Every agency owner has three numbers they would rather not check: how many retainer hours went unbilled last month, how full the studio really is, and how long an invoice takes to go out after the work is approved. Running our own client work taught us that the tools most agencies use were never designed to answer those questions honestly. Klientele's marketing agency template is what we built instead.
Where do creative agencies leak money in their post-sales operations?
Direct answer: Creative agencies leak money at four operational surfaces running in parallel on every client: time tracking (billable hours dropping between tools), retainer reconciliation (spreadsheets updated Thursday night), invoicing (retainer and overage retyped into an accounting tool), and collection (aging tracked nowhere). The hours that fall between those tools are hours the client used and nobody billed.
An agency's operational surface has four distinct financial workflows running in parallel, on every client, every month:
- Time tracking — every billable hour, tagged to a client, a project, and (hopefully) a ticket
- Retainer reconciliation — matching those hours against monthly capacity, handling rollover, flagging overage
- Invoicing — generating an invoice that reflects the retainer + any overage + any project-based line items
- Collection — chasing invoices from sent to paid to bank-reconciled
In most agencies, these live in four different tools operated by different people. The seams are where money escapes.
“The largest hidden cost in an agency isn't underpricing. It's the retainer hours that never made it from Toggl to QuickBooks.”
We saw this in our own operation before we built Klientele: clients were consuming the work, but tracking, reconciliation and invoicing were fragmented enough that hours dropped between the tools. That gap is what made us build Klientele.
What does Klientele configure for a creative agency on day one?
Direct answer: Klientele's marketing and creative agency template reshapes the workspace at setup: brief / production cycle / campaign proposal terminology, an agency delivery status ladder (Briefed → Kicked off → In production → Awaiting approval → Internal review → Delivered → Closed), custom fields for channel, asset format, brand guidelines and approval stakeholder, urgency levels with response times calibrated to creative production, and roles for Account Manager, Strategist and Creative.
Pick the marketing agency template during onboarding and the workspace reshapes itself. Terminology, workflows, custom fields, roles, notification templates, and default response times all align to how a creative agency operates.
Terminology
| Klientele's default | What an agency sees |
|---|---|
| Ticket | Brief |
| Sprint | Production Cycle |
| Feature request | Campaign Proposal |
| Project | Account |
| Deliverable | Asset |
| Retainer | Account Retainer |
Workflow statuses
The marketing agency template ships with a status ladder that matches agency delivery:
- Briefed — new brief received, not yet kicked off
- Kicked off — owner assigned, work scheduled
- In production — actively being worked
- Awaiting approval — waiting on the client
- Internal review — checked in-house before it goes out
- Delivered — delivered to the client
- Closed — complete
Custom statuses like "Awaiting brand asset" or "Copy pending sign-off" can be added in the workflow editor.
Custom fields
Pre-configured on the marketing agency template:
- Brand Guidelines URL — link to the client's brand guidelines
- Channel — dropdown: Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, X / Twitter, YouTube, Email, Print, OOH, Web
- Asset Format — dropdown: Static, Video, Carousel, Story, Reel, GIF, Audio, Long-form
- Target Audience — free text
- Approval Stakeholder — who signs off on the client side
- Delivered On — date, required before a brief is marked Delivered
SLA matrix — calibrated to agency reality
Every brief carries an urgency level. The marketing agency template sets response windows that fit creative production:
| Severity | Response SLA | What it fits |
|---|---|---|
| Critical | 4h | Live campaign fire — landing page broke during a launch |
| High | 24h | Client waiting on a delivery to unblock their next action |
| Medium | 72h | Standard brief in the production cycle |
| Low | 7 days | Nice-to-have, opportunistic |
How does retainer accounting work in Klientele?
Direct answer: Every hour logged in Klientele is tagged to a client and, if that client has an active retainer, counts against the retainer as it is recorded — no separate reconciliation step. The rollover rule (on or off, and the cap) sits on the retainer. A monthly run on the 1st measures usage against the allocation, carries unused hours forward up to the cap, and records overage for the next invoice. Retainers and invoicing are on the Team and Agency plans.
Retainer accounting is where agencies leak the most money, so it is where Klientele does the most structural work.
Every hour is tagged to a retainer at logging time
When a creative or account manager logs time in Klientele, they pick a client. If the client has an active retainer covering that work, the hours count against the retainer's remaining balance straight away. There is no separate reconciliation step and no export to a spreadsheet: the balance is current the moment the timer stops.
