The retainer renews when the work is visible.

Lifetime requests submitted and completed, monthly request volume, an activity chart over the last six months, average first response time over the last 90 days, completions this month, and the most active team members on their account. It lives in the client's own portal and stays current all year.

Yes, the portal includes a plain-language time log: who worked on what and for how long, as it happens. Agencies use it to make retainer consumption visible long before an invoice raises the question.

By putting every ask on the record. Emailed requests become tracked items with owners and hours, so the "quick favors" accumulate somewhere visible. Reports then show exactly what each account consumed, which turns the scope conversation from a feeling into a number.

Yes, custom labels and statuses slice the queue by service line, and filters give each specialist their own view. One client, one queue, many disciplines, and the client sees all of it in one place instead of four thread archives.

Auto-assignment rules send each client's requests to the right people the moment they land, notified and ready to start. Smart Focus then ranks every specialist's queue by urgency and waiting time, so the morning starts with work, not triage.

No, and it does not try. Campaign analytics stay in your marketing tools. Sideline proves the operational side of the retainer: what was asked, what was delivered, how fast, and where the hours went, which is the half of the renewal story your analytics cannot tell.

Yes, through the AI connector: Claude, ChatGPT, Make, or Zapier can read requests, time, and reports, so a scheduled automation can pull last month's hours per client into your reporting workflow. Included on every plan.

Anyone can follow the requests they care about and unfollow the ones they do not, and notification emails are clean and actionable. There is also an agency-wide private mode where emails carry no content at all, just who acted on which request with a link into Sideline.

Yes. Freelance specialists sign in with their own email, personal contact details stay private, and AI writing keeps replies at your agency's standard. When a campaign ends, access ends with one reversible click.

Everything stays: requests, threads, files, hours. Win the account back and the entire relationship history is intact, which also makes your case in the win-back conversation.

PM tools bolt guests onto software built for internal teams, and clients feel it: permissions to configure, views to learn, noise everywhere. Sideline's client side is a portal with nothing to learn, and the agency side is one queue built for request flow, not project plans. Our ClickUp comparison covers where each wins.

Retainer management is built in: monthly allowances or prepaid hour blocks, custom rules per client, and logged time drawing the balance down automatically. What Sideline does not do yet is send the invoice, so hours and reports export cleanly into whatever you bill with.

$49 per month flat on Studio: unlimited clients and requests, 5 team seats included, $9 per extra seat. Client count never changes the price, so the twentieth retainer costs the same as the first.

Free concierge migration, usually inside 24 hours of starting the trial: clients imported, intake form configured, team invited. Your clients receive a magic link and see their queue; no training call needed.