Retainers and recurring work
The month comes round. So does the work.
For accounting firms, bookkeepers, payroll offices and anyone on a monthly fee. The filings and runs that repeat are scheduled once, around your holidays, and the fee per client is a rule, not a figure to look up.
Start with the year-end close All use cases
The example comes ready: a year-end close for a client on a monthly retainer.
The fee is a rule
One rule per client, one statement per month
Set each client's fee once: monthly, weekly, biweekly or yearly, or hourly for the ones that pay by the hour. A chain of shops with one owner is a customer group: the group is invoiced once for all its members, and each member's extra fees on top. The statement for the period lists the work done, the hours, and the charge.
- A client that pays nothing yet still gets a statement of the work done
- A PDF to send, a spreadsheet to adjust, or every statement in one file
The work that repeats
The filing on the 15th, the payroll on the 28th
A repeating task follows your calendar: the filing due on the 15th moves to the next working day when it lands on a holiday, the payroll due on the 28th to the previous one. Each occurrence is a task of its own, with its assignee, its estimate and its history, and a reminder before it is due.
- Your own holidays and days off, per workspace
- A dashboard of what is open, late and due within the week
- Every Monday, every quarter, every other Friday: daily, weekly or monthly, as you choose
What the retainer costs you
Extras on top, and the clients that eat the fee
A tax return filed or an extra visit is a billable extra: a task type with a price, charged once in the period it is closed, also for a client on the group's fee. Meanwhile each kind of task has an hourly value, so the time spent on a retainer client shows what the retainer costs you, against what it brings in.
- Estimate against actual per client, project and month, in reports you build yourself
- Ask the assistant which clients went over their estimate
Try it with the example
Your workspace starts with a year-end close for a retainer client: reconciliation, adjustments and reporting, two monthly recurring tasks, an hourly value per kind of task, and a phase that cannot start early. Remove it with one click when you are done.