Adding Rates to People and Resources

Please note: Rates are included with the Blackbelt and Master plans. If you’re a Grasshopper subscriber, upgrade now to gain instant access.

Assign hourly rates to people and resources so you can forecast revenue and analyze how you’re tracking against project budgets. Once you’ve added rates, you’ll be able to calculate the value of scheduled billable hours and time logged via timesheets directly in your project reports.

Your rate card sets the default hourly rates for future projects. To set yours up:

1. Navigate to Settings > Rates.

2. Choose the desired currency.

3. Click on the New Rate button. 

4. Give the rate a name eg. “Designers” or “Engineers”, add an hourly rate and select the people or resources you want to assign a rate to.

Many teams define rates based on roles or seniority. For example:

• Junior Designer – $80/hour

• Designer – $100/hour

• Senior Designer – $120/hour

• Staff Designer – $140/hour
  

If you're looking to apply a flat rate across an entire project (e.g., everyone on this project should be billed at $50/hour), we recommend updating the rate directly within the project by overriding each person’s rate in the Teams tab (explained in the next part).

If your staff work at a day rate, you can replicate that in the rate card by taking their day rate, dividing it by the total number of hours they work per day, then adding that as an hourly rate. 

1. Navigate to the People & Resources Section.

2. Select the person you want to assign a rate to.

3. In the profile, find the Rates field.

4. Select an existing Rate or create a new one under Manage Rates.

When assigning or changing rates for people, there are a few key things to keep in mind:

• At the moment, rates are fixed per person, so you can only add one rate to a person. 

• Rate changes only affect future bookings. If you assign someone to a different rate in Settings or on their profile card the change will apply only to future bookings. Bookings already created will retain the rate they had at the time of creation. Learn in the next step, how to update a person’s rate for past and future bookings.
  

When a person is added to a project team, the rate applied is based on the rate they’re currently assigned in Settings or on their profile card. However, you can also override these rates on a project-by-project basis, which is helpful when:

• You’ve agreed on a discounted or blended rate with a client.

• The project has a flat rate for all contributors, regardless of role or seniority.

• A specific team member is being billed at a different rate than usual for this particular engagement.
  

To change rates on past and future bookings, head into the specific project’s Teams tab:

1. Go to Projects & Clients.

2. Open the relevant project.

3. Navigate to the Teams tab.

4. Manually adjust the person’s rate to update the value on any already scheduled bookings associated to this project.
   
   

You’ll see the above message notifying that rates on past and future bookings on this project will be changed. We ask you to confirm as rate changes will impact revenue reporting for this project.

If you’re missing rates in your project team or want to revert a rate to the default, you can choose “Apply Current Rate” and it’ll pick up the current rate this person is assigned to in Settings. 

Use reporting to see cumulative billable revenue across all projects within a defined time period. In the example above, you’ll notice two key totals:

• Scheduled ($1,776.25) based on 12h 15m of billable time. This is calculated using the hourly rate assigned to the people scheduled on the project (here $145/hour).

• Actual ($1,921.25) based on the amount of time that was actually logged: 13h 15m. This reflects the true value of time worked, pulled directly from Timesheets. 

The difference ($145 or Diff 1h) shows the gap between what was planned and the actual work performed, both in terms of hours and cost.

Below that, each individual’s contribution is broken down to show:

• Their scheduled vs. actual hours.

• The value of those hours based on their assigned rate.

You can use these insights to forecast future revenue and to understand how profitable each project was, based on the value of the actual hours worked by your team.

Please note: If someone hasn’t logged their actual time spent (or they’re not invited to your account), their actual value will appear as $0.

Navigating reports
Adding people and non-human resources
Creating projects and client