Ask HN: How do you manage client retainers? Built a tool, curious if useful
I run an app agency, and over time we ran into a lot of pain managing client retainers.
We have 15+ clients on different setups (some hourly, some fixed monthly) and were juggling Slack, ClickUp, Toggl, Stripe, and email. It became a mess to track hours, assign tasks, and keep clients updated without spending way too much time on manual updates.
We ended up building an internal tool to handle retainer tracking, team assignments, and automated client updates. It saved us a lot of time and improved communication and built trust.
Now I’m wondering if this is just our problem or something others struggle with too.
Would love to hear: • How do you manage retainers or ongoing client work? • What’s been your biggest headache? • Have you found tools that work well, or are you hacking it together with multiple tools?
For context, I set up a public version at retainkit.io
Would love to hear your mind even if you are a freelancer!
Not trying to pitch, just curious if it’s useful beyond our agency.
Thanks! I use linear for this and invite the clients as a guest. It has project updates built in and other neat things. It, however, doesn't have billing built in -- that's done differently in our case (we bill by half-day, so if someone even so much as answers an email, it gets billed as half a day of work). Interesting, I have used linear – but not for this usecase. How much do you pay per month for linear (assuming you are on the paid plan, since free plan doesn't allow guests?) Would you be interested in a platform that is built made for this and automatically send reports to customers as well as agency owners? Also, I'm thinking of a flat pricing with no per-member pricing [unlimited retainers / tickets and members]. Thanks for your reply! I just charge extra for visibility that covers the cost of their seat. They pay that even if there is no work.