Time tracking that agency teams actually do
Why time tracking fails in agencies, and the six settings that make it stick: rounding, notes, approvals, locks, targets and visibility.
Match the rules to the billing model
Hourly clients read every line, so 6-minute rounding and a note per entry earn their keep. Retainer clients see a department-level usage statement, so exact minutes and optional notes are fine and the team logs faster. Fixed-fee work does not bill hours at all; track it for capacity and margin and skip approval.
Show the pacing bar
People log time when they can see what it does. A pacing bar per client and department shows how much of the retainer is used and how many days are left. It turns a chore into a signal the team reads.
Approve weekly, lock monthly
Weekly approval catches the missing Friday before it becomes a missing month. A 30-day lock after the period ends means invoices and payroll are built on numbers that no longer move.
Make the approver the person who knows the work: the department director for delivery teams, the account manager for anything client-facing. An approval queue nobody owns is the same as no approval at all, and a rejected timesheet should say why in one line so the fix takes a minute.
Hours for the team, money for the leads
Team members should see their hours and their utilisation. They should not see billing rates, margins or salaries. A tool that leaks any of those to a member or a manager will eventually cause a conversation no owner wants.
Questions this article answers
- Should agencies use timers or manual entry?
- Both work; the habit matters more than the method. Timers are more accurate for people who switch tasks often; same-day manual entry with natural-language input is faster for people who work in blocks. Weekly timesheets are the least accurate and are best reserved for fixed-fee teams.
- What utilisation should an agency target?
- Around 70–75% billable for delivery roles, lower for leads with management duties. Set the target per person and review it monthly; a sustained 90% means someone is about to burn out, a sustained 50% means the retainer mix is wrong.
- How to price a marketing agency retainer (and stop giving work away)
A practical method for pricing drawdown retainers by department, setting the overage rule, and measuring the servicing gap so the retainer stays profitable.
- Agency profitability: hours × rate is lying to you
Why the standard profitability report overstates revenue and hides idle time, and how to compute real margin from contracted revenue and absorbed cost.
- White-label client reporting: what 'on your own domain' should actually mean
The checklist for reports that look like they came from your agency: domain, fonts, colours, footer, email identity, and the metrics that must never be overwritten.
Put the numbers to work.
Verbial computes the retainer pacing, servicing gap and real margin these articles describe using your own data, on day one.