

Hours spent are only half the picture. A retainer can burn hours on work that is still half done, which makes the month look healthier than it is. Compare finished work instead: for every task that is done, what was it estimated at, and what did it actually take?

An example: a 30-day retainer runs for three months. Six weeks in, the finished tasks were estimated at 14 days and actually took 17. You are just under halfway through the term and have used more than half the allowance on finished work alone, before counting what is in progress. That is the moment to talk to the client, not at the end of the quarter.

Step 4: check at fixed points, not at month end

Pick two or three checkpoints in each retainer period, for example a third and two thirds of the way through, and look at the same numbers each time. A trend you see at the first checkpoint is cheap to fix; the same trend at month end is a write-off.

What to do when the numbers say you are running over

• Raise it early and with the numbers: what was agreed, what has been used, what is still requested.
• Agree which requests move to next month, so the allowance resets cleanly.
• If the client consistently needs more, change the agreement rather than absorbing the difference.
• Bill work outside the retainer separately, and say so before you start it, not on the invoice.

Doing this in Mono

Mono is built around this routine. Each client contract holds its dates and agreed days, every project board belongs to a contract, and time is logged against the tasks on it, with a timer or by hand.

The Board overview counts finished tasks across all of the contract's boards, with a day as 8 hours. It shows the days planned for them (from their estimates) and the days actually worked (from the time logged), side by side, against the days agreed. The days left, and the warning when you go over, are based on the planned days, so compare the two numbers yourself to spot tasks that took longer than estimated, as in the example above.