Why we bill weekly on approved hours, not retainers
Retainers bill for access. We bill for approved work. Here's how the weekly cycle works, and why the approval step is the whole point.
Most staffing relationships bill for access: a flat retainer, due whether or not the month went well. It’s simple to administer and easy to resent — because the invoice doesn’t move when the work does.
We bill the other way around. You pay for approved hours, one week at a time, and the approval step is where the control lives.
How the weekly cycle works
- Work is logged against a scope. Operators track time as they work, tied to the specific scope you approved — not a vague “hours this month.”
- You see the week before it bills. Day by day, with the total, in one place. Live activity is there if you want detail; the week view is there for the decision.
- You approve — or send it back. A clean week, you approve in a click. Something looks off, you return it with a note. Nothing bills until you’ve signed off.
- Only approved hours are charged. The invoice is the week you approved. No retainer floor, no markup hidden in the rate.
The approval is the product, not the paperwork
It’s tempting to read “approve the week” as an administrative step. It’s the opposite — it’s the moment your oversight becomes a decision instead of a feeling. Because billing waits for approval, the incentives line up: the work has to be visible and defensible before money moves, not explained after.
That also changes what a dispute is. When every hour is logged against a scope you approved, a disagreement is a lookup against the record, not an argument about what happened.
What this means for you
- No retainer, no minimum term. You pay for the hours you approve. Scale up, scale down, or pause.
- No markup tucked into the rate. You see the rate, the approved hours, and the total.
- The cutoff is predictable. Approvals run on a weekly cadence in your timezone, and clean unreviewed work auto-approves so nothing stalls if you’re heads-down.
Billing weekly on approved hours isn’t just a pricing choice. It’s the mechanism that keeps you in control of the work — the invoice can’t get ahead of your sign-off.