Retainer
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- gabe0
...completely disregard everything i've said if you intend on writing in a limit on the hours per month (didn't know you were considering doing so).
- hallelujah0
it was a nobrainer for me
- gabe0
that was part of my point matt...
you don't have that nasty overhead to worry about. a retainer would only be beneficial to you if you were doing exactly the amount of work you're being billed for or LESS, for the majority of the term of the retainer.
all it takes is a bit of scope creep on one project before you're in the red, whereas if you weren't on a retainer, you would be able to bill for any additional hours.
only you know how much work this particular client requires!
- floccinaucinihilipil0
The clients we have on retainer get priority service due to the fact that we can count on their hours from month to month. We have our own benefits package, so I wouldn't consider the other offers of compensation. Why mix the two?
Anyway, in my experience, if you can get companies to sign on to a deal of this type it's a good thing.
- er... have us on retainer, I should have said. X number of hours per month is how we do it.floccinaucinihilipil
- gramme0
Right gabe, but you've gotta to scale everything back from the agency perspective... remember I'm only a one-man studio. "Hundreds of thousands of dollars" worth of billing is the absolute most I ever hope to receive in a single year from all clients total. I don't see myself every having more than one or two employees, so $300,000 in billings per year would be pretty freaking sweet.
Let's just say that the retainer from this single client alone is going to be substantially more than my full-time salary at my last job.
- gabe0
the only circumstance i can see a retainer being advantageous for an agency is when they're doing a substantial amount of work (hundreds of thousands of dollars worth) and the agency has to maintain a large staff to execute the work. or, if each and every time you start a project, there's a ton of paperwork and formalities that bog the process down. otherwise, the only person that can benefit from being on retainer is the client.
my opinion anyway :)
- gramme0
Good point JD, hadn't thought of it that way. They obviously know what I charge hourly, so once I'm approaching let's say, a monthly cap, I'll let them know.
- johndiggity0
i would write in hours per month just so they don't slam you with little shit and they know everything they give you counts toward their hours. and if they go over you can have an agreed upon fee, or deduct hours from the next month. i'm just saying...
- hallelujah0
we just entered into a similar situation with our best client... a monthly fee, based on mutual trust, no contract, no specified number of hours, no limitations on outside work
- gramme0
Yeah Bonseff, that very thought has crossed my mind. I'm already doing a certain amount of little things like that (web ads, small one-off print ads for other publications, etc.). They have web production people who do a lot of simple tasks like this already, and besides the two magazine art directors, there's a guy who's sort of a jack-of-all-trades who could do the same things for little tiny print projects.
- BonSeff0
If you go retainer, I see a lot of:
"hey, can you knock this out real quick"
in your future
- kld0
30 hours a week is really just like 1/3 of a week, No?
- huh? 90 hour work week?section_014
- more like 3/4 of a weekmonospaced
- johndiggity0
...but if shit ever goes south with this client, it could screw you up. as much as it sucks to pay more for insurance, it would be worse to run your own business yet feel beholden to someone else.
- showpony0
gramme, man, i'm really not seeing a downside to this. they help you out, but you still keep you autonomy. win/win.
- raf0
This could be the best of both worlds, being employed with a regular income and self-employed at the same time. In a lot of European countries only ex-employed people are eligible for welfare, even if they paid social security when self employed.
The downside might be you couldn't write off expenses off income you earned with them, but again, this could be different in the US.
- johndiggity0
right, but are you allocating a certain number of hours they have available for use/month as part of the retainer agreement?
- I'd rather not, if I can help it. If they need to call it 30 hrs./wk for insurance purposes, that's fine.gramme
- what's to stop them from monopolizing all your time? maybe treat it like rollover minutes?johndiggity
- Yeah I'm not sure. Like I said, they're really reasonable so I'm sure we can write in protectionsgramme
- that will maintain enough free time for me to work w/ other people.gramme
- Like, specifically outline the types of projects I'll do, the general frequency of them, etc.gramme
- gramme0
@JD
Currently, I simply track my hours for design + production, then invoice projects when finished. We don't have any agreement in writing thus far. The only exception so far has been a campaign I did that took several months—for which I wrote a contract and collected a retainer up front. So up until now, there hasn't been a monthly retainer. The situation we'll be discussing will be for a yearly retainer. This means I won't need to send invoices, and I'll get regular bi-monthly checks from them. The amount we're discussing is based on what they've paid me thus far + new responsibilities I'll take on. I think the contract will basically say that I'll be performing X services for them, and they won't hire any other outside designers. I don't know what an "agency of record" contract looks like, but I think it's effectively the same thing.
- johndiggity0
did you not allocate hours for them into your monthly retainer? what type of agreement do you have with them re time? curious about this.