Kayabyte

Retainer rollover rules: expire, capped or full, with examples

By Kayabyte

A client buys 20 hours a month and uses 12. What happens to the other 8? The answer belongs in your contract, and then in whatever tracks the balance. This guide compares the three common rules with numbers, and shows how to apply them in HubSpot by hand or with an app. HubSpot facts last checked 10 November 2026 against HubSpot’s knowledge base.

The three rules

  1. Use it or lose it. Unused hours expire at the end of the period. Simple to run and to explain, and the most common for monthly retainers. Clients tend to push work in at month end to use the hours.
  2. Capped rollover. Unused hours carry over, up to a limit, for example 25 percent of the month’s hours. With 20 hours bought and 12 used, 8 are unused but at most 5 carry, so next month starts with 25 hours.
  3. Full rollover. All unused hours carry over. Fair to the client, but a quiet client builds a large balance you must staff later, and you need an expiry rule so the balance does not grow forever.

Two details to put in the contract: how long carried hours stay valid (for example one extra month), and which hours are used first. Using the oldest hours first means carried hours are used before the new month’s hours, so they do not expire unused.

Worked example

Retainer: 20 hours a month, capped rollover at 25 percent, carried hours valid for the next month only.

The same January with full rollover would carry 8 into February, and with use it or lose it, nothing.

Doing it in HubSpot by hand

HubSpot has no retainer or rollover feature. What you can do:

Where this gets heavy: several retainers per client, carried hours with an expiry date, and correcting a late time entry from last month.

Full disclosure: we built an app for this

Retainer Wallet does the arithmetic above for each retainer. You pick one rule per retainer: hours expire, roll over in full, or roll over up to a percentage of the month’s hours. At the end of a month the app creates a separate block of carried hours, valid for the next month, and the draw-down always takes the oldest block first. A note with hours purchased, used and carried goes on the company timeline. A few behaviours to know: the carry is fixed when the period rolls, so editing an entry from a closed period later changes that period’s usage but not the hours already carried; hours added with a top-up are not rolled over, they keep their own expiry; with “roll over in full” hours carried in that are still unused are carried again, so a quiet client’s balance keeps growing, while “roll over up to a percentage” never carries more than that share of the month’s hours; a retainer’s start date and type cannot be changed after creation; and a monthly period runs from the start date’s day each month. Rollover rules are available on every plan. Free is 1 user and 3 retainers, Starter USD 29 per month, Pro USD 59 per month, with a 14-day Pro trial and no card. It installs from our site, not the HubSpot Marketplace.

More detail

FAQ

What is a capped rollover? Unused hours carry into the next period up to a limit, for example 25 percent of the hours bought. Anything above the limit expires.

Should retainer hours roll over? It is a commercial choice. Expiry is simplest to run; rollover is friendlier but needs a cap or an expiry for the carried hours.

Can HubSpot roll over retainer hours automatically? Not on its own. You can maintain the numbers with properties, a calculation property and a workflow on Professional or Enterprise, but a person has to update them each period.

Questions or corrections: support@kayabyte.dev. HubSpot is a registered trademark of HubSpot, Inc. Kayabyte is an independent developer and is not affiliated with HubSpot.