✔  Available on Grow and Scale subscriptions 1

What
An hourly or fixed fee recurring budget that can carry over budget surplus (or deficit) from one period to the next. 
Why
  • Automatically manage an ongoing budget with the flexibility of surplus or deficits.
  • Focus on delivering results and achieving your goals, without manually calculating a budget’s administrative and financial aspects.
  • Stay on top of current spend so you can make adjustments to end a project on budget.
Who
  • All site admins and project admins
  • Standard users and client users with permission to:
    • Manage project budget (allows users to create new budgets and manage existing budgets)
    • View project budget (allows users read-only access to the Finance tab's Budgets subsection)
When
For projects that involve ongoing work or support for the same client over a period of time. Typically, the work is continuous with a set budget renewing on a predefined cadence (like monthly or quarterly).
  • Brand management: When a company needs ongoing brand management and marketing support, retainer budgets let you manage budget allocation for that work over time.
What
An hourly or fixed fee recurring budget that can carry over budget surplus (or deficit) from one period to the next.
Why
  • Automatically manage an ongoing budget with the flexibility of surplus or deficits.
  • Focus on delivering results and achieving your goals, without manually calculating a budget’s administrative and financial aspects.
  • Stay on top of current spend so you can make adjustments to end a project on budget.
Who
  • All site admins and project admins
  • Standard users and client users with permission to:
    • Manage project budget (allows users to create new budgets and manage existing budgets)
    • View project budget (allows users read-only access to the Finance tab's Budgets subsection)
When
For projects that involve ongoing work or support for the same client over a period or time. Typically, the work is continuous with a set budget renewing on a predefined cadence (like monthly or quarterly).
  • Brand management: When a company needs ongoing brand management and marketing support, retainer budgets let you manage budget allocation for that work over time.
🎓 Learn in-app: Retainer project budgets

Before you start

  • Retainer budgets require a project's Time and Finance features to be turned on.
  • A project can only have one active budget at a time. The active budget is the one encompassing today’s date.
  • Projects can have multiple budgets but they cannot have overlapping dates, i.e. one budget's start and end dates cannot coincide with an existing (current or upcoming) budget’s dates.
💡 For one-off projects with a specifically defined outcome or when you need to budget more granularly for subsets of work, check out standard project budgets and task list budgets.
 

Usage limits

Plan
 Number of  active retainer budgets
Grow & Premium
2
Scale & Enterprise
Unlimited
Plan
Number of active retainer budgets
Grow & Premium
2
Scale & Enterprise
Unlimited

Create a retainer budget


  1. Click Jump to in Teamwork.com's left navigation menu.
  2. Search for and select a project. 
  3. Switch to the Finance section and select the Budgets tab. 
  4. Click Add project budget. 
    1. If an existing budget exists, click the three dots in the top right of the Project budget area and select Add new budget from the dropdown menu. 
  5. Select Retainer as the budget type. 


     
  6. Click the $ (currency) icon from the Retainer budget dropdown. 
  7. Choose either $ (financial) or Image Placeholder (time). The option you choose dictates the type of budget you're creating.
     
     
  8. Enter the retainer budget amount. This is the baseline budget amount that is renewed each budget period. 
  9. Select which logged time type contributes to your budget. Choose one of the following: 
    1. All time - all time logged (billable and non-billable)
    2. Billable time - time logged as billable that clients should be billed for
    3. Non-billable time - time logged as non-billable that clients should not be billed for
  10. Choose a budget period length (i.e. the project's billing frequency):
    1. Monthly
    2. Quarterly
  11. Select the retainer's start and end dates. This is usually the contract's duration. 
  12. Customize Retainer options using the checkboxes to:
    1. Add unspent hours to next period's budget
    2. Subtract overspent hours from next period's budget
  13. Next:
    1. Stop there: Click Create retainer budget.
    2. Level up: Set advanced options before clicking Create retainer budget: 
      1. Default billable rate: Set a default billable rate for the project. Tread lightly — this bulk updates the billable rate for everyone on the project.
      2. Notifications: Notify users via email when the budget reaches (or exceeds) a certain percentage. Set the following options for each notification:
        1. Recipient(s) - click the user field to choose one or multiple project members to receive notifications. 
        2. Notification type - click the type field and choose email or mobile push notifications.  
        3. Budget usage % -specify the usage percentage that, when reached (or exceeded), prompts the notification.
          💡 Click + Add another notification to add additional notifications. You might want to track a budget as it reaches 50, then 75, then 90 percent of the budget. 
 

Another option... 

