// By industry

Profitable agencies know where the hours go

Track time by client and project, defend scope, and prove the value of every hour you bill.

Agencies sell hours, so leaking them is fatal. Momentum shows exactly where time goes by client and project, separates billable focus from overhead, and gives you the clean reports that win scope conversations.

// The challenge

What gets in the way

Scope creep

Unbilled hours quietly erode margin because nobody can see them in time.

Thin reporting

Clients want proof of value; gut-feel summaries do not win renewals.

Utilization fog

It is unclear who is over- and under-utilized until the quarter is already lost.

+18%

Billable utilization

Client

Level reporting

Margin

Protected

// The full picture

How this plays out for agencies

The hours you sell are leaking in the tools you can't see

Agency margin dies quietly: a designer's afternoon disappears into revision churn, an account team burns billable hours in email and admin, and by the time the retainer report is due, everyone reconstructs the week from memory. Utilization lives in a spreadsheet updated hopefully. Worst of all, the same app cuts both ways — browser time is production for the social team and pure drift for everyone else — so blunt tracking misclassifies half the studio.

Department rules that understand studio work

Momentum's Departments map to your pods — Design, Copy, Social, Accounts, Production — and each carries its own app productivity rules on top of the Global App Rules baseline. Figma and the Adobe suite are Productive for Design; Instagram is Productive for Social and Non-Productive for Finance. The agent captures the actual hours, and the Timeline shows each person's day as a Time Summary of Productive, Non-Productive, and Unmarked time plus per-app usage — including clicks and keystrokes per app when you need to understand where effort concentrated.

Utilization you can read off a dashboard

A month in, the Workforce Dashboard becomes the Monday resourcing meeting: average productive time per department, top performers who are quietly carrying accounts, the least productive apps eating studio hours, and department time distribution that makes over- and under-loaded pods obvious. Scope conversations change tone when you can show exactly how the hours were spent, and the target-productive-hours setting turns utilization from a vibe into a number.

momentum · agencies · dashboardLIVE

Avg productive time / studio day6h 15m

Design dept productive share84%

Non-productive app time11%

Target productive hours hit18 / 20 people

productivenon-productiveunmarked

// Metrics to watch

The numbers that tell you it's working

Every one of these lives on the Momentum Workforce Dashboard — no exports, no spreadsheets. Set your workday, expected desk hours, and target productive hours in General settings, and watch the expected-vs-actual gap close week over week.

KPIs update as agents report in

Expected-vs-actual trend per department

Drill from any number into an individual Timeline

// The playbook

From install to insight in four moves

A proven rollout sequence using real Momentum modules — agents, machine approval, department app rules, and the dashboard.

Mirror your pods as departments

Create Departments for Design, Copy, Social, Accounts, and Production, and assign every member. Department analytics then double as pod-level utilization views.

Classify the studio toolchain

Set Global App Rules for the shared stack, then override per department — creative suites Productive for Design, social platforms Productive only for Social, admin tools where they belong.

Set billable-day expectations

In General settings, define expected desk hours and target productive hours that reflect a realistic billable day, plus productivity thresholds so the dashboard flags drift automatically.

Review time mix weekly

Scan the dashboard's most and least productive apps and department time distribution each week; drill into individual Timelines and App Usage before deadlines slip, not after the retainer review.

// How Momentum helps

A clearer picture for agencies

Momentum brings the signals that matter into one fair, real-time view — so leaders can act on evidence and teams can trust the numbers.

momentum · agencies · timelineLIVE

+18%

Billable utilization

Client

Level reporting

Margin

Protected

today · workday timeline

9:00■ active■ idle18:00

82%

prod. score

Time by client and project

Billable vs non-billable focus

Utilization and capacity views

Client-ready exportable reports

// After the 30-day baseline

Momentum never asks you to judge on day one. Collect a month of Timeline data, then set targets from your own expected-vs-actual trend — and watch it move.

+30d

baseline → lift

// Questions

Agencies teams usually ask

The same app is work for one team and a distraction for another — can Momentum handle that?+

That's exactly what department-level app rules are for. A department override beats the Global App Rule, so Instagram counts as Productive for your Social pod and Non-Productive everywhere else.

Can we see effort, not just hours?+

The Timeline's Input Statistics show clicks and keystrokes overall and per app, alongside App Usage in table, bar, or pie views — so you can distinguish an intense production day from a window left open.

How do freelancer machines get handled?+

Freelancer devices install the agent and wait in the Machines queue as Pending. Approve them for the engagement and remotely uninstall or disable login when the contract ends.

Will creatives accept this?+

Each person sees their own Timeline and productivity score — the same data their lead sees about them. Transparent, department-fair rules are what make studio rollouts stick.

See Momentum for agencies

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