Twelve client projects, one answer to who is free
Onplana runs the delivery half of an agency: who is on what across every client, hours that price at both cost and billable rates, and a way to show a client their own work without buying them a seat. It is not an agency OS, and the limits below say exactly which parts you will still need elsewhere.
What changes about resourcing Monday
A board per client and a resourcing sheet
- Open eleven boards to work out whether the designer has room.
- Update the resourcing tab by hand from what the leads told you.
- Promise the new client a start date without checking the other ten.
- Find out on Wednesday that two accounts booked the same person.
- Rebuild the client status deck from the board they cannot see.
One view across the book
- Every client project in one filterable list.
- One person's week reads across all of them at once.
- The double-booking shows before the week, not during it.
- Hours price at cost and at the client's rate.
- The client gets a link instead of a rebuilt deck.
How it works
Half of this is free and half is not, so each step says which. Nothing here is behind a sales call.
Step 1
FreeAll twelve client projects in one list
Bring what you already run across, from a file or a spreadsheet, and keep them as separate projects rather than one giant board. Filter by client, by status, by whether the work is billable, and save the view you actually use so it is there on Monday.
Step 2
ProfessionalWho is free this week, across all of them
The question an agency asks more than any other, and the one a per-project tool cannot answer. Weekly hours per person sit next to everything they are committed to across every client, booked time off comes out automatically, and forecast mode reads forward weeks rather than only the one in front of you.
Step 3
ProfessionalHours that price two ways
Log against the task, approve the week through people you name, and price it at the cost rate and the billable rate, which are separate stored numbers rather than one with a multiplier at report time. Set a rate per client or per project when a client is on different terms.
Step 4
FreeLet the client see it without buying them a seat
Send a document to named people who verify their address with a single-use code, publish the status report as a link, or build them a portal that shows each client only their own rows. None of it needs a licence for them, and none of it needs an export from you.
Try it on the book you have now
Bringing the work in is on the Free plan, from a Microsoft Project file, a spreadsheet or a CSV, and so is reporting across all of it. Load three live clients, build one report across them, and see whether the cross-client view tells you something eleven boards were hiding.
We are not quoting a statistic about agency utilisation. The number that matters is whether your own next fortnight is over-committed, and you can have that answer from your own data. If client visibility is the part you are solving, the client portal covers all three ways in detail.
What it costs, and the three things it does not do
Client projects, rate cards, cross-client reporting, project import and all three ways of showing a client their work are on the Free plan. Timesheets with an approval chain and capacity across every client are on Professional, with no seat minimum. It replaces the resourcing spreadsheet that sits beside eleven boards and disagrees with all of them.
The honest limits, and they are the ones you were going to ask about
- Retainers are not in Onplana. You can track retained work as projects and price the hours, but retainer, fixed-fee and milestone billing live in Onplana Services, the separate product for firms that bill clients.
- There is no profit-per-client report in Onplana. Separate cost and billable rates give you the inputs, and hours by client and project come out in a report. The margin report per client is part of Onplana Services.
- There is no creative proofing. No annotation on artwork, no round-based approval on an asset, no markup tool. Files have versions, sharing and in-browser Office editing, and feedback happens in comments. An agency whose bottleneck is rounds on visuals should buy something built for that and use this underneath it.
What an agency asks before it moves
Does it handle retainers?
Not in Onplana itself, and this is the first thing to check if retainers are how you bill. Onplana Services, which is Onplana plus a commercial layer for firms that bill clients, carries retainer, fixed-fee and milestone billing, including hours over the retainer. In Onplana you would track retained work as projects and keep the retainer accounting somewhere else.
Can I see profit per client?
Not in Onplana itself. The margin report per client, project and person is part of Onplana Services. In Onplana you can set separate cost and billable rates, see hours by client and project, and export that anywhere, which gets you the inputs but not the answer.
Is there creative review, proofing or annotation on assets?
No, none of it. There is no proofing tool, no annotation on an image or a PDF, and no round-based approval on a creative asset. Files live in document folders with versions, sharing and in-browser Office editing, and review happens as comments rather than as markup on the artwork. A creative agency whose bottleneck is rounds of feedback on visuals should buy something built for that.
Can I bill a client at a different rate than the hour costs me?
Yes, and this part is free. Rate cards are on the Free plan: set a billable rate outright, or a markup percentage on the cost rate, or neither and they match. Rates resolve most specific first, so a client on different terms and a project that was quoted oddly both behave the way you would expect.
What does it cost to run an agency on this?
The half most agencies start with is free: every client project, rate cards, reporting across clients, project import, and all three ways of showing a client their work. Timesheets with an approval chain and capacity across every client are on Professional, with no seat minimum. Guest seats mean a client who needs to participate does not cost a full one.
So what is this actually for?
The delivery half. Who is working on what across every client, whether the week is over-committed before it starts, what the hours were worth, and what the client can see. It is the layer under an agency OS rather than the agency OS, and an agency that already has its billing and profitability elsewhere gets the part that is usually the worst-served.
If the billable cycle end to end is what you need rather than the delivery half, PSA for small consultancies covers where that is going, and project time tracking goes deeper on the hours half.
Load three clients and look at one week
Bringing the work in and reporting across it are on the Free plan. If the cross-client week does not tell you something new, you will know inside an afternoon.
Start free