Monthly retainer review: setup, usage and reporting

Set up the period before work starts

The marketing agency workflow connects this review with campaign time and manually itemized supplier costs, with the product limits stated explicitly.

Write down the client, service, monthly fee, included hours, billing cadence and period boundaries. Define what counts toward the allowance, who can authorize additional work and when the agency will send a usage update. A calendar month and four rolling weeks produce different cutoffs, so avoid using those descriptions interchangeably.

Use one timezone in your review notes. For an October calendar period, include work dated October 1 through October 31 and keep November work in the next review. The invoice issue date does not redefine when the work happened. Explain separately whether your agreement invoices the base fee before or after delivery.

Before the first period, use the retainer agreement scope checklist to define the promises this review will test.

For the policy decision behind the unused balance, compare expiry, capped rollover and credit.

When the current term is approaching its decision point, use the retainer renewal playbook to prepare notice and explicit next-term options.

Keep the agreement separate from tracking settings

Configure the retainer in ABH only after checking the agreed fee, allowance and overage rate. Settings support the calculation; they do not settle a disagreement about what the client bought. Keep the signed agreement or written confirmation in your own controlled records and use a reference that the reviewer can find.

Retainer management and its financial review are Owner-only in ABH. Ask teammates to keep time records specific enough for review, rather than giving broader financial access just to answer a usage question. The retainer feature overview explains the product boundary, including manual invoice generation.

Review work before summarizing usage

Start with the period time entries, then examine client, project, task, date, duration and billable status. Correct entries assigned to the wrong project before approving them. A record of an internal planning session can be useful without being billable to the client. Do not delete that work merely to make the report look tidy.

Approval records the agency review of time. It does not establish that the client authorized a new service or a higher charge. Put unresolved entries in a separate review list, with an owner and next action. If the allowance is nearly used, discuss priorities before additional work begins.

Worked example: an October content retainer

Illustrative fictional example, USD, excluding taxes: a content agency agrees $1,800 per calendar month for 18 included hours. The October report covers October 1 through October 31. The team logs 16 approved billable hours for client delivery and 2 internal training hours marked non-billable. Only the 16 approved billable hours count toward this example allowance.

Included capacity is 18 hours, eligible usage is 16 hours and unused capacity is 18 minus 16, or 2 hours. There is no overage. The agreed base invoice is $1,800; it is not reduced to $1,600 merely because two hours were unused. This assumes the agreement reserves monthly capacity rather than charging only actual hours.

The client summary says: October base fee $1,800; included hours 18; approved usage 16; unused hours 2; overage $0.00. Internal training is excluded. No rollover has been agreed, so the summary makes no promise of 20 available hours in November. The Owner reviews and generates the invoice manually.

Decide rollover explicitly

Unused hours create a commercial question, not an automatic credit. Read the agreement before carrying any amount forward. If the wording is unclear, seek clarification outside ABH before promising future capacity. Record the agreed treatment alongside the period report so next month starts from an explicit decision.

Where an agreement permits rollover, maintain an external reconciliation showing the originating period, permitted hours, expiry and any usage against that balance. Do not describe ABH as providing an automatic rollover bank. Avoid silently editing the next allowance to hide the adjustment, because a later reviewer needs to understand the reason for the change.

Send a useful client report

A short report can show the reporting period, fee, included allowance, approved usage, remaining capacity and any separately authorized extras. Explain deliverables in client language and keep private staff commentary out of the shared version. Link only to material the recipient is entitled to see; an internal work reference is not automatically a shareable document.

For the fictional agency, the useful discussion is whether next month needs more drafting capacity or different priorities. Low usage does not prove poor value, and high usage does not prove a fee increase is justified. Ask which agreed deliverables were completed and which decisions held work up.

Close the month without duplicating charges

Compare the draft with the retainer invoice guide, including its included-hours calculation. Check whether an invoice already exists for the period and whether any time has already been billed. ABH prevents generating another retainer invoice for a period that already has one, but your review should still reconcile ordinary invoices and exceptions.

If the report identifies extra work, use the overage authorization workflow before treating it as an additional charge. Share the approved invoice or PDF through the ordinary process. Client money arrives through your external payment arrangement, and an Owner records a received payment manually after checking the receipt.

Make next month’s decisions traceable

At the end of the review, write a short decision note for the next period. Name any changed priority, the person responsible and whether the agreement or settings need review. Keep the original period report intact so a later discussion does not turn an old unused balance into an unexplained new allowance. If the client asks for work to move between periods, confirm the commercial treatment before changing the plan. For the content agency example, the next review begins with the normal 18-hour allowance unless a separate agreement changes it. That simple opening check helps the reviewer compare like periods and prevents a casual reporting comment from becoming an unsupported billing assumption.

Monthly retainer review checklist

• Confirm the agreement reference, fee, allowance, period boundaries and timezone.
• Review project assignments, billable status and time approvals before calculating usage.
• Show non-billable exclusions and unresolved work separately from included hours.
• Confirm rollover treatment explicitly; make no automatic carry-forward promise.
• Match authorized overages and previously billed work to the invoice draft.
• Share a privacy-checked summary and record the next period decisions.