Track retainer hours

See how much of each client's retainer is used, what rolls over, and what is about to expire.

A retainer lives on the client's profile in the Client Hub. You link it to one or more projects, and the time your team logs on those projects counts against it. Monthly retainers keep a ledger of hours allocated, used and left for each month. Annual retainers show the hours used for the period and the pace needed to use the rest. Managed services retainers have a monthly fee and no hours cap. Only owners and admins can set up and change retainers.

Set up a retainer

  1. Open Client Hub and click the client.
  2. In Retainers, click Add Retainer.
  3. Enter a Name and choose the Type: Monthly, Annual or Managed Services. The type can't be changed later: to switch, close the retainer out and add a new one.
  4. For a monthly retainer, set the Rollover Period (months), from 1 to 24 (3 by default). This is how long unused hours last before they are flagged as expiring.
  5. Set the Start Date and End Date.
  6. Tick the Linked Projects. Hours from every linked project count toward this retainer, and a project can only feed one retainer or engagement.
  7. Optionally, choose the MSA and add a Contract Link. People who can see money fields can also record a Pass-through Cost Cap, such as AWS up to a monthly limit: a label, a currency and the cap per month. It's a record only; actual spend isn't tracked.
  8. Under First Allocation, enter the Hours per Month (monthly) or the Total Hours for the Period (annual). The hours are required. People who can see money fields can add the value too, with its currency: per month for a monthly retainer, the period total for an annual one.
  9. Click Add Retainer.

Which hours count

  • Time logged on the linked projects from the start date until today, the end date or the close-out date, whichever comes first.
  • Billable and non-billable time both count.
  • Time that is pending or rejected doesn't count, and nor does paid leave.

Monthly retainers: the ledger and rollover

Each month gets the allocation in force on the 1st. The retainer card shows a table of Month, Allocated, Used, Remaining and Expires, plus this month's utilisation and the rollover balance. Hours are used oldest month first.

Unused hours expire at the end of the month that falls the rollover period after the month they belong to. With a 3-month rollover, January's hours expire at the end of April. Within 30 days of expiry, the card warns you, for example "12.0 h from March expire in 3 weeks unless used."

Expiry only flags hours. Expired hours stay in the balance until you choose to remove them:

  1. On a month marked expired that still has hours left, click Forfeit.
  2. Enter the Hours to forfeit.
  3. Click Forfeit. Jasper never forfeits hours on its own.

Jasper fills in the monthly rows when someone opens the client's profile, so there is no scheduled job to miss a month.

Annual retainers: progress and pace

An annual retainer shows a progress bar of hours used for the period and a Pace target: the hours left divided by the months left. After the end date, the card says how many hours are left and waits for you to close it out.

Managed services retainers

A managed services retainer is a monthly fee for an agreed scope, with support hours uncapped. Instead of hours you enter the Monthly Fee (ex GST) and its currency. There is no allocation, rollover, expiry, balance, burndown, pace target or write-off. The scope lives in the contract's appendix, so put the live document in the Contract Link; every hour on the linked projects counts as covered. Work billed outside the scope needs its own project and engagement.

The card shows the hours logged this month, the average per month over the last three full months, and the total since the start date. People who can see money fields also see the fee and the effective hourly rate (fee divided by hours) for this month and since the start, in the fee's own currency with no conversion. A month with no hours shows "No hours logged" instead of a rate. The since-start rate counts each month's full fee, this month's included, so it starts each month high and settles as the hours come in. Fee changes and renewals are new entries under Fee History; each month uses the fee in force at its end. While the retainer is paused the fee doesn't accrue, but hours logged still count.

Change the monthly hours

  1. Under Allocation History, click + Add.
  2. Set Effective From and the new Hours.
  3. Click Add Entry. Months that start on or after that date use the new allocation, so an entry dated mid-month takes effect from the next month. Each effective date can only be used once.

Pause and resume

Click Pause when work stops for a while. A paused retainer earns no new allocation and its expiry countdowns freeze. Click Resume to start again: expiry dates move later by the length of the pause.

Close out a retainer

  1. Click Close Out.
  2. Check the unused hours Jasper will write off.
  3. Under How did it end?, choose Completed (reached its end date, not renewed) or Cancelled (ended early).
  4. Click Close Out & Write Off. This can't be undone, and the retainer can no longer be edited.

Jasper doesn't close a retainer by itself when its end date passes. Close-out is the only way to end one.

Retainers in the Today briefing

Owners and admins see active retainers that are more than 80% used under Retainers near budget in Today.

Limits

  • There is no burndown chart. Monthly retainers have the ledger; annual retainers have the progress bar and pace target.
  • Expiry warnings show on the retainer card only. Jasper doesn't email them.
  • Retainers can't be deleted.
  • A monthly retainer that starts part-way through a month gets no hours for its first month, because each month uses the allocation in force on the 1st. Start monthly retainers on the 1st.
  • Close-out doesn't unlink the projects, so a project that fed a closed retainer can't feed a new one.
  • The retainer counts hours, not money. Jasper doesn't invoice the client.
  • Clients can't see their retainer: there is no client portal.

Last reviewed 5 October 2026

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