A retainer that stays profitable because everyone can see what has been used. Describe your retainer clients and a Taskade Genesis app builds the ledger: included scope, monthly cap in hours or outputs, what has been consumed, what is queued, and a rolling summary the client receives without you writing it.
The Time Tracker is a live Taskade Genesis app embedded on this page, and logged hours against a client are the raw material a retainer ledger runs on. Try it here, then click "Use this app" to clone it in about ten seconds and describe your own retainers so those entries roll up into an included-scope cap per package with a visible balance.
Retainers die quietly. Month one is generous, month four is over cap, month seven is resentment, month eight is a cancellation. A visible ledger prevents all of that, because the conversation happens at seventy percent consumed instead of at renewal. Workspace DNA does the accounting. Memory holds the agreement, the cap, and every request logged against it. Intelligence, backed by 15+ frontier models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and open-weight providers, classifies each incoming request as in scope, out of scope, or borderline, with a reason you can forward. Execution posts the mid-month warning and drafts the upgrade conversation before the overage happens.
Read the retainer in whichever layout fits the moment:
- Table view for the ledger with cap, consumed, remaining, and rollover per client
- Board view for the request queue moving from requested to scoped to delivered
- Calendar view for the review dates, renewal dates, and notice periods
- List view for the plain monthly summary the client actually reads
- Plus the rest of the 7 project views
Automations run the month. Wire Taskade automations so a new request lands from email or a form, gets classified, and either enters the queue or triggers a scope conversation. At seventy percent consumed you get a private heads-up, and on the first of the month the client gets their summary. With 100+ bidirectional integrations, Gmail and forms pull requests in while Slack and Gmail push warnings and summaries out.
The AI agents inside the app carry 34 built-in tools including persistent memory, file analysis, web search, custom slash commands, and multi-agent collaboration. The retainer agent can read the month's completed work and write a value summary that leads with outcomes rather than hours, which is the difference between a renewal and a review.
Clone it, invite whoever delivers the retainer, and the ledger is yours. Your usage history stays exportable, which matters when you renegotiate.
Build a variant in Taskade Genesis, see how other firms package recurring work in the Community Gallery, or learn scheduled runs in Learn. Set the promise correctly upstream with Write a Consulting Proposal From Discovery Notes, and protect the boundary with Draft a Change Order When Scope Moves.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should a retainer cap hours or outputs?
Both work, and the app supports either. Hours are simpler to track and easier for clients to understand. Outputs, such as four articles or two workshops a month, protect your margin when you get faster at the work. Many consultants cap outputs and track hours privately so they can see when a package needs repricing.
How does it decide what is in scope?
You describe the retainer in plain English once and the agent turns it into a working boundary. New requests are classified against it with a short reason, and anything borderline is flagged for you rather than decided silently. Your corrections become part of the memory, so the classification sharpens over the first few weeks.
What happens to unused hours at the end of the month?
Whatever your agreement says, and the ledger enforces it. Set no rollover, partial rollover with an expiry, or a rolling three-month average. The client summary states the rule and the balance in the same place, which removes the most common retainer argument entirely.
Can the client see their own usage?
Yes. Publish a client-facing view with the ledger, the queue, and the summary, behind app sign-in on your own domain with Business plans and above. Clients who can see their balance make better requests, and the mid-month surprise disappears.
How do I raise the price on a retainer that has drifted?
With evidence. Because the ledger holds twelve months of consumption against cap, the conversation stops being about your feelings and starts being about a pattern. The agent can draft the repricing note using the actual overage history and the outcomes delivered.
Does it handle several retainers with different terms?
Yes. Each client record carries its own cap, rules, review date, and notice period, so a five thousand a month strategy retainer and a small support retainer coexist without you keeping the terms in your head.
Can it flag a retainer at risk of cancellation?
It can watch the signals you name: falling usage, slower responses, a champion who left, or a run of low-value requests. Combine it with Track Client Health and Renewal Signals to get a proper renewal early warning system rather than a surprise email.
What is the most common reason a retainer stops being profitable?
Silent expansion of the definition. The scope agreed in month one is rarely the scope being delivered in month six, because each individual addition felt too small to mention. A ledger that logs every request against the cap makes the drift countable, so you can show a client that the arrangement has quietly grown by forty percent rather than arguing from a feeling. The second most common reason is faster delivery going unrewarded: if you cap hours and then get better at the work, your effective rate falls, which is why output-based caps often protect margin better.
