Rate Cards

Rate cards let you set consistent billing rates by role, tailor them per client, and keep your historical billing accurate even as rates change over time.

How rates are organised

• Organisation roles: your base set of billing roles and their hourly rates (for example, “Senior Designer” or “Account Manager”).
• User defaults: each person can have a default role and an internal cost rate, used to separate what you bill from what the work costs you.
• Client rate cards: optional overlays that adjust the base rates for a particular client.

How a project’s rate is decided

When work is billed on a project, the effective rate for each role is resolved in this order:

1. The client rate card selected on the project, if one is set.
2. The client’s default rate card, if it has one.
3. Your organisation’s base roles.

A client card acts as an overlay: it mirrors all of your active base roles by default and only stores the rates you choose to override. This means:

• Existing organisations keep working without setting up any client cards.
• Projects use your base organisation roles until a client card is selected.
• If a project doesn’t name a card, the client default is used when available; otherwise the base roles apply.

Rate snapshots

To keep historical billing accurate, rates are snapshotted at the moment they’re applied:

• A project member’s billable rate is captured when they’re assigned.
• Time entries capture both the billable rate and the internal cost rate that applied.

Caution

Editing a role’s rate later does not change rates that were already snapshotted on existing project members or time entries. To refresh a member’s rate, reassign them to a rate card role.

Reporting

Budget reporting distinguishes two figures:

• Billable spend: based on the billable rate snapshot.
• Internal cost: based on the internal cost rate snapshot.

Keeping these separate lets you see both what a project earns and what it costs, giving you a clear view of profitability.