How consultants price a retainer

The price of a consulting retainer is the hours a client needs each month, times your hourly rate, minus any discount you give for the commitment. The agreement also has to say what happens to unused hours, what overage costs, how project work is bought and when you review the numbers. For scale, fractional CFOs in the US charge $150 to $450 an hour, or $3,000 to $12,000 a month on retainer, according to Futureproof (12 Feb 2026).

Consulting and CFO rates by the hour

A retainer starts from an hourly rate, so it helps to know where yours sits. Published ranges are wide, because they mix fields and levels of experience:

• Independent management consultants: $100 to $350 an hour (Paperbell, updated 14 Apr 2026).
• Accounting consultants who hold a CPA: $150 to $450 an hour (same source).
• Fractional CFOs: an average rate between $175 and $450 an hour (Graphite Financial, updated 21 Aug 2026).
• Senior fractional CFOs: $350 to $600 an hour (Eagle Rock CFO, undated, read 13 Oct 2026).

None of these is a survey, so treat them as a rough check on your own rate.

If you already bill by the hour, start from the rate you charge today. If you’re still deciding how to bill, how to bill clients for hours compares hourly billing, retainers and prepaid blocks.

Decide how many hours the retainer includes

The hours are what the client buys, so pick a number they’ll use in a normal month rather than in their busiest one.

If you’ve tracked time for this client, look back over the last three to six months and use a typical month. If you haven’t, build the number up from the recurring work. Estimate a month-end review, a cash forecast update, a monthly call and any board or lender reporting, then add a few hours for the questions that arrive by email.

For a fractional CFO, Eagle Rock CFO (read 13 Oct 2026) lists 10 to 15 hours a month for early-stage companies and 15 to 25 hours for growth-stage companies. Futureproof (12 Feb 2026) puts most early-stage engagements at 8 to 20 hours a month.

Turn the hours into a monthly price

The math is one line:

Monthly price = hours included × hourly rate × (1 − discount)

Then divide the price by the hours. The result is the rate behind the retainer, sometimes called the implied rate. Put it in the agreement, because overage, extra blocks of hours and the next tier are all priced against it.

Whether to discount is up to you. You can give one in return for a commitment paid in advance, or keep the full rate and give retainer clients something else, such as faster replies.

As a check on the result, Paperbell (updated 14 Apr 2026) puts typical retainers for experienced consultants at $2,000 to $10,000 or more a month.

Offer two or three tiers

Tiers let a client pick a level, and change it later, without a new negotiation. Price each tier by hours and, if you discount, let the rate behind it fall a little as the commitment grows.

With a standard rate of $300 an hour, the tiers could look like this (the numbers are made up):

The last column describes what the hours are usually spent on. I’d word it the same way in the agreement, as a description and not as a list of tasks. Once the agreement lists tasks, every new request has to be negotiated, whereas with hours you only check whether any are left.

Decide what happens to unused hours

Put the answer in the agreement before the first quiet month, because that’s when the client will ask.

I’d choose the limited rollover for fractional CFO work. Year-end, audit and budget season are busy, so hours carried over from a quiet month usually get used then. Tell the client their balance every month, so that expired hours never come as a surprise.

Price overage before it happens

Overage is time beyond the hours included. Charging your standard hourly rate gives the client a reason to move up a tier, while charging the retainer’s own rate costs them less. Tell the client when they’re close to the limit, while they can still decide to hold work back. Bill the overage on the next invoice as its own line, with the time entries behind it.

Using the tier table, a Core client with 20 hours and nothing rolled over who uses 24 in a month has four hours of overage, which at $300 an hour is $1,200 on the next invoice.

Sell prepaid blocks for project work

Some work doesn’t belong in the monthly fee: a fundraise, audit preparation, an acquisition, a new accounting system. If you fold it into the retainer, the client pays the higher fee for months after the project ends.

Sell a prepaid block of hours for it instead. Set the size (20 or 40 hours, say), the price (a rate between the retainer rate and your standard rate) and an expiry, such as six months after payment. The client pays up front and the project time draws from the block, so the monthly retainer stays as it was.

Review the retainer every quarter

Every three months, pull the tracked hours for each retainer client and compare the hours included over the quarter with the hours used, the overage hours billed and the hours that expired unused.

Overage in two of the three months means the client needs the next tier up. When hours expire every month the retainer is too big. Propose a smaller tier or a change of scope yourself, before the client starts to question the fee. If use is close to the hours included, leave it as it is.

Review the hourly rate itself once a year, at renewal, with notice in writing.

A fractional CFO example

The numbers here are made up and follow the steps above. A fractional CFO charges a standard rate of $300 an hour. A growth-stage client took 18, 22 and 19 hours a month during three months of hourly work.

A typical month is about 20 hours, so the CFO offers the Core tier: 20 hours for $5,400 a month, which is $270 an hour. Unused hours roll over for three months. Overage is billed at $300 an hour on the next invoice. The client gets a message once 15 of the month’s hours are used. Audit preparation is sold separately, as a 40-hour block at $285 an hour ($11,400) that expires six months after payment.

At the first review, the client has used 19 hours in January, 24 in February and 20 in March. January left 1 hour to roll over, so February had 21 hours available and ran 3 hours into overage, which is $900 on the March invoice. That’s 63 hours against 60 included, with overage in only one month, so the CFO keeps the Core tier and checks again next quarter.

If you run several clients like this, each on different terms, the fractional teams page shows how Timebun handles them.

Running a retainer in Timebun

Here is how the steps above are set up in Timebun, the time tracking, retainer and invoicing software we build.

Each tier is a retainer plan, and the catalog shows the implied rate beside it, which for Core is $270. A client who outgrows a tier can move to a bigger plan right away. A move to a smaller plan starts at the next renewal.

The prepaid block for project work is a top-up bundle: a fixed block of hours at a fixed price that either never expires or expires after 3, 6 or 12 months. Clients can buy one themselves, or you can invoice them for one. Unless a project is tied to one retainer, time is taken first from the hours that expire soonest.

The retainer burn-down report gives you the numbers for the quarterly review. For any date range, it shows the hours each client was granted, used and lost to expiry, and what is left now. It’s on the Unlimited plan, which is $199 a month flat however many people you add, and it isn’t on Starter.

Clients follow their hours in the client portal.

How Timebun bills overage is in how to bill clients for hours. The low-hours warning is in how to answer “how many hours do we have left?”.

If you sell your time as a consultant, see how Timebun works for consultants.