Product Overview
Your time tracker knows the hours. Your invoicing tool knows the money. Neither one tells you which retainer is quietly costing you a thousand a month.
RETAINER IQ is an offline workbench that puts contracts, role rates, and logged hours on the same screen and turns them into the numbers you can act on: margin per contract, the hourly rate you are actually being paid, how far past the contracted hours you have drifted, how loaded each role is, and what the fee would have to be at renewal to reach your target margin. It is one HTML file. No account, no subscription, no upload — your client figures never leave your device.
Key Features
- Margin per contract, not per month — revenue, delivered cost at your own internal rates, gross margin in currency and percent, for retainers, fixed-fee projects, and time-and-materials work.
- The effective hourly rate — what each contract really pays per hour worked, whatever the rate card says. This is the number that exposes a retainer that looked fine last year.
- Scope creep in figures — contracted hours against delivered hours, with the overrun shown as hours and as a percentage, so you can raise it before the renewal instead of after it.
- Win / Watch / Act, with the rule shown — every status prints the exact rule that triggered it in plain text. No hidden weighting, no colour you have to argue with.
- A renewal price scenario — the fee that would have delivered your target margin if the same hours are delivered again. Arithmetic about work you have already done, which is the strongest opening position there is.
- Role utilization — billable hours against available hours per role, with an accessible data table beside the bars.
- Portfolio view — blended margin, blended effective rate, and how much of the period’s revenue depends on one client.
- Data-quality warnings — hours logged against a deleted contract, a role with no rate, a fee with no hours, a reversed period. Every figure you cannot trust yet is listed with its cause.
- CSV import that fits real exports — contracts, rate card, and time entries; common headings from time-tracking tools are mapped automatically, and a failed import never touches the rows you already have.
- Exports and a printable one-page report — CSV of contracts, time entries and the profitability table, a full JSON backup, and a print view with the assumptions stated on the page.
- Genuinely offline — and you can prove it — the app makes no network request of any kind. Open your browser’s developer tools, watch the Network tab while you work, and you will see nothing recorded. Disconnect the machine and everything still works.
- Editable source included — readable, unminified engine and interface files, a build script, and an 87-test suite you can run yourself.
What’s Included
- Product/index.html — the complete application in one self-contained file
- Product/samples/ — five CSV files: import templates for contracts, rates and time entries, plus worked examples of a failed import and of unsafe text being neutralised
- Editable/Source/ — engine.js, app.js, styles.css, app.template.html, build.js, test.js, e2e.py and a source guide
- Bonus/Retainer_Pricing_and_Renewal_Playbook.pdf — how to price the floor, the four ways retainers lose money, the twenty-minute monthly review, and a renewal conversation structure
- Bonus/Profitability_Review_Meeting_Agenda.pdf — a 45-minute agenda with a decision log you can run straight from the dashboard
- Bonus/CSV_Column_Map.csv — every accepted column heading for all three imports
- Documentation/ — README, Quick Start Guide (PDF), technical specification, formula register with a worked example for every formula, browser compatibility, security and privacy, data privacy sheet, test report, known limitations, changelog
- License/ — licence, code licence addendum, third-party notices
36 files. Formats: HTML, JS, CSS, CSV, PDF, MD, YAML, JSON, TXT.
Who This Is For
Owners, account managers, and delivery managers of small professional-services firms — agencies, consultancies, design studios, software teams, freelance collectives — who bill by retainer, fixed fee, or time and materials, and who want to know which contracts pay before the renewal, not after it.
What It Is Not
Not a time tracker, not an invoicing or accounting system, and not connected to Harvest, Toggl, Clockify, Jira, Xero, QuickBooks, or any other service. It does not collect time automatically; you enter or import your own hours. It is decision support, not accounting, tax, or legal advice, and its figures will not tie exactly to your accounts. Overhead is included only if you load it into your cost rates. One reporting currency, no conversion. See the included Known Limitations and Security & Privacy documents for the full non-claims list.
Requirements
Any modern browser — Chrome, Edge, Firefox, or Safari. No installation, no account, no internet connection. Data is stored in that browser on that device; export a backup to move or keep it.
Delivery
Instant download. Standalone HTML/CSS/JS web app, editable source, the full documentation set, three bonus items, licence, and cover plus six gallery screenshots taken from the final build.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need an account or internet connection?
No. Open Product/index.html in any modern browser. It runs and saves entirely offline.
Does it connect to Harvest, Toggl, Jira, or my accounting system?
No. There is no live connection to any service. You enter your hours or import a CSV export — common column headings are recognised automatically.
How is margin calculated?
Revenue minus delivered cost, divided by revenue. Delivered cost is hours multiplied by the internal cost rate you set per role. Every formula, its units, its rounding rule and a worked example are in the included Formula Register.
What is the renewal figure exactly?
The fee that would have produced your target margin at the cost you actually delivered. It is a scenario that assumes the same hours repeat, not a forecast.
Can I use it for more than one currency?
One reporting currency per workbench, with no conversion. Keep a separate workbench per currency.
What happens to my data?
It stays in your browser’s local storage on your device unless you explicitly export it. Nothing is uploaded anywhere.
Can I customise the calculations or the look?
Yes. Editable/Source/ contains the full unminified source, a build script, and the test suite.
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