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What Gauge does
One agency week in order: agreed work, approved time, next month's capacity and one billing packet.
Gauge keeps an agency's week in order: what each client agreed to, who can deliver it next month, what the approved work cost, and which approved work is ready for your bookkeeper. It is built for owner-led design, marketing and software agencies of about 5 to 40 people, with staff and contractors, hourly engagements and fixed-fee projects.
Gauge is MIT licensed and runs on your own computer. Every record stays in your own copy, and you can export all of it whenever you like.
What a week looks like
- People record their time, by hand or with a timer, against an engagement and a task.
- They submit it. The engagement's lead approves the exact entry, or returns it with a reason.
- On Review, you see the week's exceptions: missing time, overspend, capacity conflicts, approved work not yet billed, and decisions waiting for you.
- On Capacity, you see next month: each person's available, committed, tentative and remaining time.
- On Billing, finance prepares one packet of approved, unbilled work, approves it, and downloads the same CSV every time.
The parts
| Part | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Engagements | Clients, people, engagements with a responsible lead, assigned people and agreed scope, terms and change orders, tasks and fixed-fee milestones |
| Time | Manual entries and a persistent timer; submit, return, approve and audited corrections |
| Expenses | Project expenses with private receipts and a reimbursable flag |
| Capacity | Working calendars, contractor availability, leave, and tentative or committed staffing |
| Rates | Cost and bill rates that take effect on a date, private to finance |
| Billing | Billing preparation packets with exact source lines, approved once |
| Imports | The Harvest move-in: preview, reconcile, apply, roll back and undo |
| Access | Invitations and Gauge roles: staff, lead, finance and agent |
What Gauge does not do
Billing packets are preparation for your bookkeeper, not invoices. Gauge does not send invoices, take payments, run payroll, work out tax or post to a ledger; your accounting tool keeps doing that. Margin in Gauge is an operational calculation from the rates and terms you entered, not audited profit. Money is in Australian dollars, and every person and engagement has an explicit work timezone.
Next
Read Getting started to run Gauge and set up your first engagement.