Retainer overage

Work delivered under a retainer agreement beyond the monthly scope or hours the client is paying for, in a given billing period.

Example

A retainer covers 20 hours of work per month; the team logs 27 hours in March. Those extra 7 hours are a retainer overage — billable separately if the contract allows it, or absorbed as a loss if it doesn't.

Why it matters for agencies

Whether an overage gets billed depends entirely on whether the retainer agreement specifies what happens past the monthly cap. Agencies that don't define this upfront tend to just absorb overages indefinitely, which functions as an ongoing, compounding form of unbilled scope creep.