Skip to content
Register

Invoicing software for digital agencies with retainers and projects

Invoice Crowd runs both ways a digital agency bills from one account: a monthly retainer that should never need chasing, and project work that has to be scoped, tracked and invoiced. The ledger sits underneath both.

Start your 30-day Team trial See pricing
  • Recurring retainer billing
  • Time logged against projects
  • Team roles and permissions
Invoice Crowd Projects screen for a digital agency with fixed-cost and hourly projects per client, a running timer, a monthly recurring invoice schedule and the hours logged against a project budget

What is inside

Two revenue models, one account

Retainer income should arrive without anyone raising it. Project income has to be quoted, staffed and tracked. The same account handles both, and the books keep up with each.

Recurring revenue

Set the schedule once, then stop touching it

Retainers that raise themselves

Set a retainer per client with its monthly fee and the hours it includes, and the invoice goes out on schedule whether or not anyone remembers it. Time the team logs on that client's projects counts against the hours, unused hours carry over or expire, and extra hours go on the next invoice. A flat fee with no hours can run as a plain recurring invoice. Reminders chase what is unpaid, so a retainer that slips is caught before it becomes a quarter.

  • Hours included each month, counted as time is logged
  • Reminders before anyone writes an awkward email
  • A flat or percentage late fee, added automatically after the due date
Retainers
Invoice Crowd items list with agency services saved to the catalogue, the same items on a recurring invoice and the item search used to add them

Saved items for the retainer bundle

Most agency retainers are a fixed bundle: so many hours of strategy, a content run, a reporting call. Save each part as an item with its own rate and description, then add the same items to the estimate, the invoice or the recurring profile, priced the same way for every client on the same tier.

  • Save the services you sell over and over as items
  • Pull the saved items onto an estimate or an invoice
  • Update an item's rate once for the next document
Saved items

Project work

From the pitch to the last hour logged

Three branded Invoice Crowd proposal templates, Software Maintenance, Advertising Agency and Affiliate Program, with an e-signed approval and a proposal opened notification

Scope it in a proposal, bill what was signed

New project work starts as a proposal: scope, phases, price and terms, signed in the browser rather than printed. What the client accepts is what carries into the invoice, so the number on the first bill matches the number they agreed to.

  • More than 70 proposal templates to start from
  • E-signature on the document itself
  • Accepted pricing carries into the invoice
The proposal builder
Invoice Crowd timesheet with the logged, billable and unbilled hours summary and an Invoice These button, a running timer and the billable hours ready to invoice

Time logged against the right project

Projects hold the work and the timesheet holds the hours, and each project's Profitability tab subtracts labour cost and expenses from what you billed. Team members log time against the project they are on, so when a client asks what the retainer actually covered last month there is a record rather than a reconstruction from calendars and memory. Members submit their week, you or a timesheet manager approve it, and a project can be set so only approved time is billed. The Utilisation view shows logged hours against each person's capacity.

  • Weekly timesheets submitted and approved
  • Hours attached to a project, not a spreadsheet tab
  • A record to answer a scope question with
Project profitability

The team and the books

Who can open what, and what it all adds up to

Invoice Crowd Team screen with invited agency members and their status, the invite panel with a role and module access, and the Accountant role limited to viewing and exporting

Team members with roles, not shared logins

Bring account managers, designers and a bookkeeper into the same account and give each person a role that limits what they can open and change. A member can also be limited to selected customers only.

  • A role per person instead of one password
  • Two team members on Team, three on Business
  • Accounting open only to the people who need it
What each plan includes
Invoice Crowd profit and loss statement with monthly revenue, cost of goods sold and gross profit, and the total revenue and net profit tiles

Agency numbers, not just invoice totals

Under the invoicing sits a double-entry ledger with a chart of 148 accounts already built. Contractor bills, software subscriptions and studio costs post into it alongside the revenue, so profit and loss shows the agency's real position rather than a sum of what was billed.

  • 148 accounts ready before you post anything
  • Costs and revenue in the same set of books
  • Profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow
The accounting module

Why agencies consolidate

One account from the pitch to the balance sheet

Agencies usually end up with a proposal tool, an invoicing tool and a bookkeeping tool, plus somebody whose afternoon goes on moving numbers between them.

  • Proposals, invoices and books together

    The document you pitched with, the invoice it became and the ledger entry behind it are three views of one record, not three exports to reconcile.

