Retainer reporting

What it is#

Retainer reporting is the work an agency does within a retainer engagement to produce the recurring written deliverables the contract obligates them to send. A typical mid-market agency retainer at $5K-$30K/month includes some implicit (sometimes explicit) expectation of:

• A monthly performance report
• A quarterly business review (QBR)
• Weekly or biweekly status updates
• Ad-hoc check-ins when results swing

For most agencies, this work is unbillable overhead — the retainer fee covers it but nobody tracks the hours specifically, and it eats into margin invisibly.

The math problem#

According to AgencyAnalytics 2025 benchmarks, agencies spend ~11.2 hours per client per month on reporting work. At a 30-client roster, that's roughly two full-time employees dedicated entirely to reporting that the contract assumes is free.

For an agency billing at a $150/hour blended rate, this translates to ~$50K/month in unbillable internal time — money that should be margin but instead funds the retainer deliverable.

Why automation matters here specifically#

Retainer reporting is a rare combination of high-frequency, low-variability, and high-stakes. The same brief structure ships every month for the same client. Most of the content is mechanical (data extraction, formatting). A small portion is high-judgment (narrative, recommendations). Manual production conflates the two and makes both expensive.

Automation isolates the mechanical portion so the high-judgment work — which is the work the client is actually paying for — gets done by the right people.

In SendBriefs specifically#

Retainer reporting is the core use case SendBriefs was built for. See the client reporting solution page for the full motion.