Help · Money
Recurring retainers
For the client who pays the same amount every month. owntime remembers the cadence and reminds you. It does not send anything, ever.
Setting one up
Pick the client, describe the retainer, and set how often it repeats: every few days, weeks or months. A monthly retainer can be pinned to the last day of the month instead of a fixed day number. If the engagement has an end, set it to stop after a number of drafts and it marks itself completed rather than reminding you forever.
There are two kinds. A fixed amount retainer repeats one line for the same figure. A tracked time retainer takes its lines from that client’s unbilled hours and billable expenses, grouped the same way the invoice builder groups them, so a monthly retainer that bills actual work builds itself from what you tracked.
What happens when it comes due
- A due badge appears, and a reminder names the retainer.
- You press once. A fixed retainer builds a draft with its one line. A tracked-time retainer fills the draft from that client’s unbilled entries and expenses.
- The next date moves forward by the cadence, keeping its phase: the 1st stays the 1st, the month end stays the month end, even if you build it late.
- The draft waits for you. Review it, adjust anything, then send it yourself.
This is a reminder with a shortcut, not an automatic biller. Nothing leaves your machine without you looking at it, which is the only safe way to run something that spends a client’s money.
When it goes wrong
If you miss a period the date sits in the past and the row still shows DUE. Building it once clears the badge and moves the next date past today, so you never get a queue of catch-up invoices and no month silently disappears. A tracked-time retainer with nothing unbilled for that client builds nothing at all and keeps waiting, rather than sending you a blank invoice.
Hourly retainers
A retainer that bills the month’s hours is a tracked-time template. Set it to tracked and the one click draft pulls that client’s unbilled entries, applies your project rates and rounding, and locks what it used so nothing gets billed twice. To watch an hours allowance instead, set a budget in hours on the project and let the 75% warning tell you when the month is running hot.