Retainer Burn
The Retainer LedgerHours they already paid for, about to disappear at the close.
Unused retainer hours vanish at the end of the period under your own rollover rule, and nobody looks until after the period has closed — by which time the work those hours would have bought is gone and so is the goodwill.
A retainer is a price and a rule: this much a month, and this is what happens to the hours nobody used. Enter what each client bought, what they used, and your own rollover rule, and this prints the hours that expire when the period closes, what they are worth, and what the fixed fee actually came to an hour.
About this tool
Retainer Burn: what it solves
A retainer is two agreements wearing one number: a price for the period, and a rule about the hours that price bought and nobody used. They roll over in full, they roll over up to a cap, or they are gone at the close. That second half is the shop’s own invention — time tracking knows the hours, accounting knows the fee, and the rule that decides which hours survive was never keyed into either. This reads a period per client and prints two things. First, the hours about to expire, sorted by how many days the period has left, with the money beside them and a closed period named as gone rather than going. Second, the effective rate: a fixed fee is a different hourly rate every period, climbing on light use and collapsing on an overrun. It suggests no fee, proposes no rollover policy, and sets no overage rate.
A retainer is two agreements wearing one number
There is the price for the period. Everybody knows that one — it is on the invoice.
Then there is the rule about the hours that price bought and nobody used. They roll over in full, they roll over up to a cap, or they are gone at the close.
That second agreement is your invention. Time tracking knows the hours. Accounting knows the fee. The rule that decides which hours survive the month was never keyed into either of them, so it lives in an email from two years ago and in the head of whoever negotiated it.
The hours about to disappear
This is the finding, and it is worth money in two directions.
Under a no-rollover or a capped rule, unused hours expire when the period closes. The client paid for them. They will not get them. And nobody looks until afterwards, because the thing that would prompt a look — an invoice, a report, a system alert — all arrive after the close.
Deliver against those hours and you have given a client work they already paid for at no cost to your margin. Let them lapse and you have kept money for nothing, which feels fine right up until a client works out that it happened.
So this sorts by days left in the period, fewest first, with the money beside the hours. A period that has already closed says the hours are gone rather than going, because those are different facts and only one of them is actionable.
The fee is fixed and the hourly rate is not
A retainer at one price is a different hourly rate every single period.
Light month, the rate climbs. Overrun, it collapses. Nobody sees either, because the invoice is the same number every time and the invoice is what gets looked at.
This shows the effective rate beside the fee, per client, per period. That is arithmetic on your own numbers rather than a judgment about your pricing — but a client whose effective rate has been sliding for four months is a conversation, and this is where you find out it is time to have it.
Hours over, with nothing to charge them at
A client goes past the retainer and no overage rate was agreed.
That work is unbilled and unbillable. It is not a mistake in the arithmetic and it is not something to fix in a spreadsheet — it is a term that was never written, and the hours are gone.
This names them rather than absorbing them into a total, because the sum of that number over a year is usually the reason a profitable-looking retainer is not.
What it replaces
The check that happens when somebody remembers, which is not monthly. Or the spreadsheet with the rollover rule in a formula, which is right for one client and wrong for the client whose terms were different.
You enter each retainer’s terms once — fee, hours, rollover rule, cap, overage. Every period after that is the hours used.
Who it is for
Agencies, consultants, bookkeepers and IT support shops — anyone selling a block of hours a month under terms negotiated per client.
What it will not do
It suggests no fee. What your month is worth depends on what you do and who you do it for.
It proposes no rollover policy. Full, capped or none — that is a commercial decision about how much unused time you are willing to carry, and it is the term this whole tool exists to apply.
It sets no overage rate, and names no target for how much of a retainer should be used.
It does not forecast next period’s usage. Nothing here projects anything; it reports the period in front of it.
Nothing you type is sent anywhere. The arithmetic runs in your browser. Client names, fees and terms stay on the machine you typed them on. Close the tab and it is gone.
Yours would be built the same way.
This one runs on made-up data. The version built for your business runs on yours, and you own it outright. Builds start at $2,500. That is a floor, not a quote. What yours costs is agreed before any work begins. The first conversation is free.