Consulting CRM software for independent consultants and fractional executives. A book of retainers and projects: renewals drift, relationships go quiet, proposals stall, invoices sit unpaid. Retainer watches all of it and puts what needs you on one screen.
Generic CRMs store what you type into them. They don't notice that a retainer ends in six weeks or that your best client went quiet.
A CRM for prospects, a PM tool for delivery, an invoicing app to get paid. Context dies at every handoff.
Extra hours never invoiced, renewals raised too late, warm deals forgotten after a “not now”. None of it announces itself.
Every signal below feeds one ranked queue on the Today screen, ordered by what it costs you to ignore.
A retainer or project ends within 60 days and nothing is lined up.
An important relationship has gone silent past its threshold, ranked by how much the relationship is worth, not just how long it's been.
You sent a proposal five days ago and nothing has moved.
A sent invoice is past due. The clearest money at risk.
Out-of-scope hours logged but never invoiced.
A deal lost on timing whose recheck date has arrived. Not dead, just early.
A six-stage pipeline for the selling. Signing converts a deal into an engagement in one click, and everything you learned while selling travels with it.
See the deal pipelineStart free
Log hours against engagements, see retainer utilization at a glance, and turn extra hours into a draft invoice.
See time & invoicingStart freeConnect Google Calendar once. Client meetings land on the right engagement and count as touches automatically, so “last contact” is real data, not memory. Meeting notes live where the work lives.
See calendar syncStart free
One email for the week ahead: who to talk to, what's on the table, what's overdue.
See the Monday digestStart freeRetainer scans your meeting history and drafts your client list from it.
Review the draft and classify clients and prospects. Minutes, not an afternoon of data entry.
Your first dashboard has real history behind it: last contact, active work, what needs attention.
The Today queue refreshes daily and the Monday digest keeps the week's priorities in your inbox.
“It flagged nine unbilled hours on a client I'd have written off as goodwill. That one card paid for the year.”
“I stopped keeping a mental list of who I owe a call. The queue is the list, and it's ranked better than mine was.”
“Two renewals came up while I was heads-down delivering. Retainer raised both six weeks out.”
There isn't one. Everything is free while Retainer is in beta, and you'll know what the paid plans cost before beta ends, not after. Beta users get notice and a better price than anyone who shows up later. We'd rather have your feedback now than your card.
About ten minutes. Connect Google Calendar and Retainer reads your meeting history to draft your client list — you confirm who's a client, who's a prospect, and who's neither. Your first Today screen already knows who you haven't spoken to since spring. There's no empty-database phase to survive.
A CRM stores what you type into it and then waits. It won't tell you a retainer ends in six weeks, or that your most valuable client has gone quiet. Retainer is that missing layer: consulting CRM software, a CRM system for consulting relationships rather than a pipeline you have to remember to check. Worth knowing up front: importing from an existing CRM is manual today — the calendar scan does most of the work for you.
Event times, titles, and who was invited — read-only, and only so Retainer can tell a client meeting from a dentist appointment. It can't create, move, or delete anything, and one click in settings disconnects it for good.
No. Retainer never touches your inbox.
No. There's one screen that's current whenever you open it, and one Monday email you can switch off. Nothing pings you. And when you dismiss a nudge it's gone for good, not snoozed until next week — a system you have to argue with is one you stop opening.
Sales teams chasing volume, anyone who needs shared pipelines and per-seat permissions, and anyone whose work isn't relationship-shaped. It's built for independent consultants and small firms running retainers and project work — one person's book of business, watched properly. It's single-user today.
You leave. No contract, nothing to cancel. Being straight with you: there's no one-click export yet — it lands before anyone is asked to pay, and until then we'll get your data out for you if you ask.