Retainer tracker for design studios and brand agencies.
Brand and UX studios often work with long-term clients on a monthly design retainer — a fixed pool of hours for ongoing brand work, social content, campaign materials, or product UX. The gap: designers track time in Harvest or Toggl, but clients have no way to see how many hours remain before requesting another deck revision, social content batch, or Figma prototype update. They ask. The studio answers. The cycle repeats every week. HourTab fixes that: import your CSV, generate a public link per client, and let clients check their own balance whenever they want — before making the next request.
Free forever for your first retainer · no credit card.
Why design studio retainer tracking breaks down
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Revision cycles eat hours invisibly — until the client is already out of time.
A client who doesn’t know they’ve used 80% of their monthly design hours will request another round of changes without hesitation — it’s what feels normal when you don’t see a running total. The studio has to either absorb the hours (bad margin) or deliver an awkward “you’re out of retainer hours” message at the worst possible moment, usually mid-project. A live balance creates natural scope awareness: when clients can see they’ve used 16 of 20 hours in week three, they make deliberate choices about how to use the remaining four, rather than requesting changes as if the month has infinite capacity.
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Multi-discipline studios bill mixed rates — clients need the work log to understand the invoice.
Designer, art director, strategist, and copywriter hours all come out of one retainer at different rates. When a client receives a month-end invoice that looks expensive, they sometimes push back on specific line items — not because they’re unreasonable, but because they can’t see what drove the cost. A clear work log with entry descriptions (“Brand identity review — color system, 2h”; “Art director — campaign concept, 3h”; “Strategist — positioning workshop, 2h”) shows the work without exposing the rate card. Clients understand the mix and the invoice becomes a confirmation, not a question.
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Creative work resists documentation — under-logging creates invoice disputes.
It’s easy to forget to log a 30-minute Figma exploration session, a direction-finding call with the art director, or a 20-minute color palette review. Accumulated under-logging means actual hours exceed billed hours — the studio loses money — or the invoice reflects hours the client doesn’t recognize from their own memory. Regular CSV imports to HourTab create a documentation discipline: if it’s not in the log, it’s not billable. That discipline benefits both the studio (accurate billing) and the client (no invoice surprises).
How it works for design studios
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Create a retainer in HourTab. Enter the client name, monthly hours (e.g. 20h brand retainer, 15h social content retainer), and cycle reset date. If you have separate pools for different disciplines or work types, you can create multiple retainers per client or combine them — whichever gives the client the clearest picture of their monthly allocation.
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Import from Harvest, Toggl, or Clockify weekly. Export your time entries for the client and paste the CSV into HourTab. Each entry shows role, task, and hours. Good entry descriptions make the work legible: “Designer — homepage wireframes v2, 3h” tells a clearer story than “design work, 3h.” The import takes under a minute and the client’s live URL updates immediately.
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Share the link at onboarding. Drop the unique public URL into your onboarding email or client brief. The client bookmarks it and checks their balance in real time as design work ships. Revision requests arrive with context: “We have 4 hours left this month — here’s what we’d like to prioritize.” That’s a better conversation than “we need another round of changes” from a client who doesn’t know they’re already at 95%.
A shared balance URL turns revision requests into informed scope decisions — good for the relationship, good for the work.
“Design clients on retainer frequently underestimate how quickly hours are consumed by revision cycles and coordination work — visibility into the balance changes how they prioritize requests.”
— Design agency operations guide
A shared balance URL turns revision requests into informed scope decisions — good for the relationship, good for the work.
Frequently asked questions
How do design studios typically track retainer hours?
Most design studios track time in Harvest, Toggl, or Clockify. The problem isn’t the tracking — it’s the client visibility. Designers log their hours, but clients have no way to see how many remain without emailing or calling. HourTab adds a live public URL on top of your existing tracker so clients can check their own balance before sending the next revision request.
Can clients see what each hour was spent on, or just a total?
Both. HourTab shows a running balance alongside a full work log with every entry: date, task description (e.g. “Brand identity review, 2h” or “Social content batch — 8 posts, 3h”), role, and updated balance. Clients see exactly what consumed the retainer — which turns revision conversations into informed scope decisions rather than awkward “you’re out of hours” notifications.
Does HourTab work with Harvest, Toggl, or Clockify?
Yes. Export a CSV from Harvest, Toggl, Clockify, or any time tracker that produces CSV output and paste it into HourTab. Your existing time-tracking workflow stays exactly the same — HourTab only adds the client-facing layer on top. Import as often as you like: daily, weekly, or at any cadence that works for your studio.
How do we handle month-end if the client used all hours in week two?
When a client’s balance hits zero, the HourTab URL shows the depleted balance clearly. Because the client has been watching the balance all month, they’re not surprised — they saw it coming. The conversation shifts from ‘you’re out of hours’ to ‘you’ve consumed your allocation; here are options for additional hours.’ HourTab’s Studio plan lets you show overage hours as a separate category so the client can see both the retainer consumption and any out-of-scope hours.