Retainer tracker for bookkeepers and bookkeeping practices.
Bookkeeping retainers are typically fixed monthly fees — $300–$1,500/month for a set number of transactions or hours — but when clients ask questions, request clean-up work, or need catch-up books from prior months, the hours add up fast. Clients rarely understand why their “fixed fee” just changed — until they see the log that explains it. HourTab shows them before the invoice. Import your weekly time log, generate a public URL per client, and let clients check what’s been done and how many hours remain before the billing cycle closes.
Free forever for your first retainer · no credit card.
Why bookkeeping retainer tracking breaks down
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Catch-up work is a common scope surprise that clients don’t see coming.
A client who’s been two months behind in their books asks for a QBO clean-up. That’s legitimate work — but it adds 6–10 hours to a month the client thought was a fixed fee. Without a live balance showing those extra hours as they’re logged, the client gets an invoice that’s 60% higher than expected and is immediately suspicious. The same invoice, sent to a client who has been watching the catch-up hours accumulate all month on their HourTab URL, arrives as a confirmation of work they already knew was happening. The billing conversation is completely different — one is a dispute, the other is a sign-off.
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Q4 and year-end complexity adds hours clients didn’t budget for.
October through December brings Q4 reconciliation, 1099 preparation, year-end journal entries, and often a conversation about catching up anything that slipped during the year. Each of these activities adds hours to months where the client expected their standard retainer fee. A bookkeeper who has set up a live balance URL for each client can show exactly what drove the Q4 billing: “Reconcile bank accounts — October, 2h”; “1099 contractor prep — 14 vendors, 3h”; “Year-end journal entries, 2h.” The client sees why Q4 costs more, before the invoice asks them to pay it.
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Managing 10–20 bookkeeping clients means 10–20 potential “how many hours do I have left?” calls.
A bookkeeper with a full client roster on similar monthly retainers can’t afford the time to field individual balance inquiries. Even a once-a-month call per client adds 2–3 hours of admin work that doesn’t produce billable output. One live URL per client eliminates those calls entirely. Each client checks their own balance. The bookkeeper’s time goes to the work, not to reporting on the work. At the scale of 15–20 clients, this adds up to 30–40 hours saved per year — effectively a free retainer client recovered in saved admin time.
How it works for bookkeepers
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Create the retainer. Enter the client name and monthly hours included in the standard retainer (e.g. 8h/mo standard bookkeeping). For flat-fee retainers, convert to hours at your effective rate. If you have a client with a 50-transaction/month cap, estimate the typical hours that covers and set that as the monthly allocation.
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Export your weekly time log from QBO Time, Toggl, or Harvest and import to HourTab. Each entry populates the client-facing work log: date, task (e.g. “Reconcile bank accounts — October, 2h” or “Catch-up books — August backlog, 4h”), hours used, and balance remaining. Specific descriptions make the work legible and prevent the “what did you actually do?” invoice question.
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Share the link at client onboarding. Clients bookmark it and check their own balance — especially useful during tax prep season when out-of-scope requests spike. When the client asks for catch-up work in November, they can already see they’re using their standard 8 hours just for monthly reconciliation. The scope conversation about the catch-up project happens with a shared understanding of where the hours are going, not as a billing surprise in December.
A live balance link makes the addition visible before the invoice — not on it.
“Bookkeeping clients on monthly retainers often don’t realize how quickly ad hoc requests add up — catch-up work and Q4 prep can double the expected hours in a single month.”
— Bookkeeping practice management guide
A live balance link makes the addition visible before the invoice, not on it.
Frequently asked questions
How do bookkeepers typically track retainer hours?
Most bookkeepers track time in QBO Time, Toggl, Harvest, or a spreadsheet. Hours are logged internally per client, but clients typically have no visibility into how many hours their monthly retainer has covered until they receive the invoice. HourTab adds a public share URL on top of your existing time tracker — clients can check their own balance mid-month without calling or emailing.
Can I use HourTab with QuickBooks Time or QBO?
Yes. QuickBooks Time (formerly TSheets) and QBO Time both support CSV exports of time entries. Export your weekly log for each client and import the CSV into HourTab. The client-facing URL updates immediately. Your QBO Time workflow stays exactly the same — HourTab only adds the client-visible layer.
What if a client’s catch-up work puts them significantly over their retainer?
When you import hours that push the client past their retainer limit, HourTab displays the overage clearly on the client-facing URL. Because the client can see the balance approaching zero before the work is finished, the overage conversation is proactive rather than reactive. You can reach out before the invoice: ‘You’ve reached your monthly 8-hour retainer — the catch-up work will require an additional 4 hours; here’s what that looks like.’ No billing shock at month-end.
Does HourTab show dollar amounts or just hours?
HourTab tracks hours natively, which is the clearest unit for bookkeeping retainers where clients care about the time spent, not just the dollar amount. For flat-fee retainers, you can convert the fee to an equivalent number of hours and track against that. If you want clients to see dollars, include your effective hourly rate in the engagement letter and let them calculate — or describe task values in the entry descriptions so clients understand the fee without needing to see a rate card.