Project Management Software for Marketing Agencies in Osaka

The retainer and the campaign that share a client

A client who has been with an agency for years usually buys two things: a steady retainer for the ongoing work, and separate projects whenever there's a launch or a seasonal push. The two are priced differently, but the same designers and writers do both, often on the same day. Unless hours are recorded against the right one, the campaign looks profitable and the retainer quietly absorbs the overrun.

ShipSprint lets you keep the retainer and each campaign as separate projects under the same client. On Team and up, the time log sits beside each task and takes about five seconds, so the hours go to the project the work belongs to. Timesheets collect each person's week, and a reminder for a missing day goes to the person who owes it, not their manager.

Approvals with more than one person on the client side

Client approval can involve a marketing manager, a department head and sometimes legal, each with comments. Tracking that by email means nobody is sure which version was approved by whom.

On a ShipSprint board, each approval stage can be its own column, so a deliverable's position shows where it is waiting. Comments can be gathered on a wiki page with page history, and any sentence of feedback can be turned into a task for the designer. When the client asks why a change happened, the history answers.

New briefs and requests from every client go into one triage inbox and are accepted deliberately. Per-column WIP limits on each board show when the studio is full, before another rush job is promised.

Seasonal work and seasonal leave

Capacity planning on Team and up counts approved leave, out-of-office and public holidays. In Japan that means Golden Week in late April and early May, Obon in mid-August and the New Year holidays. If your clients run campaigns timed to those holidays, the production work lands in the weeks just before the studio empties out, and that's when it helps to see real availability before accepting dates.

There are no screenshots, no keystroke logging and no activity tracking. Hours are what people log themselves.

Using ShipSprint from an Osaka agency: the practical points

Who you're buying from. ShipSprint is made by Quantuva Technologies Pvt. Ltd. in Hyderabad, India. There's no office or local entity in Japan; support runs by email and in-app chat.

Time zones. IST is 3 hours 30 minutes behind Osaka, with no seasonal change. The Indian working day overlaps your afternoon, so questions sent in your morning are usually answered the same working day.

Billing. You pay per seat in Indian rupees through Razorpay, and your bank converts the charge to yen. Your accountant can confirm how consumption tax applies to a service bought from abroad.

Data protection. Customer lists and contact details from client campaigns are personal information under the Act on the Protection of Personal Information (APPI). Compare the sub-processor list and the security overview with your obligations and each client's contract before that data goes into a task.