HourTab

Blog · July 9, 2026 · ~11 min read

Dubsado vs. HourTab for retainer clients: what each tool handles

Dubsado is one of the most comprehensive client management platforms available for independent service providers. It handles nearly every administrative layer of a freelance business. The one thing it doesn’t handle: giving your retainer client a live, always-current view of how many hours they have left this cycle.

Two different problems

To compare Dubsado and HourTab fairly, it helps to separate the two distinct problems that arise in retainer relationships:

Problem 1: Business administration. Writing and sending proposals, getting contracts signed, scheduling client calls, processing invoices, tracking payment status, managing the client communication record. Dubsado is purpose-built for this category. It is a comprehensive CRM and workflow platform that handles the full administrative lifecycle of a client relationship.

Problem 2: Client-facing hours transparency. The live dashboard that shows the client, at any moment, how many hours are used and remaining in the current retainer cycle — with a work log of what was done and when. This is not an administrative problem. It’s a client transparency problem. Dubsado does not solve it.

This distinction matters because many Dubsado users assume that a platform comprehensive enough to handle contracts, invoicing, scheduling, and client portals must surely also handle retainer hours visibility. In practice, Dubsado’s client portal gives clients access to their contracts, invoices, and questionnaires. It does not generate a live hours-remaining progress bar that updates automatically from your time tracking data.

What Dubsado does for retainer relationships

Dubsado handles retainer relationships at the structural and billing layer extremely well. Here is what the platform covers:

Retainer proposals and contracts: You can create proposal templates for retainer engagements, define the terms, get the contract signed digitally, and have it stored in the client’s project file. For a freelancer who is moving from informal email agreements to proper contracts, this is a major step forward.

Recurring invoice automation: Dubsado can automate recurring invoices for retainer clients — the monthly bill goes out on the agreed date without manual intervention. Combined with automated payment reminders, this removes the most time-consuming billing administration from the freelancer’s workflow.

Scheduling integration: Dubsado’s built-in scheduler handles client-initiated meeting requests with availability rules, buffer times, and calendar sync. For retainer clients who need regular check-ins or task-kickoff calls, this removes back-and-forth scheduling.

Workflow automation: Dubsado’s canned workflows let you automate touchpoints: onboarding emails, mid-cycle follow-ups, renewal reminders. This is useful for maintaining consistent communication across multiple retainer clients without managing each one manually.

Client portal: Dubsado’s client portal gives clients access to their invoices, contract, and project questionnaires. It is a login-based portal, meaning clients create an account and access their files there. For clients who are already using the portal to view their invoice history, this is a natural touchpoint. For clients who are less engaged with software portals, the login requirement can become friction.

What Dubsado doesn’t do for retainer hours

Dubsado does not have a retainer hours tracker that generates a public client-facing view. There is no native feature that:

As a result, Dubsado users who have retainer clients face the same situation as everyone else: clients email asking how many hours they have left, and the freelancer answers manually — usually by checking their own time tracker, doing the math against the cap, and typing a response. For one client, this is a 2-minute task. For four or five retainer clients asking more than once a month, it becomes a persistent, non-billable administrative drain.

Some Dubsado users work around this by attaching hours summaries to the mid-cycle automated workflow email. This is better than nothing but it is a snapshot at a point in time rather than a live view — the client sees where hours stood when the email was sent, not where they stand right now.

What HourTab does (and doesn’t do)

HourTab is a single-purpose tool that solves Problem 2 specifically. You upload a CSV export from your time tracker (Toggl, Harvest, Clockify, or a manual spreadsheet), enter the retainer hours cap and cycle dates, and HourTab generates a public URL. That URL shows the client a progress bar with hours used and remaining, the reset date, and a detailed work log of every time entry in the current cycle. The client bookmarks the URL and checks it themselves whenever they want. No client login, no account creation, no installation.

HourTab does not do proposals, contracts, invoicing, scheduling, payment automation, or any of the other business management functions that Dubsado covers. It is not trying to compete with Dubsado on those dimensions. It exists to fill one gap — the live, always-current, client-accessible retainer hours view — that comprehensive platforms like Dubsado have not prioritized.

Pricing: free for one active retainer, $9/mo (Solo) for up to 10 retainers, $19/mo (Studio) for unlimited retainers with branded subdomain and team seats.