Rollover is a first-class model, not a spreadsheet convention
When you set up a retainer in Klientele, you configure the rollover policy in the retainer form:
- Rollover: on or off
- Max rollover cap — e.g. "up to 10 hours banked, no more"
Klientele's monthly rollover run happens on the 1st of each month. It compares each client's usage with the monthly allocation and carries unused hours forward, up to the cap. No end-of-month reconciliation meeting, and no "how many hours did we bank last quarter?" conversations: every month's rollover is recorded on the retainer.
Overage goes on the next invoice
If a client uses more than the monthly allocation, the extra hours are added to the next invoice as overage at the rate agreed on the retainer. The invoice is built from the retainer's recorded usage, not from a spreadsheet the ops lead maintains.
How does Klientele plan honest studio capacity?
Direct answer: Klientele's weekly capacity planning (Team and Agency plans) starts each person's 40-hour week and subtracts the overhead an agency really carries. The marketing agency template sets 5 hours for client meetings, 3 for creative review, 3 for pitch and strategy, 3 for studio admin and 4 for an urgent buffer, leaving 22 production hours a week. A 12-person studio plans against 264 production hours, not 480.
Most agencies plan against a 40-hour week per person and then wonder why the studio is always late. The gap is overhead nobody budgets for: client calls, internal critiques, new-business decks, admin and the last-minute brand ask.
The marketing agency template sets these defaults, and each one can be adjusted per person:
| Bucket | Hours per week | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Total available | 40 | Standard week |
| Client meetings | 5 | Stand-ups, briefs, approvals |
| Creative review | 3 | Internal critiques, brand alignment |
| Pitch & strategy | 3 | New business and strategy decks |
| Studio admin | 3 | Email, scheduling, internal ops |
| Urgent buffer | 4 | Reserve for last-minute brand asks |
| Production hours | 22 | What you can realistically schedule |
If you're a 12-person studio and everyone works a 40-hour week, your production capacity is 264 hours a week (12 × 22), not 480. The difference is not slack; it is overhead every agency carries.
Klientele's weekly capacity plans (Team and Agency plans) budget each person's week from 40 hours down to their production hours, so briefs are scheduled against the real number.
What changed when Codefree moved its own client work onto Klientele?
Direct answer: Codefree, the company that builds Klientele, moved its own client work off a four-tool stack (a project tool, a time tracker, an accounting tool and a retainer spreadsheet) and onto Klientele. Retainer balances became something we looked up instead of reconciled, invoices were built from the hours already logged, and the weekly reconciliation meeting stopped being necessary.
We don't publish before-and-after percentages for our own firm: one company's numbers are an anecdote, not a benchmark. What changed was the shape of the work. Hours were tagged to a client and a retainer when they were logged, so month-end was a review rather than a hunt. Overage was visible before the invoice went out, not after the client queried it. And the question "where are we with this client?" had one place to look.
The fair test is your own: run one active retainer through a trial and compare the month-end with the one before it.
What does Klientele not do for agencies (and what to pair it with)?
Direct answer: Klientele is not a design tool (Figma and Adobe CC stay in place — Klientele holds the brief that references the file), not a CRM (keep your sales pipeline in your CRM — Klientele is post-sales), and not a white-labelled client portal (the portal is Klientele-branded on every plan). The stack it replaces is the project tool, the time tracker, the invoicing tool and the retainer spreadsheet.
Full honesty:
- Klientele is not a design tool. Figma, Framer, Photoshop, Adobe CC — none of those get replaced. Klientele holds the task record that references the Figma file. The Figma file stays in Figma.
- Klientele is not a CRM. Keep sales pipeline management (leads, deals, forecasts) in your CRM. Klientele has no built-in CRM integration; you can connect one yourself through the public API and webhooks. Klientele is for post-sales; CRM is for pre-sales.
- Klientele is not a white-labelling engine. On every plan, your logo is on the client portal, on invoices and on emails, and the portal uses your accent colour and welcome message. A portal on your own domain is coming next, on the Agency plan. Full white-labelling of the product is not offered.
The stack Klientele replaces: a project tool, a time tracker, an invoicing tool and the retainer spreadsheet. That's the swap.
If your agency runs on a project tool, a time tracker, an invoicing tool and a retainer spreadsheet, the seams between them are where billable hours go missing. Start a 14-day trial, pick the marketing agency template, add your current clients and load one active retainer to see the month-end run in one place. Retainers and invoicing continue on the Team plan.
Last updated July 30, 2026