The fee is fixed. The hours are not.

Hourly work and fixed-fee work need different interpretations. For hourly projects, Flowboard calculates revenue from billable hours multiplied by the billable rates stored with those entries. For fixed-fee and retainer projects, the configured monetary budget supplies the contract or retainer amount used in the calculation. Logging another hour therefore has different consequences depending on the billing type.

For an hourly engagement, another billable hour can increase the revenue represented in the project. For a fixed-fee engagement, another hour increases delivery cost without automatically increasing the agreed fee. A change request may justify a commercial adjustment, but the software cannot assume that the client has accepted it. Update the agreement and project configuration deliberately.

Direct labor includes logged work, including time marked non-billable. This is essential for seeing the effect of internal meetings, revisions, account management, and rework that belong to the engagement. Non-pass-through project expenses also contribute to direct costs. Pass-through treatment matters because an amount simply passed to the client should not be confused with the agency's own delivery burden.

Direct margin is revenue less direct costs, divided by revenue. Use it to understand delivery economics alongside the remaining work. Company overhead, taxes, and payment collection belong in your wider accounting review; they are separate from this project measure.

Consider a $12,000 fixed-fee design engagement. The team has logged 160 hours at an average $50 labor cost and recorded $1,000 in non-pass-through production expenses. Direct costs are $9,000, leaving $3,000 of direct project contribution. Direct margin is 25%. This is an illustrative calculation using simplified average rates, not a customer result.

An additional 20 hours of revisions at the same cost adds $1,000 without changing the fixed fee. Direct costs become $10,000 and direct margin falls to about 16.7%. The useful response is a scope conversation: determine whether the new work belongs to the original agreement, needs a paid change, or should displace something else. A dashboard cannot make that commercial decision on its own.

A consistent operating policy matters more than a visually precise percentage. Two projects cannot be compared fairly if one team records all delivery time and the other records only billable production.

1. Confirm the contract basis

   Choose the billing type and enter the relevant fee or retainer amount. Define the period represented by an ongoing engagement.

2. Review rate inputs

   Check the labor and billable rate configuration that feeds time entries. Treat historical entry values as part of the record rather than assuming a later rate change rewrites history.

3. Record direct expenses consistently

   Decide which costs belong to the project and how pass-through expenses should be treated. Avoid counting the same cost in two places.

4. Pair results with the remaining plan

   Discuss open deliverables, unlogged work, and upcoming expenses before deciding that an early margin is sustainable.

Hour-budget consumption answers how much of the planned effort has been recorded. Margin answers how configured revenue compares with recorded direct costs. Invoice status answers a billing question. Payment status answers a collection question. Each is useful, but substituting one for another creates false confidence.

Financial visibility is role-sensitive. Owner and Admin roles can review commercial values, while other roles may receive an operational view without monetary amounts. That allows a producer to manage delivery without making internal labor costs part of every team discussion. Decide who needs each decision surface before rolling the workflow out.