Rates & Costs allows you to add hourly rate and fixed rate to your projects and tasks, and hourly rate and hourly cost to users. This can be useful for project billing, budgeting and payroll!
Prices in TrackingTime are defined at the project level. Within the project, you can set how the work is billed—whether it's a fixed project rate, a variable rate based on the number of hours worked (project hourly rate), or the hourly rate of the user performing the task (user hourly rate). You can also manage exceptions by adjusting the settings for a specific task. For example, you might have a project billed at $50 per hour, but want to charge $100 for a particular task.
Enable Rates & Costs
Roles: admin | Paid feature
How to enable Rates & Costs:
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⚠️ Please note that you need to be set up as an account administrator to activate and to use this feature. You can enable and disable Rates & Costs at any time, as required.
⚠️ Rates can be set at three different levels: Project, Task and User. Regarding their application for costs calculation, they have a hierarchy that'll be explained below.
How do rates & costs work?
In TrackingTime, rate and cost are different concepts used for financial tracking:
Rate: This is the amount you charge for your work, typically per hour. It can be set for projects, tasks, and users. It's used for billing clients and calculating revenue.
Cost: This represents the expense associated with an employee, such as their salary. It's set as an hourly cost for users and helps in calculating internal expenses.
📝 Both rate and cost can be added to users, allowing you to track both billable amounts and internal expenses for your team.
Rates & Costs for projects
Roles: admin | Paid feature
Within the project, you can set how the work is billed—whether using a fixed project rate, an hourly rate for the entire project, or individual user hourly rates. These settings ensure accurate cost tracking and billing while also helping to generate detailed reports.
Fixed rates for projects
Set a single, predefined rate for the entire project, regardless of hours worked or who performs the tasks.
How to set up fixed rates for projects:
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Hourly rates for projects
Define a rate based on the total hours worked on the project, ensuring billing reflects actual time spent.
How to set up hourly rates for projects:
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User hourly rate for projects
Apply individual hourly rates for each team member, so costs vary depending on who completes the work.
How to set up user hourly rates for projects:
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📝 Go to the Rates & Costs for users section of this article to learn how to set rates for your employees.
Overriding the project rates' configuration
Project hourly rates will be overridden by any custom task rates set. If rates for all 3 levels were set (task, project and user) the rate used to calculate amount owed for time worked, will be the one set in your task.
How to set up rates for tasks:
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📝 If "Project hourly rate" is chosen instead of "Custom Rate", the rate applied for the task will be the one previously set in the project settings.
Rates & Costs for users
Roles: admin | Paid feature
If a rate was not applied to the task or project you are tracking, the rate used to calculate amount owed for time worked, will be the one set for each employee.
How to set up rates&costs for users:
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Validity periods
The validity period feature in Rates & Costs ensures accurate tracking of employee compensation over time. Employees may have had a specific rate when they were hired, but this rate could change on a certain date due to raises, promotions, or policy updates. By defining validity periods, the system applies the correct rate based on the applicable timeframe, ensuring precise cost calculations for payroll, budgeting, and reporting.
How to assign a validity period to an employee:
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⚠️ Remember to check which levels were set up (task, project and user) when calculating total costs, as the final amount will depend on the levels and their hierarchy.