Introducing Expenses on Fixed Price Retainer Periods

Let's say you run a Fixed Price Retainer charging $5k per month, and in one month your team incurs a $1k expense. Until now, there was no link between that expense and the retainer period, so Forecast would still show the full $5k as available for your team's time. To see your real remaining budget, you'd need to do the math yourself, usually in a spreadsheet on the side, and it was easy to over service a client without realizing it.

That changes now.

You can now associate an expense with a specific Fixed Price retainer period, so the expense draws down that period's budget. In the example above, the period will correctly show $4,000 remaining once your team's expenses have been approved.

Key benefits

One unified view of period consumption Time and expenses now sit side by side on Retainer Tracking, so you can see at a glance how the period budget has been used and how much remains for time.

Locked periods lock their expenses When you lock a period, the expenses associated with it lock too, keeping your project financials and invoicing accurate and secure.

Nothing to set up Your retainer tracking becomes more accurate automatically. No setup or migration needed on your end.

How to include an expense on a period

Open a Fixed Price Retainer project that has at least one unlocked period. The project must have at least one unlocked period. If every period is locked, the option is greyed out with a message indicating no unlocked periods are available.
Edit an expense on that project.
Under Billing options, select Billable as part of Fixed Price.
Below the billing options, tick the checkbox (its exact label differs from "Include on a period"). It sits on its own, not under an "Other expense options" heading.
Choose a period from the Period dropdown. It defaults to the unlocked period containing the expense date. If no such period exists, it defaults to the next unlocked period after that date, or otherwise to the first unlocked period on the project. Only unlocked periods can be selected.
Save the expense.

Note: Only expenses marked Part of Fixed Price can be included on a period. If an expense is Non-Billable or Billable on top of Fixed Price, the option to include it on a period is unavailable. These expenses generate their own revenue and can be invoiced independently, so they stand apart from the period budget rather than drawing down on it.

Note: Choosing a period is always your call, it's never inherited automatically from the expense date. This gives you more control and avoids conflicts that could arise if your chosen period were locked or the expense date fell outside every period's range.

What changes on Retainer Tracking

The period's Actual Billable Value of Service now includes the price of associated expenses dated in the past.
The period's Projected Total Billable Value of Service now includes the price of associated expenses.
The Retainer Status bar chart reflects the price of expenses on the associated period. Two labels have been renamed to reflect that they now cover more than time:
- "Actual Billable Time Spent To Date" is now Actual Billable Value of Service (time registrations × rate, plus the price of billable-as-part-of-fixed-price expenses on the period).
- "Planned T&M Price" is now Estimated Billable Value of Service (estimated time × rate, plus the price of planned billable expenses on the period). Whether an expense counts as planned is set by the "This expense is planned" checkbox on the expense modal.
When you expand a period, you'll see a new Expenses table next to the Time Registrations table. It's collapsed by default, and hidden entirely if no expenses are associated with the period.
Expanding the table shows the associated expenses, including name, category, date, quantity, price, and person, plus a lock indicator for expenses on locked periods.
Rollover accounts for the actual budget consumed by expenses, so an expense needs to be dated in the past to be reflected in rollover.

Locked periods

If a period with associated expenses is locked, those expenses are shown as locked and can no longer be edited. You'll see a message explaining that the expense is locked because its period has been locked.

Invoicing

For now, expenses that are Part of Fixed Price and associated with a period are absorbed into the period line item rather than appearing as their own line item on the invoice. We heard from customers that these expenses weren't meant to be client facing on the invoice, so that's how we've built it for now, and we'll continue to monitor feedback on this.

To have an expense appear as its own invoice line item, mark it Billable on top of Fixed Price instead. The expense must also be approved before it appears as a line item. Keep in mind that option isn't compatible with period association, and the invoice will need to be created from the project Invoicing page or the company Invoicing page rather than from Retainer Tracking.

Reporting in Advanced Analytics

You can pull a list of expenses per period.
You can see the sum of expense price and expense cost per period, for example alongside the period price.
You won't be able to show the period target alongside a list of expenses, since the target can't be split across individual expenses. The same applies to period price: it can't logically be divided between expenses by name.

Good to know

Fixed Hours retainers aren't supported yet. Their period targets are hours based, so an expense in currency can't draw them down.
T&M retainers aren't supported. They have no rollover, and expenses can already be added and invoiced alongside a time-based retainer period.
There are no other changes to the expense model beyond the option to include an expense on a Fixed Price period.
There are no changes to any integrations.
The system won't auto-select a period based on the expense date, you'll always choose it yourself.
Expenses dated today or in the future are included in Remaining Work values, and therefore in Projected Total Billable Value of Service, but not in Actuals or rollover. Only past-dated expenses affect Actuals and rollover. If this timing is a problem for your workflow, let us know, we'll look at expanding this to cover all associated expenses regardless of date.
An unapproved expense still appears in the Expenses table, but it won't reduce the period's remaining budget until it's approved. Until then, the period shows the full budgeted amount as available.

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