Who this is for
Agencies of every kind (marketing and digital, creative and brand, web and product, PR and communications), plus consulting firms that sell projects and retainers. The owner sells, and account managers hold the clients. Producers or project managers hold the schedule. Creatives and freelancers do the work, and everyone fills in the time tracker late on Friday, if at all.
If your whole problem is profitability reporting, utilization and invoicing from timesheets, an agency-management product handles those natively. monday.com is the better choice when the problem is the work itself: who's doing what, for which client, by when. It also shows what's waiting on the client and how much of the retainer is gone.
The problem, in your words
The retainer is over-serviced by a third, and nobody knows until the quarter ends. The client approved the concept in an email thread three people were not on. The freelancer was chased by text and double-booked. The proposal went out on a Word template with the last client's name still in the footer. The project tool shows 400 open tasks, half from closed projects, and the client has a different version of the content calendar spreadsheet.
None of that is a people problem. The information is in six places, joined only by the account manager's memory. The build puts it in one place the whole agency can see.
What gets built
Clients and retainers
Each client is a row on a clients board, one of monday.com's shared tables. The row holds the account manager, retainer hours or project fee, renewal date, contact and status. A roll-up column compares this month's project hours with the retainer, so over-servicing shows on the tenth, not at quarter end. Scope changes go on a private board, each as a row with a date and an amount.
Projects and deliverables
Each client, or each project for project work, gets a board made from a template with your phases: Brief, Strategy, Concept, Production, Review, Delivered. Deliverables are rows with an owner, due date, round number and status; tasks sit beneath them as subitems. A roll-up board puts every dated deliverable from every client on one timeline, which the producer checks each Monday.
Approvals on the record
Each deliverable that needs sign-off is a row with an approval column (Pending, Approved, Revise), an approved date and the version it refers to. The client's emailed reply lands in the row's comment thread, timestamped and attributed. That's your audit trail when the client says in month four they never approved the concept. A client who wants to check progress gets a view-and-comment shared board with no staff notes or hours. The client approvals page walks through this in eight steps; they're written for design studios and work for agencies too.
Pipeline and proposals
Your website's inquiry form feeds a leads group, a section of a board. Each lead carries a stage from Inquiry to Won, the estimate and the last contact date. After ten days without contact, the lead's owner gets a task. A small app turns the row into a proposal on your letterhead, and a won lead sets up the client's project board from the template. Nothing gets retyped between pitch and kickoff.
People, freelancers and time
Staff are users. Freelancers are contacts with a rate and a specialty, linked to their deliverables, and only the ones in the system every day get a seat. The workload view shows each person's deliverables against a weekly capacity, with anyone over in red. A time tracking column on every task feeds a dashboard of hours per client per month against the retainer, the number the agency never had.
Content calendar and the dashboard
A calendar view shows every client's content rows, colored by client and filtered by channel, and clients see theirs on their shared boards. One dashboard covers retainer burn by client, deliverables due this week, approvals waiting on clients over seven days, pipeline by stage and hours by person.
A typical build
The closest named example is Studio Yona, a Los Angeles design studio. Every project gets its own board, made from a template; fees are visible only to the principal; approvals and submissions are dated rows. Its migration off Asana moved 77 projects and 2,109 tasks, reconciled with zero mismatches. An agency build adds retainers and hours, with freelancers where the studio had consultants.
The agency builds behind this page were for a marketing agency and a communications consultancy. Outside the one named case study, we describe every engagement by industry only.
How an engagement runs
The work runs in five steps. We record the free 30-minute review call. Then we read what you use today (project tool, time tracker, proposal folder, content spreadsheet) and write up what to keep. You approve a written map of boards, stages and who sees what: the one sign-off we ask for. We build the structure in your account, in your vocabulary, and you test it with real client work before anything is automated.
Next come the automations and the proposal app, then the migration of open work, with closed projects left behind. We check the migration both ways: every old record has a new row, and every new row has an old record.
A script reads your live account to check every board, column, label and row count the system depends on. The handover is a recorded demo plus a short how-to recording for each common task. Then you put real work through the system and tell us what needs changing. We adjust and you check again until it fits the way your agency works, usually within the two weeks the full build takes.
