The True-Up

The Situation

Your agency bills the retainer client actual hours against a hundred-twenty-hour monthly cap — eighteen thousand a month when it runs full. This month the team logged eighty-seven; the client's own product launch slipped and took your workload with it. It is the last day of the month and your account director is in the doorway: should she true it up to a hundred eighteen? Her reasons arrive pre-assembled. The slippage was their delay, not ours. We held the team available; availability is worth something. Finance flags any invoice that varies from the retainer, and the client's own AP expects the number. We will make up the hours next month anyway. The invoice backup lists hours by person, by task, to the tenth. She is waiting, and the billing window closes at five.

The Question

May you pad the timesheet to the retainer number when the client caused the slow month and you'll make it up anyway?

VERDICT

No. The timesheet is a balance — it weighs your labor for a man who cannot watch you work, and eighty-seven weighed out as a hundred eighteen is the deceitful balance Scripture calls an abomination, not a rounding. An invoice is speech: it asserts that these people did this work for these hours, and the Catechism's definition closes the escape hatch — a falsehood spoken with the intention of deceiving is a lie, whether spoken in a deposition or a line item. Every one of the director's reasons is an argument for a different contract, not a false record: if availability is worth paying for, sell availability — a true retainer, use-it-or-lose-it, priced openly and signed. You may not get that contract's economics by forging this contract's arithmetic. Bill the eighty-seven.

The Warrant

Before Sundown

Bill the eighty-seven before five. Then put the real problem on next week's agenda: renegotiate the retainer into what you actually sell — openly, on paper, with the client looking at it.