Dubsado + HourTab: the complementary workflow

Because these tools solve different problems, they work alongside each other without overlap or conflict. The typical combined workflow:

Dubsado handles the formal relationship layer: The proposal goes out through Dubsado, the client signs the contract in the Dubsado portal, the recurring invoice runs on the agreed date, and the payment history lives in the project file. All of this remains untouched by adding HourTab.

HourTab handles the live hours layer: You log time in Toggl or Harvest as you normally would. At whatever cadence you update hours (weekly, after each work session, or at mid-cycle), you export a CSV and upload it to HourTab. The client’s URL updates. You mentioned HourTab once in the retainer onboarding message; the client has been checking it since.

The combined stack is particularly useful at the moment the invoice arrives. When a client receives a Dubsado invoice for 18 hours of work, the typical response is “wait, I only remember X, Y, and Z — what are the other hours?” When that same client has had HourTab access all month, they’ve watched the work log build in real time. The invoice is a summary of what they’ve already seen. Billing disputes decrease when the client has had continuous visibility rather than a monthly statement surprise.

When Dubsado alone is sufficient

There are cases where Dubsado’s built-in features are enough and HourTab adds no meaningful value:

Flat-fee retainers with no hours component. If your retainer is a fixed price for defined deliverables — regardless of hours — there are no hours to track or display. Dubsado handles the invoice and contract; the client question “how many hours are left?” simply never comes up because hours aren’t part of the agreement.

One or two clients who never ask about hours. If your retainer clients are entirely satisfied receiving the work and the invoice without asking about the hours consumed between cycles, the problem HourTab solves doesn’t exist in your practice. Some client types — larger companies with accounts payable staff, long-term clients with high trust levels — fall into this category.

You already have a custom solution. Some experienced freelancers have built a workable hours-visibility process into their Dubsado workflows via attachment emails or custom portal content. If that process is working and your clients are satisfied with it, there’s no gap to fill.

When you need HourTab alongside Dubsado

The specific indicators:

Your retainer clients ask about hours between billing cycles. Even once a month per client, this is a non-billable interruption that the right tool eliminates entirely. With HourTab, the client’s answer is always one click away and it doesn’t require your involvement.

You have three or more retainer clients with hours-based agreements. The math on manual hours updates shifts as the client list grows. Three clients asking twice a month is six emails. Five clients asking twice a month is ten emails. The overhead compounds and at some point the time cost of manual updates exceeds the cost of a dedicated tool.

You want to reduce invoice friction. Clients who have had continuous hours visibility throughout the month approve invoices faster and dispute them less. If you’re spending time on invoice questions that re-litigate the hours spent, a live work log that the client watched build is the most direct solution.

Your retainer renewal conversations would benefit from a clear track record. HourTab’s work log serves as the documented history of what was delivered during each cycle. At renewal time, you can reference not just the hours count but the specific work completed — which is visible in the HourTab dashboard both parties have been looking at all year.

Practical setup alongside Dubsado

Adding HourTab to a Dubsado workflow takes about 10 minutes for the initial setup and a few minutes per week thereafter:

Initial setup (one time per client): Create a HourTab account, add a retainer for each client with their hours cap and cycle dates. Two minutes per client.

Sending the URL: Add the HourTab URL to the retainer onboarding workflow in Dubsado — include it in the kickoff email or the first canned workflow message. The client receives it once at the start of the engagement and bookmarks it.

Ongoing updates: Export a CSV from your time tracker whenever you want the client’s URL to reflect current hours. Upload it to HourTab. The URL updates. This is the same data you were already keeping for your own billing records; HourTab just adds a client-facing layer.

Cycle reset: At the start of each new cycle, update the cycle dates in HourTab. The client’s URL resets. Dubsado’s recurring invoice fires on the old cycle’s last day. Both systems update at the same inflection point with no manual coordination required between them.

The bottom line

Dubsado and HourTab are not alternatives to each other. They solve adjacent problems: Dubsado handles the business management layer of your freelance practice, and HourTab handles the one piece of client transparency that comprehensive platforms have consistently left out.

If you are a Dubsado user with hours-based retainer clients and those clients still send you status emails, you have a specific gap that Dubsado was not designed to fill. HourTab fills it without changing your Dubsado workflow, without requiring your client to create another account, and without significant cost relative to the time it saves.

For more on managing retainer relationships effectively: retainer client communication best practices and what to include in client reporting for a complete picture of how to reduce admin in ongoing engagements.