Time tracking for retainers

Know where every retainer stands

Timers and timesheets are table stakes. The question a retainer business actually needs answered is: how many hours does this client have left this month?

Retainer work fails quietly. Hours get logged (mostly), a spreadsheet gets updated (sometimes), and at month-end someone discovers a client at 160% of their retainer — or worse, bills for it and starts an argument. Pinboard tracks time where the work happens, rolls it up per client and per project, and turns the month into a billing report instead of an archaeology project.

Overheard

Sound familiar?

How many hours does Acme have left?
Nobody knows mid-month. By the time the spreadsheet says a client is over, the hours are spent and unbillable.
Can everyone log their time by Friday?
When the timer lives outside the project tool, hours get logged late, from memory, or not at all.
We can't bill what nobody tracked.
Every month-end, someone loses an afternoon reconciling timesheets into an invoiceable summary.

Capture

Timers where the work is

Start a timer on the task, the ticket, or the timesheet itself. Time entries carry the project and client automatically, because they were created in context.

Track on tasks and tickets
Delivery work and request work both land on the same timesheet.
Timesheet view per person, per week
See the week fill in as it happens, not as it's reconstructed on Friday.
Timesheet · This week
MC
Mon
Tue
Wed
Thu
Fri
ACME onboarding
ImplementationBILLABLE
2
1.5
2
1
Support triage
SupportBILLABLE
1
2
0.5
1.5
Sprint planningSuggested
Internal
1
0.5
Week total13.0h · 11.5h billable

Visibility

Hours rolled up by client, project, and person

Billing reports aggregate tracked time per project and per client, so the retainer conversation happens mid-month — while there's still time to act on it.

Q3 Delivery — workboard
MC
#
Phase
Status
Est.
Σ Actual
1Design phase
PN
Done24h26.5h
2Build phase
MC
In progress80h41h
3QA + launch
DR
Planned24h
10,000-row tested · windowed queriesΣ 67.5h · computed server-side

Per-client rollups

One view answers 'how much of the retainer is used?' without exports.

Billable flags

Separate billable from internal time so reports reflect what can actually be invoiced.

AI Assistant
MC
Move everything overdue in Website Redesign to next week
4 changes — nothing applied until you approve:
Reschedule 4 overdue tasks → Mon, Jul 20
Keep assignees and priorities
Comment on each with the reason
ApprovedEdit
Done — 4 tasks rescheduled. Sources: Website Redesign board.

AI

The assistant fills in the gaps

Pinboard's AI can suggest timesheet entries from your actual activity and let you log time in a sentence — 'log 2 hours on the Acme redesign yesterday.'

Suggested entries
Forgotten hours get proposed from real activity, not guessed at.
Log time by telling it
Natural-language time entry, from inside Pinboard or from your own AI via MCP.

Pricing

What it costs

Time tracking and billing reports are part of the planned Pro plan at $10 per editor per month — not a separate product or a per-feature upcharge. Planned pricing — the whole platform is free while in early access, and early-access teams get notice before anything is ever charged.

Questions

FAQ

Yes — billing reports roll tracked time up by client and project for any date range, with billable and non-billable time separated. That's the view a retainer business lives in.

Yes. Time entries attach to tasks or tickets, so request work and delivery work both count against the same client — which is usually where retainer leakage hides.

Nothing right now — approved workspaces get the full platform free during early access. Planned pricing is Pro at $10 per editor per month, with Service Desk (+$10), CRM (+$15), and AI (+$12) as optional per-seat add-ons, so you only pay for the apps you switch on.

Yes. Pinboard ships an MCP server with 56 tools, so the assistant you already use — Claude, or any MCP-compatible assistant — can create tasks, log time, file tickets, and query boards directly. There's also an open REST API with token auth.

Early access

Run it all in one workspace

Request early access — every app, no credit card, free while in alpha.

Free plan available · No credit card · Free while in early access