Sell support by the month
and know what it costs
A support retainer is the easiest thing to sell and the hardest to keep profitable, because the thing being consumed is measured in minutes nobody writes down. Measure them, and the whole agreement becomes something you can price.
Retainers are on every plan. The support inbox is an add-on, included in your trial.
What each client is consuming, while the period is still running.
The retainer you priced is not the retainer you're delivering
Support retainers are sold on an estimate, then delivered for years without anybody checking the estimate. The client who was quoted ten hours a month is now taking eighteen, and the only evidence is a general feeling that they are hard work.
It goes wrong because support consumption is invisible by default. Nobody logs a four-minute reply, so the allowance is spent by a process with no record.
- The allowance was a guess at signing, and has never been checked against reality.
- Support arrives as email, which is the one place hours never get recorded.
- The person answering has no idea how much of the month is already gone.
- At renewal you argue for a bigger retainer with no numbers to point at.
- One client is quietly subsidised by the rest, and you cannot prove which.
Three things a support retainer needs
An allowance that counts down honestly, a meter where the spending happens, and an invoice at the end you did not have to reconstruct.
An allowance that counts down as it is used
Set the hours and the period. Time logged against that client counts down the allowance as it is logged, not when somebody updates a spreadsheet. The budget resets on its own cycle, whether that is weekly, monthly, quarterly, or something you defined yourself.
- Weekly, fortnightly, monthly, quarterly or custom periods, per client
- Auto-reset at the end of each period, with a fresh allowance
- Alert threshold per retainer, so you hear about it at 80%
- Hours over the allowance are still tracked, never silently dropped
The meter, where the spending happens
A retainer is spent by whoever is answering the client, so that is where the number has to be. With the Customer Support Inbox, requests arrive in Hour Cap with the retainer meter beside them.
Somebody deciding whether this request deserves twenty minutes or two hours can see that the month has two and a half hours left in it, at the moment they are deciding.
- Client mail forwarded into a shared inbox inside Hour Cap
- Senders matched to clients from your synced Xero contacts
- Start a timer or log a duration from the thread, against the retainer
- Replies go out from your own domain, under your agency name
An add-on at $12 per seat per month, and only for the people who answer client mail.
Morning. Two customers rang this week to say their Amex card bounced at checkout. Visa goes through fine. Can someone take a look before the weekend sale?
Hi Priya, found it. Amex was failing the address check on the new gateway rules. Fixed and tested both cards this morning, so you are clear for the sale.
Invoice the period from the record
When the period closes you already know the number, because you watched it arrive. Invoice the allowance, the allowance plus the overage, or whatever your agreement says, and push it to Xero as a draft with the descriptions already written.
- Pick exactly which entries go on this period's invoice
- Overage entries stay available until you decide what to do with them
- Line items grouped per entry, project, date, or team member
- Drafts land in Xero for review before anything is sent
Or bill the allowance only, and take the overage to the renewal conversation.
Renewal is a numbers conversation
Keeping a support retainer profitable comes down to whether you can put a figure on the table at renewal.
From guessed allowance to priced agreement
The first period is measurement. After that you are working from evidence.
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Model
Enter the agreement you actually signed
The allowance the client is paying for, on the period they are paying for it, with an alert at 80%. Not the allowance you wish you had sold.
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Measure
Let one period tell you the truth
Forward the support address so the requests are captured where they arrive. One full period of real consumption is usually enough to see whether the agreement was priced anywhere near correctly.
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Reprice
Take the number to the renewal
Invoice each period through Xero as you go, and arrive at the renewal with consumption per client rather than an impression. The agreement that comes out of that conversation is one you can deliver.
Common questions
What is a support retainer?
An agreement where a client pays a fixed amount each period for an agreed allowance of support: a number of hours, a response commitment, or both. It is the most common way agencies sell ongoing help, and the hardest to keep profitable, because the thing being consumed is measured in minutes that nobody writes down.
How do I price a support retainer?
On evidence, which means you need a period of measured consumption before you can do it well. Track what a client asks for over a couple of months, at the rates of the people answering, and the right allowance becomes obvious. Pricing from a guess is how agencies end up with support retainers that lose money for a year before anybody notices.
How do I track hours against a support retainer?
Create a retainer with an hours allowance and a period (weekly, fortnightly, monthly, quarterly, or custom). Time logged against that client counts down the allowance as it is logged, and the budget resets on its own cycle. With the Customer Support Inbox add-on, time logged from a conversation counts the same way, which is what makes the number real.
What happens when a client goes over their support allowance?
The hours are still tracked and the retainer shows as over cap. When you invoice the period you choose what to bill: the allowance only, the allowance plus the overage, or the allowance now with a separate conversation about the rest. Nothing is hidden and nothing is decided for you.
Can I see the cap while I am answering a request?
Yes, and it is the reason the inbox lives inside the time tracker. The retainer meter sits beside the conversation, so the person deciding how much effort a request deserves can see how much of the period is left before they decide, rather than finding out at month end.
What does this cost?
Retainers and caps are part of Hour Cap itself. The Customer Support Inbox is an add-on at $12 per seat per month on top of a Team or Business plan, and only for the people who answer client mail. Both are included in your trial.
Why I built Hour Cap
I'm Jonathan, a freelance web developer in Brisbane, Australia. After 15 years, I wanted my client work to run on one system instead of separate tools that didn't handle retainers or Xero, copy/paste errors, and time that never got invoiced. I needed one tool that handled retainers, fixed-price, and hourly projects, let me write proper multi-line descriptions, showed me what was actually profitable, and pushed straight to Xero as invoices. Nothing did all of it, so I built one. Today it is pivotal to my business: all my time tracking, invoice drafting, and profitability runs through Hour Cap, and it scales the same way for agencies and teams.
Independent and self-funded. When you email support, you reach the person who built it.
Know what your support retainers cost
One period of measured consumption is usually enough to see whether the agreement was priced correctly. Start with this one.