Retainer profitability hides in utilisation, scope creep and unbilled favours. Spreadsheets hide it until it is too late.
Weekly retainer review (20 minutes)
- List active retainers with contracted hours or deliverables.
- Compare actual effort or output vs plan (honest estimate, not timesheet theatre).
- Flag accounts under 60% or over 110% of target utilisation.
- Note scope requests outside SOW, decide bill, absorb or recontract.
One founder metric
Margin per retainer after fully loaded delivery cost. If you cannot compute it monthly, that is the first build.
Use this as a working checklist inside your team first. When the same steps repeat every week and spreadsheets start breaking, that is usually the moment to scope a lightweight admin dashboard with queues, owners, blockers and a founder view as an owned system. See the relevant Standen service · More guides · SaaS ops audit.