  • Sub-brands and side ventures

    Business profiles keep separate branding, customers and books under one account. Pro holds two, Team five and Business ten.

  • However the client wants to pay

    PayPal, Stripe, Razorpay, Square, Payoneer, Braintree, Authorize.net, Airwallex, GoCardless, PayFast, PayTabs, Telr, M-Pesa, PhonePe and Paystack, with split and partial payments when a project is billed in stages.

  • Clients abroad, reporting at home

    Bill an overseas client in their currency and still read the agency's revenue in yours, because the ledger holds base-currency values.

Also included

The rest of what an agency runs on

The parts of agency admin that usually end up in a spreadsheet, a shared drive or somebody's inbox.

  • Client portal

    Clients approve proposals, download invoices and pay in one place instead of a mail thread, and approve or question each week's hours on their projects (hours only, never rates).

  • Estimate to invoice

    Approve an estimate and the invoice writes itself from the same lines, taxes included.

  • Payment gateways

    Fifteen payment gateways, so the client pays on the invoice rather than by bank transfer.

  • Split payments

    Bill a project in stages: deposit up front, balance on delivery, both against one invoice.

  • Reminders and late fees

    Chase an overdue retainer automatically. Set a flat or percentage late fee when you send the invoice, and it is added automatically if the invoice is still unpaid after the due date.

  • Expense tracking

    Log contractor invoices and software costs with the receipt attached to the transaction.

  • Vendors and bills

    Record what freelancers and suppliers charge you as bills, and tag the related expenses to the project they belong to.

  • Outbound webhooks

    Push invoice, customer and expense events to a webhook URL you choose, or connect through Pabbly Connect using your Invoice Crowd sign-in.

  • Reports and exports

    Review aged debt, income and expense reports on screen, have them emailed on a schedule, and prepare GST returns if you bill from India.

  • Client records

    One record per client holds the contacts, currency, terms and every document ever raised against them.

  • Budget against actuals

    Set a spend budget per ledger account, then read it against what the agency actually posted.

  • Proposal templates

    A content library keeps reusable sections, and 70+ proposal templates give the document a starting shape.

  • Invoice wizard

    Bill the work between the dates you choose, rounded to 6, 15 or 30 minutes, re-bill project expenses with a markup, and invoice part of a fixed fee per milestone, with a live preview. Paid plans.

  • Payments received

    Record a client's advance before the invoice exists, with its own receipt, and apply it when you bill. One payment can also settle several open invoices, oldest first.

  • Refunds

    Refund an online payment through Stripe, PayPal, Square and five other gateways straight from the invoice. The credit note is made for you and the refund is booked once the provider confirms it.

Questions

Running an agency on Invoice Crowd, answered

Can I bill retainer clients automatically every month?

Yes. A retainer raises the monthly invoice on schedule without anyone opening the app, and counts the hours your team logs against the hours it includes, billing any extra on the next invoice. A flat fee with no hours runs as a recurring invoice. Reminders go out if it is unpaid, and a flat or percentage late fee set when you send the invoice is added automatically if it is still unpaid after the due date.

How many people can work in the account?

The Team plan includes two team members and the Business plan three. Each gets a role, so you decide who can open accounting records and who only sees the work their permissions allow.

Can I track time against a project?

Yes. Projects and a timesheet are part of the same account, so hours are logged against the project they belong to rather than in a separate tracker. That leaves you a record of what a retainer month actually contained when a client asks.

Does it handle a client who pays in another currency?

Yes. Invoice in the client's currency while your reports total in the business profile's accounting currency, and the Show Amounts In switch lets you read the dashboard in one currency or across all of them.

Can two agency brands run from one subscription?

Yes, through business profiles. Each profile keeps its own branding, customers and accounting records, and you switch between them from one login. Pro holds two profiles, Team five and Business ten.

Is there a trial before we move the whole agency across?

Thirty days, with no credit card. That is long enough to run a full retainer cycle: raise the recurring invoices, send a proposal, log some hours and see what the reports look like at month end. Paid plans start at ten dollars a month.

Put the retainers on a schedule and the projects on record

Set the recurring profiles up once, scope the project work in a proposal, and let the ledger keep pace with both.

  • Retainers invoiced on schedule
  • A role for every team member
  • Thirty-day trial, no card needed
Start your 30-day Team trial Compare plans