How agencies invoice retainers (and stop chasing them)

The month-end ritual

You know it: the spreadsheet, the Xero export, the four clients whose card expired, the two who "didn't get the invoice". Retainers are meant to be predictable revenue — the invoicing makes them feel like anything but.

The fix isn't discipline. It's structure: money rules attached to the deal, so the invoices raise themselves.

Structure the money at signature

Every retainer should leave the proposal stage as a payment structure, not a number: deposit at signature (we see 20–50% across agencies), then monthly or milestone schedule. When the client signs online, the deposit invoice exists before the ink dries.

If your proposals don't take payment, they're PDFs with hope attached.

The three automations

Once the structure exists, automate the boring:

• Recurring invoices: raised on schedule, emailed automatically, card charged if one's on file.
• Overdue nudges: day 3 a polite email, day 10 the account owner gets a task — written in your words, sent in your timing.
• Renewal radar: upcoming retainer ends visible per client, so nobody quietly rolls into month 13 without a conversation.

What it looks like in practice

In GetFound: the proposal carries the payment structure, signing converts it to invoices, the recurring schedule raises and collects monthly, and the client sees every invoice in their portal — which, politely, ends the "can you resend that" emails too.

Watch the proposals tab in the demo below: sent → opened → chased → signed → deposit paid → recurring schedule live. That's the whole ritual, retired.