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Retainer Hours Burn Alert

Example prompt: "Every weekday at 8am, pull this month's logged hours from Harvest grouped by client. Compare against each client's monthly retainer cap from our 'Retainers' tab in Google Sheets. For any client at 75% of their cap with more than a week of the month left, post a heads-up in #accounts on Slack. For any client at 90% or over, post in #accounts AND draft a friendly email in Gmail to the client lead explaining where we are against the retainer and asking if they'd like to add hours or pause non-essential work. Don't send the email — leave it as a draft for me to review."

The Problem

Retainer engagements are forgiving until they aren't. A client asks for "one more small thing" each week and by mid-month we have quietly burned through the cap, with another two weeks of work expected at no extra charge. Nobody wants to be the person counting minutes on a long-term relationship, but nobody wants to absorb a third of the month's effort either. The conversation is much easier to have when we spot the trend at 75% than when we phone the client on day twenty-eight to say we have run out.

How GloriaMundo Solves It

We build a scheduled workflow that runs every weekday morning. An integration step pulls month-to-date logged hours from Harvest grouped by client. A code step compares each client's total against the monthly cap held in our 'Retainers' Google Sheet, calculating the percentage burned and the days remaining in the month. A conditional step routes clients into three buckets: comfortably on track, approaching 75% with time left, or at or beyond 90%. For approaching cases, an integration step posts a heads-up in #accounts on Slack. For 90%+ cases, an LLM step drafts a friendly email to the client lead in Gmail — never accusatory, just transparent — explaining the burn and offering options. The email is left as a draft so we can adjust the tone before sending. The Glass Box preview shows the full burn table and any drafts before the workflow does anything visible.

Example Workflow Steps

  1. Trigger (scheduled): Every weekday at 8am.
  2. Step 1 (integration): Pull this month's time entries from Harvest, grouped by client.
  3. Step 2 (integration): Read each client's monthly retainer cap and contact details from the 'Retainers' tab in Google Sheets.
  4. Step 3 (code): Compute the percentage of the cap burned and the days remaining in the calendar month for each client.
  5. Step 4 (conditional): Bucket clients as 'on-track' (skip), 'approaching' (75-89%), or 'at-cap' (90%+).
  6. Step 5 (integration): For approaching clients, post a single grouped heads-up in #accounts on Slack listing each client and their burn.
  7. Step 6 (llm): For at-cap clients, draft a personalised email to the client lead — neutral, transparent, with two practical options (add hours, or pause non-essential work).
  8. Step 7 (integration): Save each email as a draft in Gmail addressed to the right contact.
  9. Step 8 (integration): Post a separate #accounts message listing the at-cap clients and the draft links so the account lead can review and send.

Integrations Used

  • Harvest — source of time entries (Toggl, Clockify, or any time tracker with hours-by-client export works equivalently)
  • Google Sheets — holds each retainer's monthly cap and the client lead's contact details
  • Slack — accounts channel receives both the heads-up list and the at-cap review list
  • Gmail — at-cap client emails are saved as drafts for review

Who This Is For

Agency operations leads and freelancers running multiple retainer clients who want to catch over-burn early without manually checking time reports every week.

Time & Cost Saved

Reviewing burn manually means opening the time tracker, summing hours per client, cross-referencing each cap, and then deciding who to talk to and what to say. For a shop with 8-12 active retainers, that is an honest hour or two each week, and it is the first thing to slip when delivery work piles up. The bigger saving is the unbilled hours we no longer absorb — even one early conversation per quarter that converts to additional paid hours typically pays for the workflow many times over.