Every way you sell the work, on one screen.
Fixed price, retainer, managed service and day rate each go wrong in their own way. Bitmap knows the difference, and shows you which is which.
The problem
An agency rarely sells plain days. It sells a fixed price for a build, a monthly retainer for support, a managed service with a service level, and a day rate for the work that fits none of those. Each is priced differently, invoiced differently and goes wrong differently. A fixed-price project loses money when it overruns; a retainer loses money when the client quietly uses more than they pay for; a managed service loses money when nobody notices the contract is up for renewal.
Most tools understand one of those shapes, usually the day rate. The rest is handled with conventions: a fake budget of a hundred days, a spreadsheet of retainer hours, a calendar reminder for the notice date that lives in one person's diary.
So the agency has good people, good clients and good work, and no single view of which engagements are making money and which are being subsidised by the others.
What changes
- Each engagement is recorded as the kind of contract it is
- A fixed-price overrun shows in the week it starts, not at the end
- Retainer usage against what was paid for is a report, not an estimate
- Milestone and monthly invoices raise themselves on the date
- Contract notice dates arrive as a notification, not a surprise
What Bitmap does with it
It knows how the work was sold
Contract types for fixed scope, monthly retainer, managed service and time and materials. The type shapes how budgets, schedules and health checks behave, so a retainer is not a hundred-day budget in disguise.
It prices a fixed job in money and in days
A fixed-price budget carries the sum agreed and the days it was priced on. The budgeted day rate connects the two, so an overrun is visible in hours before it is felt in margin.
It writes the invoices when the deal is signed
The payment schedule is part of setting the project up: a deposit, milestones, a balance, or twelve monthly amounts. Each falls into Ready to Invoice on its date, with the amount and the account already on it.
It raises the draft in Xero
One draft per client from Ready to Invoice, against the right contact and account codes. Approval and payment come back through the webhook, so the invoice list in Bitmap is the truth.
It remembers the notice date
Contracts carry their term and their notification date, and Bitmap posts to your channel when one is coming up. The renewal conversation happens before the client's, not after.
It shows who is subsidising whom
With every engagement on the same budgets, timesheets and schedules, the projects overview and the health checks put the fixed-price build and the retainer side by side. The one being carried is plain to see.
The deposit, the milestones and the monthly amounts across every project, each with its raise date and whether it has been raised.
What it looks like in practice
A digital agency of thirty-five sets up its contract types in Bitmap: fixed scope, monthly retainer, managed service and time and materials. Each client's engagements are recorded against the right type, with the contract's term and notice date on it. The fixed-price builds get a budget in money and the days it was priced on; the retainers get a monthly budget that resets.
The payment schedule for a fixed-price build is written when it is signed: a deposit, two milestones and a balance. The retainers get a schedule of monthly amounts for the year. From then on, Ready to Invoice fills itself on the first of each month and on each milestone date, and the finance lead raises the drafts in Xero from it.
Three months in, the health checks show one fixed-price build has used seventy per cent of its budget at forty per cent of its scope. The delivery lead sees it on a Tuesday and changes the plan. A retainer client's usage report shows they have used a hundred and forty hours against a hundred paid for, and the account lead has the conversation about the next tier with the numbers in front of them.
The other use cases
A day-rate consultancy that has outgrown its spreadsheet
You sell days, and you know roughly who is on what. The spreadsheet that holds it has stopped scaling, and month-end proves it.
- Budgets, plan and timesheets against the same records
- Who is free, and when, without asking around
- Utilisation on the first of the month, not the fifteenth
A finance team that wants month-end to take an afternoon
Month-end is a reconciliation across timesheets, proposals and the accounts package, and deferred income is a number nobody can produce on demand.
- Invoices fall due on their own and raise into Xero
- Deferred income at any date, per project and in total
- The board figures on the first, from the same records
Run your consultancy from one place.
Tell us how you sell: the mix of fixed price, retainer and time and materials. We will show you what each looks like in Bitmap.