Rate cards

In Settings > Financials > Rates you can create new Rate cards.

Written By Matti Parviainen

Last updated 14 days ago

Baseline: your global average

You will always have the global average rate to fall back to. We recommend using your latest known average rate for that. You can revise this over time if your averages change.

Rate cards

Create as many rate cards as you need. Depending on your pricing strategy and the amount of freedom given to your sales team to negotiate discounted rates, you may need a few of these.

Rate cards are always assigned to projects. Assign Rate cards to projects anywhere you modify the project details: Projects list, Timeline or Directory.

Why editing rate cards may be blocked

When a rate card is assigned to a project, you may no longer edit it. The reason why rate cards should not be edited (but duplicated and edited after copying instead) is that change in rate cards will also change all historical data.

You can add multiple rate cards to the same project: Create a new one, and go through the projects where the new rates should be applied, and add the new rate card starting on the date you choose. Then the past data will be untouched and the new rate card used from the chosen date onwards.

Setting up rate cards

Rates belong to a position on a project, meaning a role or a person, that might have many project allocations over time. Essentially, on the timeline, a position = one row. If you need the same person to have more than one rate on a project, create a new position for them.

You can set rates for positions with no role, for roles, and for roles within certain sites. Additionally, you can specify the rates for all seniority levels you’ve set up.

Note: If the person has a seniority but the rate card isn't defined for that seniority then it'll default to the rate card’s base rate. To keep things clear, adding the same role rate for each seniority is the best practice – if you have seniorities set but charge the same rate for all designers, for example. See example below:

Exceptions per position (that one team member who has a special price)

You can always override the rate per position in the team. Do this from the position editing window on the Timeline or in the Horizon, when you’re looking at the team setup. Click on the rate and choose “Position-specific rate” instead.

Review where your rates are coming from

When you open Project Details and look at the Planning section, each Position has the rate (and if you have set costs, the gross margin) visible. Hover your mouse cursor over it to reveal how the rate has been determined. Here is a team where each (named or unnamed) position is different:

Lots of differences in the rates across this team setup

Basic case: Position with no person, no seniority specified, using rate card

Hovering over 100 €/h: a Project rate card is in use, and a price for Developer role without a seniority is used. As the Position is yet to be assigned to a Person, it assumes that this is work in Helsinki, the Project Site.
Gross margin for the same position as above: Cost rate is determined from the Cost Card for Helsinki, and in there, the cost for Developers is 45 €/h. 55€/h equals to 55%

Rate & cost determined by the Position Seniority

Position has Role: Developer and Seniority: Junior. Rate card uses the 98 €/h rate for this combination.
The gross margin is also affected. Junior Developer costs 42 €/h.

Position-specific rate

A specific position can have a rate that simply does not follow the rate card. Here, the fictional example is a Developer who has the Leadership skill. The salesperson knows that we feel comfortable charging more for this. Once we assign a person to this position, we can see if the gross margin is 62.5%...

Person-based rates, costs and margins

...and here we see Steffi assigned to that position, and her cost is 70.17 €/h which will bring the gross margin down to 41.53%.
Another example of person-specific rate: this Helsinki-based project is borrowing Stefan from Stockholm – his seniority is Regular. If the project rate card has Site-specific rates, the Stockholm rate would be used instead of Helsinki.

Project-by-project pricing

You can also create a Rate Card from the project context and use it for that project only.

Have a look at the different ways to set rates (project-specific rate card, shared rate card, task-based rates and position-specific rates) in this short video:

Revenue in Reports

You can show most reports in either utilization-%, hours, or revenue. The global defaults may cause inaccuracies in the reporting, but at least it’s better than showing “not available” until all rates have been carefully set.

If you use multiple currencies, you may show any revenue report in any of the currencies. The conversion rate is the one you set in Settings > Rates & Currencies. Operating underlines any numbers that have been converted.

See also: get started with revenue.


Video: work with hourly rates and revenue forecasting (Ask to join our early access users!).