Overview of Retainer Budget Type

⏱️ 4 minute read

Retainer budget projects help manage the ongoing, dynamic needs of your clients when the exact workload or tasks may not be known from the start.

This article includes:

• Understanding Retainer Agreements
• Overview of Retainer Budgets
• Related Articles

Understanding Retainer Agreements

A retainer agreement is a long-term work-for-hire contract between you (the provider) and your client to deliver ongoing services over a set period, typically for a fixed fee. 

Rather than paying for individual tasks or projects, the client pays a regular fee (often monthly) to ensure the provider is available to handle various tasks as needed. 

The scope of work is usually more flexible, allowing both you and your client to adjust to changes as they arise. This flexibility makes it easier to accommodate shifts in demand or requirements without the need to renegotiate terms or fees for every new task or project.

Overview of Retainer Budgets

In Forecast, the retainer budget type project focuses on periods. These periods have a target, either a monetary value (price) or hours defined for a particular time period, often monthly. 

A period meets its target by collecting data from the project's tasks and time registrations.

Understanding Periods

• A period has a start date and an end date.
• Periods typically follow calendar months, but duration can be customized to fit the period or the project.

Best Practice: Align period dates with your project's phase dates so task and time registration data fall within a single period, rather than spanning multiple periods.

• A period's target value is a fixed amount (hours or price). 
• A period's Estimated value comes from the total Estimated hours of all tasks whose start dates fall within the period, whether the tasks sit in a phase or under Tasks with no phase. If a task spans multiple periods, its estimate is split proportionally across each one.

Example: A project has two periods, following the calendar months of March and April. A task with a 100h estimate runs from March 15th to April 14th. 50h of that estimate is distributed to March's Estimated value, and 50h to April's.

• Within a period, estimated hours are distributed evenly across company working days, based on each task's dates. See Configuring your Company Details for more on working hours and days.
• Period metrics like Actual Billable Value of Service and Time Entries reflect time registered against the period's tasks.
• Time registered after a period's end date won't appear on that period, even if the associated task falls within it. Instead, it appears in a future period, depending on when it was entered.
• Time registered after a period is locked creates Conflicted Time. Project Owners are alerted with a warning and options to resolve it, such as reconciling the conflict by subtracting the equivalent time from the targets of future unlocked periods.
• If a period doesn't reach its target, or exceeds it, by the end date, the surplus or deficit can be moved to future periods. See Managing Retainer Periods for details.

• Expenses marked as “Part of Fixed Price” can be associated with an unlocked period to draw down from the period budget. Period budget consumption reflects both time registrations and associated expenses.

  Note: Fixed Hours retainers and Time & Materials retainers are out of scope and don't support period drawdown via expenses.

  To learn more about expenses on fixed-price retainers, review our release notes: Introducing Expenses on Fixed-Price Retainer Periods.

Retainer Tracking

The Retainer Tracking tab is the hub of a retainer project and is used to ensure the project is financially on track. Retainer Tracking includes the Retainer Status Chart, Retainer Totals and a breakdown of all periods within the the project. 

To learn more about Retainer Tracking, define metrics in Retainer Status and Retainer Totals and effectively review and manage your periods, check out Understanding Retainer Tracking. 

Invoicing

Retainers include ability to invoice periods individually or in bulk. To learn more about invoicing your retainer periods, check out Invoicing Retainer Periods.

Revenue Recognition

Retainer budget projects support Revenue Recognition. Read more in Revenue Recognition in Fixed Price Projects and Retainers.

Reporting

It is possible to report on Retainer budget projects in both standard and advanced reporting. Learn more in Getting Started with Forecast reporting and Getting started with Advanced Analytics. 

Related Articles

• Understanding Retainer Tracking
• Creating a Retainer Project
• Managing Retainer Periods
• Invoicing Retainer Periods