Create a retainer budget from the project's Dashboard. 
  1. From a project's Dashboard tab, select the Summary tab. 
  2. Scroll to the Project budget panel. 
  3. Click Add a budget. Have an existing budget? Instead, click the ... (ellipsis) in the Project budget panel's top right, then select Add new budget. 

Edit a retainer budget

  1. Click Jump to in Teamwork.com's left navigation menu. 
  2. Search for and select a project. 
  3. Switch to the project’s Finance section, then select the Budgets tab.
  4. Scroll to the Project budget panel.
  5. Click the ... (ellipsis) in the panel's top right. 
  6. Select Edit budget from the dropdown menu. 
  7. You can edit: 
    1. Budget type (time or financial)
    2. Budget amount
    3. Time log type to contribute
    4. Budget end date 
    5. Advanced options:
      1. Default billable rate 
      2. Notifications 

📝 Should any of the following options need amending, the budget must be deleted and recreated.
  • Period length
  • Start date
  • Budget's under/over spend in relation to the next period's budget

End the current retainer budget

  1. Click Jump to in Teamwork.com's left navigation menu.
  2. Search for and select a project. 
  3. Switch to the project’s Finance section, then select the Budgets tab.
  4. Scroll to the Project budget panel.
  5. Click the ... (ellipsis) in the panel's top right. 
  6. Select End current budget from the dropdown menu. 
  7. Click the date field. 
  8. Choose a date from the date picker as the existing budget's end date. The budget continues to be active up to and including the selected date.
  9. Click Save. 
Your budget ends at 11:59pm on the selected date and after that date shows up in budget history. 


Delete the current retainer budget

  1. Click Jump to in Teamwork.com's left navigation menu. 
  2. Search for and select a project. 
  3. Switch to the project’s Finance section, then select the Budgets tab.
  4. Scroll to the Project budget panel.
  5. Click the ... (ellipsis) in the top right of the panel. 
  6. Select Delete budget from the dropdown menu. 
  7. Click OK to confirm deletion.

Your budget is deleted (i.e. erased from the account). It will no longer appear on reports or invoices and won’t be visible or editable.
 

View retainer history 

  1. Click Jump to in Teamwork.com's left navigation menu.
  2. Search for and select the relevant project. 
  3. Switch to the Finance tab and select the Budgets tab to see the retainer history chart. 

Retainer history displays the project's budget data in columns. 

Image Placeholder


💡 Hover over any of the chart’s bars to see the corresponding period’s data displayed numerically. Click See more to show additional retainer details (like start and end dates, period length, etc).

Graph element
Purpose
Total bar 
Light blue 
Displays the budget target for the month or quarter. In the first month, it always matches the default budget value. However, depending on the budget's over/underspend tracking, it can be more or less than this value in subsequent periods.
Used bar
Dark blue
Represents the amount of budget actually used within the retainer period. It fills up as time is logged against the project.
Added
Green section of bar
Shows the amount of surplus budget available if unused budget has been carried over from previous periods. This bar only appears if the total bar exceeds the budget's default value. 
Subtracted
Red section of bar
This section is added under the Total bar (below the x-axis) to represent a budget that was subtracted from the default value due to overspend in the previous period.
Average
Pink line
The average hours spent or fees incurred each period up through the current date. The goal is to have this bar as close as possible to the default line.
Default
Dashed grey line
The baseline retainer budget amount that is renewed each period cycle.
Graph item
Purpose
Total bar
Light blue
Displays the budget target for the month or quarter. In the first month, it always matches the default budget value. However, depending on the budget's over/underspend tracking, it can be more or less than this value in subsequent periods.
Used bar
Dark blue
Represents the amount of budget actually used within the retainer period. It fills up as time is logged against the project.
Added
Green section of bar
Shows the amount of surplus budget available if unused budget has been carried over from previous periods. This bar only appears if the total bar exceeds the budget's default value.
Subtracted
Red section of bar
This section is added to the base of the Total bar to represent a budget that was subtracted from the default value due to overspend in the previous period.
Average
Pink line
The average hours spent or fees incurred each period up through the current date. The goal is to have this bar as close as possible to the default line.
Default
Dashed grey line
The baseline retainer budget amount that is renewed each period cycle.

Best practices

  • Create budgets at the start: Add a budget as part of the process of kicking off a project or task list — even better, add budgets to project templates if you can.
  • Establish a budget baseline: Clearly define budget amount, retainer lifespan and budget period with the customer. When negotiating a budget, work towards setting a realistic target based on past performance, market rates, and industry standards.
  • Set up a budget review process: Regularly review the budget and assess its performance, making adjustments as needed to improve efficiency and effectiveness.

1. Also available on legacy subscriptions: Premium, Enterprise.