Many Float customers work with clients on a retainer basis. Retainers are common in design, marketing, consulting, legal, or technical services and can be structured in several different ways. While we don't currently support specific retainer budgets, Float gives you the flexibility to set up your projects, phases, and tasks so you can track retainers and budget usage in a way that matches your client agreements.
Common retainer models
If you’re not sure which model to choose, start by asking how your client’s retainer is structured. Do they draw down a fixed yearly pool? Is the budget segmented by months or quarters? Do they bill by deliverable? With that in mind, it will be easier to set up your project budgets accordingly.
Yearly retainer - full project budget
If a client has a single annual budget, you can set up a project for the whole year and allocate the full amount as the project budget.
Work can then be scheduled (and logged if you are on a Pro or Enterprise plan) against this yearly pool, allowing you to track progress and budget usage throughout the year.
Segmented retainer (monthly or quarterly) - budget by phase
If client work is tied to specific time periods, like months or quarters, you can create project phases for each time segment (e.g., 12 phases for monthly retainers) and allocate budget for each segment by phase.
That way, you will be able to track progress and budget usage within each period separately.
📝Note: For budget by phase projects, any allocations scheduled or logged directly under the main project (without being assigned to a specific phase) are considered non-billable.
Individual deliverables (a la carte retainer) - budget by task
If the client's billing is based on specific deliverables rather than a pre-set budget, you can track work and costs at the task level.
Task budgets can be added both on the project level:
And on the phase level:
Combined, they count toward the whole project budget.
This approach provides maximum flexibility and works well for retainers that cover variable, on-demand, or fee-by-service work.
Retainers best practices
Set up project templates for consistency
To streamline your work, you can create project templates for different retainer structures.
📝Note: Project templates can be created and managed by the Account Owner, Billing guests, Admins, and Managers with the appropriate project permissions.
For each template, you can add the specific budget type and the team with client-specific bill rates. Using the template to create a new project will significantly reduce setup time and ensure consistency for recurring arrangements.
Here are some tips to make the project templates even more useful:
Create and apply naming conventions to identify retainer projects easily.
Use the Client field to tie projects directly to the specific client.
Color-code templates by client for quick visual reference.
Once you’ve created a project from a template, assign a unique project code (e.g., for billing purposes).
Use project Notes to store agreement details
You can use the Notes field within projects to include non-sensitive scope details and keep retainer agreements visible and easily accessible.
