Retainer is a partial fee paid in advance for professional services. It is an up-front deposit or advance payment that belongs to the customer, but which the client has given to you in advance for their projects. In other words, this advance money has been received, but not yet earned by you. This retainer is a liability in your accounting records, even though you deposit this fund in the client's account. Companies need to be careful and professional in handling client funds. When you have to bill the client an amount within the retainer payment, you can apply the retainer to the relevant invoice. When the invoice for the project is in excess of the retainer available, you can create an invoice and apply the retainer amount to the invoice.
The Retainer Management screen provides all the useful and detailed client and project retainer information. It maintains a history of the retainer payments—received, applied and available on the basis of a client and related projects. Client Retainer is the advance payment received from a client and is available for all the projects of that client. Project Retainer is the advance payment received from the client on any particular project and hence can be applied on that project only. Retainer Management screen thus allows you to manage client and related project fund accounts.
Retainers
can also be recorded and used against the projects whose status is Main;
not directly but to the associated phases.
You can create retainer invoices, view previous invoices and print them from this screen. BillQuick Online allows numbering for tracking the retainer invoices. The format can be set in the Global Settings screen. Retainer invoices created here will appear in the Payment tab of the Retainer Management screen. After the retainer payment is received, you can enter it in the Payment screen.
Retainer payment can be associated with a retainer invoice (invoice number 0) and is recorded in Payment screen for a proper audit trail. Retainers can also be applied to invoices in Payment screen or when they are processed in Billing Review. Client retainer can be applied only when the individual project retainers are exhausted. Retainer Management data is used on reports and invoices.