Asana tracks projects. Retainer clients need to track hours.
Asana has no native time tracking. For consultants billing on retainer, seeing how many hours have been consumed against a monthly cap requires a separate time-tracking integration — Harvest, Everhour, or Clockify. And even with that integration in place, there is no Asana view that shows a client “12 of 20 hours used this month, 8 remain.” Giving clients Asana project access means they see tasks, timelines, and deliverable status — a project management view that doesn’t answer the retainer balance question. HourTab is the dedicated balance URL that sits outside Asana entirely, requiring no client account and showing only the hours data.
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The Asana gaps that retainer consultants hit
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Asana has no native time tracking — retainer hours require a separate integration.
Asana is a project management platform, and time tracking is deliberately kept outside its core scope. To log billable hours against Asana tasks, consultants install Harvest, Everhour, Clockify, or a similar integration. This means retainer-hour data lives in the time tracker, not in Asana. A client who wants to see their retainer balance can’t find it in Asana — even if they have project access — because Asana doesn’t hold the hours data. HourTab takes the CSV export from whatever time tracker you use and provides the client-facing balance view that neither Asana nor the time tracker provides on its own.
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Asana guest access shows tasks and milestones, not billable hour totals.
Asana’s Limited Access Member (guest) feature gives clients view access to specific projects. They can see task names, due dates, assignees, and project progress. They cannot see a running total of billable hours consumed, a monthly cap, or the remaining balance. The Asana Portfolio and Timeline views are tools for project managers tracking delivery risk — not for clients tracking retainer consumption. Adding a client to an Asana project gives them visibility into what’s being worked on, not how much of their monthly budget has been used.
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Asana Dashboards can’t calculate retainer balance without manual configuration per client.
Asana’s Dashboard and Goals features can display custom metrics, but configuring a per-client retainer balance widget requires manual setup: connecting the time-tracking integration, setting the monthly cap as a target, and scoping the chart to the right project, date range, and team member. This setup needs to be recreated for each new retainer client, updated when the cap changes, and reconfigured at each billing cycle reset. HourTab handles all of this automatically once you set the retainer cap and billing cycle start date.
How it works with Asana
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Keep Asana for project delivery. Tasks, timelines, milestones, and client deliverables stay in Asana. The internal project management workflow doesn’t change.
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Export billable hours from your time tracker and import to HourTab weekly. Whether you use Harvest, Everhour, Clockify, or Toggl alongside Asana, export the billable hours CSV for each retainer client and import into HourTab. The balance and work log update immediately.
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Send the HourTab URL instead of an Asana project invite. For the retainer balance question, clients get a bookmarkable URL — no Asana account, no project access, no task visibility required. They see exactly what they need: hours remaining.
Asana for project management. HourTab for the retainer balance question Asana can’t answer.
“We use Asana for every client project. But when clients ask about retainer hours, I still send a manual email update — because Asana shows them tasks, not balance.”
— Common experience with Asana and retainer clients
HourTab answers the balance question. Asana keeps handling the project management.
Frequently asked questions
Does HourTab work with Asana integrations like Harvest or Everhour?
Yes. If you use Harvest or Everhour alongside Asana, export the billable hours CSV from that time tracker and import it into HourTab. HourTab reads the standard CSV export format from Harvest, Clockify, Toggl, and most other time trackers. You don’t need to change your Asana or time-tracking workflow.
What does HourTab add that Asana’s guest access doesn’t?
Asana guest access lets clients view tasks, assignees, due dates, and project status. There is no Asana view that shows a retainer balance: hours cap, hours used, hours remaining, and a billable work log. HourTab is built specifically for that view. A client visiting a HourTab balance URL sees only their retainer data — no tasks, no project pipeline.
Can Asana show clients remaining retainer hours?
Not natively. Asana doesn’t have time tracking built in and requires integrations. Even with an integration, Asana shows hours per task, not a retainer balance against a monthly cap. To get “12 of 20 hours used,” you’d need manual Dashboard configuration per client. HourTab handles this automatically via CSV import.
Is HourTab a full replacement for Asana?
No. Asana is a full-featured project management platform. HourTab handles one specific use case: communicating retainer hour balance to clients. Consultants who use Asana for project delivery add HourTab to handle the client-facing balance question that Asana’s project structure wasn’t designed to answer.