Retainers with hours
Say how many hours a retainer's fee covers each period, and what happens to hours over and hours unused.
3 min readUpdated
A retainer can come with hours: on its scope line, enter the Hours included each month (or quarter). The fee bills as before. What changes is that approved time marked billable is counted against each period's hours, by the day the work was done.
Hours over
- Are absorbed: recorded as over-service and not billed. The campaign and the Retainer hours report show how much, at bill rates.
- Are billed: when the period ends, the hours over become one billable item. With a rate on the line they bill at that rate; otherwise at each person's role rate.
Hours over are the latest ones. With 80 hours included and 92 used, the 12 over are taken from the last entries of the period, and valued at those entries' rates.
Hours unused
Unused hours lapse at the end of the period, unless the line says they carry over, up to a limit you set. Hours carried in are added to the next period's hours to use.
Part periods
When a part month is billed by its days, its hours are too: a retainer starting on 10 March with 80 hours a month includes 56.77 hours for March (22 of 31 days).
Was this helpful?
Related
- Campaigns for agenciesLog time and have it approvedLog the hours you worked on a campaign, submit them, and have someone else approve them so they can be billed.
- Campaigns for agenciesBill a campaign over time against its scopeGive a campaign a scope of fees, retainers, milestones, hours, costs and media, and bill each part as it falls due.
- Campaigns for agenciesTime and materialsBill approved hours at their rate, with an estimate or a not-to-exceed amount, and gather them into one invoice line per role.
- Campaigns for agenciesBilling roles, hourly rates and staff costSet what an hour of each role bills at, give each person a billing role and a cost rate, and see what staff time costs a campaign.
Still stuck?
Write to us and a person who knows thruflow will answer. Say what you were doing and what you saw.