Project Management Software for Marketing Agencies in Manila

Retainers are a volume business

A monthly retainer usually means a fixed set of deliverables: so many posts, so many banners, a newsletter, a report. Each one goes through brief, draft, internal review, client review and revisions. With several clients, that's hundreds of small items a month, and the agency's margin depends on getting each through without extra rounds nobody planned for.

Two things go wrong. Work piles up in "waiting for client" while the team starts the next batch, so everything lands late at once. And the extra revision rounds are never logged, so the account looks profitable until someone counts the hours.

ShipSprint puts each client on its own board, with a per-column WIP limit on the approval stage so a stalled client is visible before the backlog builds. On Team and up, time is logged in about five seconds next to the deliverable just finished, and the reminder goes to the person who did the work, not their manager. The hours per client are then there for the retainer review.

Clients in other time zones

If some clients are abroad, their feedback may arrive while your studio is closed. The board is the handover: a card's column says where each deliverable stands, so whoever opens the workspace next sees what came back and what's waiting, without a status call. The "my day" screen shows each person what's theirs today, and "I'm blocked" brings in the account lead with the context when an asset or approval is missing.

On Business, the owner command center shows every client on one screen, the Monday digest arrives assembled, and scorecards show delivered work and logged hours per person, adjusted for leave and visible to that person. There are no screenshots, keystroke logs or activity tracking.

The long Christmas season

In the Philippines, Holy Week and a Christmas season that runs long, into early January, are the periods that most affect capacity. If clients want festive campaigns out in December, that production work competes with the leave people have booked. Capacity planning on Team and up counts approved leave, out-of-office and public holidays, so you can see in October whether the December slate fits the people who'll actually be working.

Buying from Manila: what to check

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

Time zones. IST is 2 hours 30 minutes behind Manila. Your studio opens before we do, but most of your afternoon overlaps our working day, and replies usually come the same working day, Indian time.

Billing. Plans are charged per seat in Indian rupees through Razorpay, with your bank converting to pesos. How Philippine VAT applies to the purchase is for your accountant to say.

Data protection. Campaign work can involve personal data about a client's customers, which in the Philippines falls under the Data Privacy Act of 2012. Read the sub-processor list and security overview, and check them against your obligations and client agreements.