RATES

​By adding Labor Rates and Charge Rates to each staff member’s profile you are adding financial information to the things you are already tracking.

• What Can Rates Do For You?
• Where Are Rates Used In The App?
• How Do You Set Up Rates?​

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What Can Rates Do For You?

By adding Labor, Charge and Billing Rates to your account, you can extract several dollar values when desired.

• Payroll Information
• Status of Design Budgets by Value of time spent
• Invoice Information
• Calculated 'Percent Complete' of Fees

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Where Are Rates Used In The App?

​The Labor Rate is used with time entries to show your basic cost of project work. You can access these types of tables by menu buttons on the Bookkeeping Page. Initially there is one “$ Payroll Prep” under the menu heading Tools. This can be used for getting payroll amounts prepared. Labor Rates are also used to manage Comp Time.
See more about Payroll Prep here.
See Comp Time here.

The Charge Rate is used with time entries to calculate the cost of time AND overhead that is ‘charged’ to the Project for each hour spent working on the Project. There are two places where Charge Rates are used for now. 

• First in the Project-Phase Budgets table on the Projects Page. The Charge Rates are used to provide the total dollar amount charged to the Project-Phase job-to-date. (1)

• Second the Charge Rates are used in the Labor Charge column of the Project Status Reports.(2)

The Billing Rates are used in the “Invoice Preview” table accessed by a menu button on the Bookkeeping Page under the menu heading Tools. (3) See this article for details.

​How Do You Set Up Rates?

​On the Bookkeeping Page, look in the Tools menu grouping, select the button labeled “Rates and Comp Time”.(3) This opens the Staff Rate table that lists all your staff members. You enter rates by clicking in the cell or by the “edit” link on the line of the staff member in question. 

Labor Rate
The Labor Rate is the amount you pay the staff member per hour.
If their pay is based on a yearly salary, use their annual salary divided by the hours in a year for your organization. The usual number of hours in a work year is 2080 (52 weeks x 40 hours). This includes paid time off.

Charge Rate
The Charge Rate is the Labor Rate multiplied by an overhead factor to represent the cost of labor plus a share of overhead. You can find more about calculating an appropriate Overhead Factor here.

Std Billing Rate
The Std Billing Rate is the Labor Rate multiplied by a factor that includes the overhead allowance AND profit. In some circumstances the Std Billing Rate is determined by what the market will bear. This Std Billing Rate is used as a benchmark when adding Custom Project Billing Rates.


Other Information
'Comp Time Entries' and 'History' are included in this table for convenience.

History is a place to store notes about a staff member: Hire Date, Left Date, Raise Dates and old rate, and anything else that you would like to store.

Making a Comp Time Entry here provides a way to track Comp Time if you use the concept. This is accessed from the Bookkeeping page, too.

Updated May 6, 2020