Audit your agency retainer.
Put in what you pay and what you get. The sheet on this page works out how much of it reaches the work, and how much pays for the agency around the work. Every step of the arithmetic is shown, and you can change every assumption.
← about sixty seconds. nothing is sent anywhere.
Your retainer,
read back to you
| Ref | Where it goes | Per month |
|---|
- Reaching the work
- —
- Cost per finished deliverable
- —
- People billed you never see
- —
- Scope that is process, not output
- —
How this is calculated
Show your workingThere is no hidden model here and no data about your agency. It is arithmetic on the four numbers you typed, plus one assumption you can change.
- The multiplier. Agencies bill a person’s time at roughly three times what that person costs them. One part is the person. The rest covers the building, the unbilled hours, the functions that never touch your account, and profit.
- People you never see. Anyone billed to your account whose output you cannot point to is counted as coordination rather than production.
- Process versus output. Each scope item you ticked is counted as either describing the work or being the work. Calls, decks and reports describe it.
- Per deliverable. The whole monthly fee divided by the number of finished things you actually receive.
This is an estimate from your own numbers, not an audit of your agency.
Your agency may be excellent and worth every unit of it. Plenty are. The point of the sheet is that you should be able to see the split and ask about it, which is a conversation the retainer model is designed not to have.
Now price the same work without the overhead.
Tick what you actually need and get a real statement of work back, in writing, with a number against every line.