Billing work to a retainer
In order to apply your time or expenses to a retainer in TimeCache, you need to activate the retainer status for the time or expense entry.

You toggle the retainer status of an entry (on or off) by clicking the +/- marker at the right end of the entry in the Daily Log and choosing Apply to retainer or Don't apply to retainer from the contextual menu that appears. In the Job Sheets panel, Option-clicking an entry's +/- marker allows the same changes.

The charges applied to a retainer are not shown in the Daily Log totals (or a Job Sheet's totals). The entries appear in italics to help you remember that they are being billed to a retainer. TimeCache does not check Daily Log entries to make sure there is a retainer to bill against, so be sure you have a retainer to apply an entry to before doing so.

Apply to retainer by default
When you create or edit a billing category, you can set its default status to Apply to retainer. When you do so, all new Daily Log entries that use this billing category will be applied to a retainer. You can deactivate retainer status for such an entry individually on the Daily Log or after it has been posted, on its Job Sheet.