Client work template

Studios and agencies rarely lose money on the work; they lose it on the gap between delivering something and invoicing it. This template links clients to projects and projects to individual deliverables, each with an owner, a due date and a billed flag, so "what shipped last month and never made it onto an invoice" is a view rather than an archaeology project. It is also the shape that answers "can we take this on" without opening five files.

One row in Projects reads Q1 site refresh, Halden & Co, In progress, $18,000, 62 hours, due 28 Mar: one piece of work for one client, linked to it, with a status, a budget it can run past, the hours used so far and a due date. Above it sits Clients, one row per account: the name, the account lead, the retainer, a status, the date they came on, and a Billed to date column that's a formula rather than a running total somebody keeps. Below it sits Deliverables, the level the work actually happens at: one row is a thing somebody owes somebody, linked to its project, with an owner, a due date, a status such as With client, and whether it has been billed.

Studios rarely lose money on the work. They lose it in the gap between delivering something and billing for it, and that gap is invisible in a normal project plan because a project plan finishes at done. Putting Billed on the deliverable row, rather than on an invoice living in another system entirely, is the whole trick: what shipped last month and never made it onto an invoice becomes a view, not an afternoon of archaeology. And because the row already knows which client it belongs to, the total comes out by account.

One chart for the work, one for the money. Due this week groups every deliverable landing in the next seven days by owner and pulls the overdue ones to the top instead of leaving them buried in the same list. Shipped but not billed totals approved work with no invoice against it, by client: the number that quietly funds a month if somebody looks at it. Sample clients, projects and deliverables arrive with a few already past their date, so neither chart opens empty or reassuringly green.

What's due in the next seven days, and who owns it: that's the Monday question. Which projects are over budget on hours compares hours used against the budget on the project row. What has been approved but never billed pays for itself. And how much revenue is sitting in active retainers this month needs the Clients table and nothing else. None of them requires a view built first.

Every new-business conversation hides the same question, and this shape answers it. Projects carry a budget and hours used, deliverables carry owners and dates, so capacity is a look at who's already carrying what over the next two weeks: not a guess followed by an apology three weeks later. Want that in hours rather than counts? Add a Time entries table linked to deliverables, and hours roll up to the project without anybody adding them up.

Retainers and project work running side by side is the tell. Design and development studios, marketing and PR agencies, consultancies, freelancers with more than one client at a time: the shape fits all of them. What it isn't is accounting software: Billed is a flag that tells you an invoice should exist, not the invoice itself, and reconciliation still happens where your invoices do.

Three imports, top down: clients, then projects, then deliverables, each one pointing at the level above it. CSV and XLSX come across untouched, a Google Sheet somebody already keeps can stay connected, and forwarding an email in gets it read into a table. Describe how the columns match up; the relationship columns get set, and nothing is pasted across as reference codes.