Which retainers are you over-servicing?
A retainer is a promise of a certain amount of work for a certain fee. Then the client asks for one more round of changes, and one more, and nobody counts. Daytide counts, from the design files, ad accounts and project boards your team already works in.
Where the time goes missing.
How agencies usually bill: monthly retainer or fixed project fee.
- Retainers that quietly grow
- The scope said twenty hours a month. The work is closer to thirty-five, spread over six people in pieces too small for anyone to notice.
- Many small tasks, many clients
- Resize a banner, change a headline, export again. A designer touches eight clients in a day. A timer for each switch is more work than the task.
- Estimates with nothing behind them
- The next website gets quoted from how the last one felt. How the last one actually went was never written down.
A day, as Daytide records it.
This is what one person sees for their own day. Pick an entry to see what the label was based on.
- 09:00 to 09:25Slack and e-mailNo single client25 min
Why here
Sorted automatically, from the page title
- Figma, 1 h 45: “Harbour Dental spring campaign”
- Photoshop, 20 min: a file in ~/Clients/Harbour Dental/Campaign
- You confirmed this client on Tuesday
Why here
Sorted automatically, from the page title
- Figma, 40 min, the same file
“Changes after feedback” is the kind of work. Daytide learned it from your answer on day two.
- 12:10 to 13:00AwayScreen locked, not counted50 min
Why here
Sorted automatically, from the meeting window
- Zoom call, 45 min: “Kessler weekly”
Why here
Not sorted. Daytide asks instead of guessing.
- Figma, 30 min: “Landing v2”
- Two clients have a landing page in progress this month
Why here
Sorted automatically, from the site address
- Webflow, 1 h 30: project “mill-lane-school”
- A browser preview of the same site, 15 min
- 16:00 to 17:20Kessler & DaughtersBanner exports1 h 20
- Working time
- 7 h 30
- Sorted without asking
- 7 h
- Private
- 0 min
- Questions waiting
- 1
Tools the template already knows.
Anything not listed here is learned in calibration week. Daytide sees an unfamiliar tool, asks what it is for, and remembers.
- Design
- Figma, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects, Premiere Pro
- Advertising
- Google Ads, Meta Ads Manager
- Web
- WordPress, Webflow
- Work management
- Asana, ClickUp, Slack
In Figma and in ad platforms the client or account name is normally part of the page title, which is what Daytide reads. Slack is recorded as time in Slack. Channel names are cleaned like any other title, and messages are never read.
What the first week shows.
Hours per client against the retainer
A team-level table of time per client for the week. Hold it against what each retainer is supposed to cover.
Production against revisions and admin
Kind of work is its own list, so you can see how much of a client's time is making things and how much is e-mail, calls and changes.
The repeat jobs
The same export, resize or report built by hand every week. These come up in the Opportunities list with a rough number of hours.
- Daytide: Yesterday an hour and a half went into a Figma file called “Landing v2”. Which client is that?
- Harbour Dental Group
- Mill Lane School
- Something else
- Internal
What it will not tell you.
Daytide sees that a Figma file called “Harbour Dental spring campaign” was open for two hours. It does not see the design. Time spent thinking away from the screen, or sketching on paper, is not there unless the person adds it in chat.
Give it one normal week.
Install it, answer a handful of questions, and look at the picture on day seven. The trial runs for 30 days, so you see three more weeks after that before you decide anything.
No card needed to start. Want someone to set it up with you? Assisted onboarding is $250, credited to your first annual invoice.