The Get Paid Kit · Pricing

Free retainer hours tracker

A retainer is a block of hours bought in advance — and most retainers fail silently, in 20-minute favours nobody counted. This tracker tells you how fast the block is burning, when it runs out, and what the overage costs before it happens: enter the block, the hours used and the days gone, and read the pace while there is still time to act on it. It is not the retainer calculator, which prices a block before you sign — the fee, the discount, the rollover exposure. This one watches a live block you have already sold, and its only question is whether the hours and the days agree.

Runs in your browser — nothing you enter is uploaded, sent to a server or stored anywhere except this device. The figures exist only in this page. This is a planning estimate for your own numbers, not financial advice.

The block, mid-period

Hours in the block the hours the client bought for this period — 20 is a common monthly block

Hours used so far counted the way your agreement counts them — meetings, calls and revisions included, if the contract says so

Days elapsed in the period calendar days gone since this period started

Days in the period 30 for a monthly block — both day counts are yours to type, so any block length works

Your standard hourly rate ($) the rate overage bills at — your full rate, never the discounted block rate

Overage policy what your agreement says happens when the block runs out — the tracker reads the outcome under yours

New to the block itself? The retainer calculator prices it before you sign — the fee, the certainty discount you choose, the rollover exposure. This page starts where that one ends: with a retainer already running. Every field follows the method in our guide to freelance retainers.

How the block is burning

— hours projected by the period’s end

Enter the block, the hours used and the days gone — the pace appears here.

—Days until the block runs out at the current pace — the pacing number, whichever policy you run.

—The outcome under the overage policy you run appears here.

Hours in the block	—
Hours used so far	—
Share of the block used	—
Hours remaining	—
Days elapsed / days in the period	—
Burn rate	—
Projected total at the period’s end	—
Projected hours past the block	—
Policy outcome	—

Enter the block and its period, and this line explains how to read the pace honestly.

Worked example

The defaults above, read the way you would read them mid-month: a 20-hour monthly block at a $95 standard rate, 13.5 hours used by day 12 of 30, overage billed at the standard rate. Enter those numbers above and the tracker returns exactly this:

Hours in the block	20
Hours used by day 12	13.5
Share of the block used	67.5%
Hours remaining	6.5
Burn rate (13.5 hours ÷ 12 days)	1.125 hours a day
Projected total (1.125 × 30 days)	33.75 hours
Projected hours past the block	13.75
Projected overage cost (13.75 × $95)	$1,306.25
Days until the block runs out (6.5 ÷ 1.125)	5.8 days
Verdict	Over pace

Read what the projection is really saying. Nothing has gone wrong yet — this period’s fee is already paid, and 6.5 hours remain. What the burn rate adds is a date: at 1.125 hours a day the block runs out in 5.8 days, around day 18, and the rest of the month projects another 13.75 hours — $1,306.25 of work currently scheduled to arrive unpriced. At day 12 that is a five-minute conversation with three priced options. At day 30 it is a surprise on an invoice. The tracker exists to move that conversation to day 12.

The method

How the retainer tracker works

A retainer fails silently. The hours do not leave in a lump; they leak in 20-minute favours — the quick call, the small tweak, the “while you’re in there”. None of them feels like billable work, and together they are the block. The effective hourly rate calculator catches the same leak inside a finished project, when nothing can be done about it. This tracker catches it mid-flight, in the one it can still change.
The mid-period check is the whole game. A burn rate is just used hours divided by days elapsed, and the projection is that rate held flat to the period’s end — which is why the tool asks for both halves of the period, and why day 12 is the moment that matters. Pace at day 12 is a conversation. The identical numbers discovered at day 30 are an invoice dispute. Neither the client nor the work changed; only the timing did.
Under-use is also a finding. A client quietly overpaying for capacity they never call is not a win. It is a renewal quietly deciding itself, in the wrong direction, three months from now. Flag the unused block, scope more work into it, or offer to resize it at renewal — the client lifetime value of a client who trusts your counting dwarfs one block’s leftover hours.
Overage agreed before is a policy; after, it is an argument. Billing the overage at your standard rate, pausing the work at the block, or rolling unused hours forward are all workable policies. What makes one of them yours is that it was chosen, priced and written before the block ran out — the vocabulary for that writing is in our guide to freelance payment terms, and the three options above are priced from the same projection, so the conversation is about a choice, not a surprise.
Count what the agreement counts. Meetings, calls, revision rounds: the contract’s definition of retainer time rules, not your instinct at the end of the month. Where the agreement is silent, the leak points are the usual ones, and the fix belongs in the renewal’s terms — our guide to freelance retainers lists the six terms to settle, rollover and overage among them.

Disclaimer: This is a planning estimate for your own numbers, not financial advice. The projection holds the current pace flat to the period’s end; real work bunches and pauses, so read it as the honest early warning it is, not a forecast anyone guarantees. What a policy means in a dispute depends on the agreement you actually signed.

The two tools are a pair. The retainer calculator sets the block up — the fee, the discount, the rollover rule, the overage rate; this tracker keeps it honest while it runs. And when a client’s payment habits are the real risk rather than their hour habits, that is a different pattern: our guide to handling a client who pays late every time covers it.

Questions

Retainer tracking questions

Do unused retainer hours roll over?+

Only if the contract says so. A retainer buys reserved capacity for a period — your time held open, whether or not it is called — not a jar of hours the client owns until they are spent. Where an agreement is silent, the standard position is that unused hours expire at the period’s end. If you offer rollover as a kindness, cap it and write the cap down: uncapped rollover is a debt of future time that lands all at once, in your busiest month. The rollover rules are set out in our guide to freelance retainers.

Should I tell the client we are over pace?+

Yes — at the halfway signal, not at the invoice. Bring the projection, not a complaint: the hours used, the pace, the day the block runs out, and the three options priced — bill the overage at the standard rate, pause at the block, or resize the next block. A client warned at day 12 can still choose; a client surprised at day 30 can only argue. Held early, the same conversation is most of what separates a policy from a dispute.

What counts as retainer time?+

Whatever the agreement says counts — its definition rules, not a feeling at the end of the month. In most retainers the honest answer includes meetings, calls and revision rounds: they are your time, reserved and spent like any other. The usual leak is the opposite habit — counting only the heads-down production hours while the calls and the small tweaks drain the block uncounted. If the agreement is silent on a category, name it and agree it before the next period, not after the argument.