In brief: A Retainer runs in monthly cycles, and each cycle carries its own effort pools, tasks, and actuals, so nothing carries across.

Applies to: Anyone working on a Retainer Job. Project Jobs use a Timeline instead.

See also: Projects vs Retainers: Choosing the Right Job Type covers the choice itself, and Reading the Job Performance Tab: Plan, Actual, Drift covers reading a single cycle's numbers.

A Retainer Job runs in monthly cycles, one cycle per month, and each cycle is its own self-contained window. Its own effort pools, its own tasks, its own actuals. The cycle switcher at the top of the Job moves you between months, and everything below it reloads for the month you picked. Look at March and you see March. That is the whole idea: a Retainer is not one long job, it is the same job happening again every month.

You'll find the switcher at the top of Jobs → your Retainer Job → Tasks, and again on the Performance tab.

Why Retainers work differently

A Project asks a finite question: are we delivering this scoped body of work? It has a beginning, a sequence, and an end, which is why Projects get a Timeline and dependencies. The difference between the two Job types is set out in Projects vs Retainers: Choosing the Right Job Type.

A Retainer asks a repeating question: are we using this client's monthly capacity the way we planned? There is no sequence to protect and no finish line to hit, so there is no Timeline on a Retainer Job. The Timeline tab is there but grayed out, and hovering it tells you the same thing: Timeline applies to Project Jobs only.

What a Retainer has instead is the cycle.

The cycle switcher

At the top of the Tasks tab and the Performance tab you get a small control labeled Cycle, showing a month like Apr 2026, with an arrow on either side.

• It opens on the current cycle by default, because when you walk into a live Retainer you almost always want to know what is happening now
• The arrows step you back and forward through the Retainer's real months
• The arrow grays out at each end, so you cannot navigate to a month the Retainer does not have

Change the month and the Deliverables, their pools, their tasks, and every number underneath change with it. Nothing from one month leaks into another.

Monthly planning, not total planning

This trips people up once, and then never again.

When you plan a Retainer in the Plan stepper, every LOE number you enter is monthly hours, not hours for the life of the engagement. 20 hours of SEO on a Deliverable means 20 hours of SEO every month, not 20 hours spread across the year.

That is why a Retainer Deliverable has no duration and no dependencies. Its pools do not describe a body of work, they describe a month of capacity.

What resets and what does not

Each cycle carries its own copy of the Deliverable effort pools, and each cycle accumulates its own actuals against them.

Time counts in the month it was logged. Not the month it was planned, not the month the task was created. If someone logs 2 hours on February 28 and 3 hours on March 1, February gets 2 and March gets 3. Work does not stop at a month boundary, but the accounting does. How that time gets recorded in the first place is covered in My Time: Log Your Effort and Fix What You Missed.

Actuals never carry across. March's meters read March's hours against March's plan. A heavy February does not follow you into March, and it does not need to, because you can still open February and see exactly what happened.

Recurring tasks

Most Retainer work is the same work again: the monthly report, the weekly status call, the content calendar review. Net Net handles these with a template and instances rather than by copying tasks around.

How it works

Turn on the Repeat control on a task row in a Retainer Job. That task becomes a recurring template for the Retainer.

• The template holds the defaults: the title, the description, the Deliverable it belongs to, and the assignee allocations with their service types and LOE
• Each cycle materializes its own instance of that task, opening in Backlog with its own due date

From there the instances are ordinary Job Tasks. People change their status, log time against them, chat on them, and complete them, and none of that touches the template or any other month's instance.

The rules that follow from that

• Instances are independent per month. February's report task knows nothing about January's
• Templates never hold actual hours. Only instances do
• Instances are what count toward performance, never the template
• Editing the template changes the defaults for future instances, not the ones already running

Reading a Retainer's performance

The Performance tab carries the same cycle switcher, and it works the same way: pick a month, read that month.

For each cycle you get the planned hours, the actual hours, what is remaining, and the breakdowns by Deliverable and by service type. It is the same shape as a Project's Performance tab, scoped to one month at a time. The full walkthrough is in Reading the Job Performance Tab: Plan, Actual, Drift.

The honest reason for all of this

Retainers fail differently from Projects, and they fail quietly.

A Project usually announces itself when it is in trouble: a date slips, a Deliverable stalls, someone raises a hand. A Retainer can be genuinely unhealthy while nothing at all appears to be late. The month's capacity gets used up in the first ten days. The service mix drifts, and what was sold as Strategy is quietly being delivered as Support. Or the opposite, and half the capacity goes unused every month while the client wonders what they are paying for.

None of that shows up in a task list. It shows up when each month stands on its own and you can compare one to the next. That is what the cycle model is for.

For the habits that keep a monthly engagement healthy outside the software, ten tips for keeping projects and retainers on schedule is worth a read.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I look at a different month on a Retainer?

Use the cycle switcher at the top of the Job's Tasks or Performance tab. It shows the month you are viewing, like Apr 2026, with arrows to step backward and forward. Everything below it, the Deliverables, the tasks, and the numbers, reloads for the month you select.

Are the LOE hours I plan on a Retainer monthly or total?

Monthly. Every LOE number in a Retainer plan describes one month of capacity, not the whole engagement. 20 hours of SEO means 20 hours every month.

Which month does my time land in?

The month you logged it in, not the month the work was planned for. Two hours logged on February 28 belong to February and three logged on March 1 belong to March, even if it is the same task and the same piece of work.

Why is the Timeline tab grayed out on my Retainer?

Timeline applies to Project Jobs only. A Retainer has no sequence and no dependencies to lay out, because the same capacity repeats every month. Its structure lives in the cycle switcher instead.

How do recurring tasks work?

A recurring task is a template, and each cycle materializes its own instance of it. The template holds the title, the Deliverable, and the assignee allocations. Each month's instance is an ordinary task with its own status, its own due date, and its own logged time. Turn one on with the Repeat control on the task row.

If I edit a recurring task, does it change past months?

No. Editing the template changes the defaults for future instances only. Instances that already exist keep their own status, their own time, and their own history. Turning Repeat off stops new instances from being created and leaves everything already generated untouched.

Do Retainer Deliverables have due dates and durations?

They have due dates, but no duration and no dependencies. A Retainer Deliverable describes a repeating monthly commitment rather than a scheduled piece of work, so there is nothing to sequence.

Related articles

If you are setting a Retainer up for the first time, Projects vs Retainers: Choosing the Right Job Type explains the choice and Plan Stepper: How to Build a Job Plan Step by Step walks through building the monthly plan. Day to day, Job Tasks: Assignees, Allocations, and Statuses covers the task side and Which Tasks Can Accept Time (and Which Cannot) explains why some rows will not take a timer. When you want the picture across every Job at once rather than one month of one Retainer, the Jobs Report: Look Up Any Job's Plan vs Actual History is the place to go.

Updated on: 08/04/2026