Fixed price and retainer

Not every job is paid by the hour. When you agree a fixed sum or a monthly retainer with your client, set it on the section or package. frego then knows these hours are not invoiced by the hour and shows you whether the job pays off. Agreements are part of PRO.

Fixed price or retainer

• Fixed price is one sum for the whole section or package, for example 4,000 € for a new website. You can invoice it at once or in parts, for example a 50 % advance.
• Retainer is a sum for every month, for example 500 € a month for looking after a website. You invoice each month separately.

How to set up an agreement

1. In the project, open the menu of the section or package and choose My price agreement.
2. Choose Fixed price or Retainer and enter the amount and currency. The amount is net: VAT is added on the invoice.
3. Reference rate is your usual hourly rate. It is prefilled from the project, and frego uses it to work out plus and minus.
4. For a retainer, pick the month it starts. You can leave the end empty.

Agreements cannot be nested: with one on a section you cannot have one on a package inside it, and the other way round.

If you have an approved and applied quote, it has a Create fixed-price agreement button. By default it covers the whole quote: all its sections, packages and tasks, including the ones you add to them later. You see plus or minus for the whole job at once. It also covers your work in those sections and packages that you have not invoiced yet, including work done before the agreement. A whole quote can only have a fixed price, and it must not overlap with an agreement on one of its sections or packages. Instead of the whole quote you can also pick one of its sections or packages. The amount and rate are prefilled from the quote.

Who sees the agreement

Only you. Your teammates and your client see neither the amount, nor the rate, nor that an agreement exists. Only your own hours count towards it. A teammate in the same section invoices their own way.

Which hours an agreement covers

• All your hours in the section or package that are not invoiced yet, including those worked before you created the agreement.
• Hours you already invoiced by the hour stay that way. Statistics show them separately.
• For a retainer, hours after its last month are hourly again.

Covered hours are not offered when you invoice from hours and do not count towards your hourly earnings. Billable time does not matter for them. You will not see them in the default list of uninvoiced hours or in the PDF hours report; show them with the Under agreement filter.

Change request

When your client wants something extra outside the agreement, open the task and turn on Change request. Hours on that task are invoiced by the hour even inside a section with an agreement. You only see the switch when you have an agreement on that section or package. When you move the task to another project, the flag is cleared.

Invoice

When you create an invoice for the client, you will find a Agreements part:

• for a fixed price, the remaining amount is prefilled; change it or enter a percentage,
• for a retainer, tick the months that are not invoiced yet.

Your client only sees the item and the amount on the invoice, nothing about hours. When you delete the invoice, the amount or month is free again. When you duplicate an invoice, the copy is not linked to the agreement: the copied line is an ordinary line.

Statistics

In Project statistics you will find My agreements:

• Fixed price: how much you worked, how much you already invoiced, your effective hourly rate and the plus or minus against your reference rate.
• Retainer: how many hours you worked this month, how many are left and how many days the month still has. A chart shows the last 6 months. When you go over budget 3 months in a row, frego suggests asking your client for an increase.

In Finances a retainer counts as earned in the month it is for, even before you invoice it. A fixed price counts when you invoice it, on the invoice issue date.

Example: a job, then ongoing service

You quote a website for 10,000 € and agree it as a fixed price on the whole quote. After the handover you enter the handover date. Do the ongoing service in a separate section, for example Service: put a maintenance retainer on one package, small fixed-price changes on other packages, and the remaining tasks in the section are invoiced by the hour.

Changing and cancelling

• When you hand the job over, enter the Handed over on date on the fixed price. Work from the next day on no longer counts against the fixed price and is invoiced by the hour. A free warranty fix you simply write off. The date can also be in the future (at the latest in 2037), you can change it, and clearing it reopens the agreement.
• You can overwrite the fixed price at any time.
• A retainer change applies from the month you choose. Past months are not recalculated.
• You can delete an agreement as long as no invoice uses it. After that you can only end a retainer.
• You can delete an agreement without PRO; creating or editing one needs PRO.
• Deleting a section or package is never blocked. An agreement without an invoice is deleted with it; an invoiced one is detached and stays in your agreements. The hours it covered at that moment stay with it and are never offered by the hour. A retainer without an end ends with the current month.