Pricing
Every price is published on the pricing page. Build prices are starting prices. After the free 30-minute review, we send a fixed quote before anything is built.
Foundation, from $3,000, takes one week: the clients board, the project template, an inquiry form, three automations, one dashboard and a recorded training. Full System starts at $7,000 and takes two weeks: Foundation plus approvals with shared client boards and the pipeline with its won-to-project automation. It also adds workload, freelancers, retainer time tracking, the content calendar, permissions and dashboards. And it moves your open work from Asana, ClickUp, Trello or Teamwork, reconciled row by row. After the build, an optional care plan gives you 4 hours of changes a month for $600, or 8 hours for $1,100.
The proposal generator, like other custom work that runs in your account, is priced into the fixed quote. monday.com Pro seats are separate: $19 per seat per month billed annually, as shown on monday.com/pricing on October 7, 2026. Pro is the lowest tier with time tracking and private boards.
If your agency already runs on monday.com, Asana, Smartsheet, Airtable or ClickUp and the setup has grown messy, Overhaul fixes it, from $5,000. We audit the account, rebuild the client boards and automations nobody trusts and clear out the duplicates. The price includes permissions, dashboards and a recorded training, and your data stays where it is. Most overhauls take one week, and a large account takes two.
monday.com versus Asana, ClickUp and agency-management software
Asana and ClickUp are general task managers an agency can set up in an afternoon, and either is enough for a shared to-do list. The Asana vs monday.com page covers that choice for a studio, and the reasoning carries over to an agency. Productive and Function Point are agency-management products, sold per user, that put budgets, time, utilization, profitability and invoicing in one place. If the owner asks "which clients make money", either one reports it natively. monday.com shows hours by person and client on a dashboard built for you, with margin from your agency tool or a spreadsheet.
monday.com is the better choice for answering "what is happening on every account this week". It's also the better choice when clients need a view they can open, or when a won proposal should become a project without retyping. And it uses your vocabulary and automations, not a vendor's workflow.
| Need | Asana, ClickUp | Productive, Function Point | monday.com, built as above |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shared task list, fast setup | Yes | Yes | Yes, from a template |
| Retainer burn this month | No | Built in | Time rolled up on a dashboard |
| Profitability and utilization reports | No | Built in | Hours by person and client; margin from your agency tool or a spreadsheet |
| Approvals with a dated thread | Comments | Sometimes | A row per approval, email into the thread |
| Client view without a seat | Guests | Client portal | Shared board, view and comment |
| Won proposal becomes a project | Manual | Sometimes | One automation plus a template |
| Cost | Per user (see pricing pages) | Per user (see pricing pages) | $19 per seat per month on Pro, plus the build |
What stays in other tools for agencies
Limits, as of October 12, 2026
Profitability and utilization reporting comes from a spreadsheet or an agency-management product, and hours against the retainer show on a dashboard built for you. Invoicing stays in QuickBooks or your accounting tool, connected by hand or by a small app. Time tracking needs the Pro plan or above and only counts if people press the button.
Proofing and markup of creative files need a marketplace app or a review tool. Client guests see shared boards only, so keep staff notes and hours off them. The proposal generator is custom work.
Key takeaways
- One clients board with retainer burn visible on the tenth of the month, not at quarter end.
- A project board per client from a template, with deliverables as rows and rounds as a number.
- Approvals are rows with a date and the client's email in the thread; shared boards carry no hours.
- A won proposal becomes the project; freelancers are contacts, not seats.
- Asana for a shared to-do list; an agency-management product for margin; monday.com for the work.
Limitations of this page
The named example is a design studio, not an agency. The agency builds behind this page were for a marketing agency and a communications consultancy in the United States. The retainer-burn dashboard depends on people tracking time, which no system enforces.
We read monday.com's features on its support site on October 7, 2026. We describe Asana, ClickUp, Productive and Function Point from their own home pages, without quoting prices. We sell monday.com builds, so keep that in mind. Before you decide, read our page on when you do not need a consultant.