Retainers quietly stop being profitable
A client contracted for twenty hours a month has been taking thirty-five since March, and nobody can prove it at the renewal conversation.
Industries
Employee management for digital agencies
Every agency has the same two questions: is this retainer profitable, and where did the month go. Both are answered by hours attributed to a client, which is exactly what nobody has time to record by hand at the end of the week.
The problems this sector actually has
Written from what customers in this sector tell us goes wrong, rather than from a generic list of benefits.
Timesheets are filled in on Friday, from memory
Which makes them approximately fiction, and everyone involved knows it.
Scope creep has no evidence
The extra rounds of revisions felt significant but there is no number to put in an email, so the conversation never happens.
Utilisation is a guess
Nobody knows whether the team is at eighty per cent or a hundred and twenty until somebody resigns.
Freelancers and staff are tracked differently
Two systems, two formats, and a monthly reconciliation somebody hates doing.
Clients ask for a breakdown
And producing one takes half a day of assembling numbers from four places.
How Employee Desk is used here
Hours per client, not per week
A project per client, tasks under it, and tracked time attributed as work happens rather than reconstructed on Friday. The retainer conversation then starts from a number both sides can see.
Reports you can send
Hours per project over any date range, exportable as CSV to attach to an invoice or paste into a monthly client report. Same data, no assembly.
Utilisation from real data
Tracked hours against available hours, per person and per team, which is the earliest honest signal that you are about to lose somebody to overload or about to have a quiet month.
One system for everyone
Staff and long-term freelancers on the same projects with the same time entries. Attendance applies to employees; contractors can be tracked on projects only.
A configuration that usually works
A starting point rather than a prescription. Most teams adjust one or two of these in the first month.
| Setting | Typical choice | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Plan | Growth | The tracker and project hours are the point |
| Project structure | One project per client, tasks per deliverable | Makes the billing report fall out for free |
| Screenshots | Off, unless a client contract requires them | Hours are the deliverable; images are not |
| Work reports | Daily, against the client project | Doubles as the material for the monthly client update |
| Attendance | Flexible shift with a grace window | Agencies rarely run a strict register, and pretending otherwise fails |
| Reporting cadence | Weekly per-project review | Catches an over-serviced retainer in week two, not month five |
Frequently asked questions
Can we bill clients directly from tracked hours?
You can export hours per project and per person for any date range as CSV, which is what most agencies put into their invoicing tool. There is no invoicing module inside Employee Desk itself.
Can freelancers use it?
Yes. Add them as users on the relevant projects. If they should not appear in the attendance register, leave attendance unassigned for them and use project time only.
Can a client see their own hours?
Not directly — there is no client portal. Export the per-project report and send it, which is what agencies using it do today.
How do we handle non-billable time?
Create internal projects for admin, business development and training. What you want to see is the billable-to-total ratio, and that only works if the non-billable time is recorded too.
Is the tracker mandatory for everyone?
No. A common pattern is the tracker for delivery teams on client work, and daily work reports for management and business development.
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