Hourly rates and project costs

Hourly rates turn project time into money: what a project costs and how much of it you can bill. Rates and project costs are part of the Pro and Premium plans.

Rates, cost amounts and invoices are visible only to owners and admins. Rates are close to salary information, so team admins, managers, project managers and employees see hours in the projects and in the reports, never rates or amounts, and the support team cannot see them either.

Where to set rates

• Projects → Rates lists every rate, in three tabs: Person, Project and Person on project.
• The Rates tab of a project shows the rates of that project and its people.

A rate has an hourly amount, a currency and the day it is valid from (and, if you like, the day it ends). To change a rate from a date, add a new rate from that date: the previous open-ended rate of the same person or project ends the day before. Past time keeps the rate that was valid on its day, so a raise does not change last month’s costs.

Which rate applies: the three layers

Every time entry gets one rate. Focus looks for it from the most specific layer to the least specific one and takes the first rate that is valid on the day the time entry starts:

Order	Layer	Set for	Example
1	Person on project	One person on one project	Ali on Website redesign: 200 TRY
2	Project	Everyone on one project	Website redesign: 150 TRY
3	Person	One person on every project	Ali: 100 TRY

So the precedence is person on project, then project, then person.

• A more specific rate always wins, whatever its amount. 0 is a valid rate: a person-on-project rate of 0 means that this person’s time on this project is free, and it wins over the project and person rates.
• When a layer has no rate valid on that day, Focus moves to the next layer.
• When no layer has a rate, the time is unrated: it counts in the hours but not in any amount, and the report shows it in the Unrated column. An invoice cannot include unrated billable time (rate_missing).

With the example rates, and the person-on-project rate valid from 10 October:

Time entry	Rate	Why
Ali on Website redesign, 5 October	150 TRY	The person-on-project rate is not valid yet, so the project rate applies
Ali on Website redesign, 12 October	200 TRY	The person-on-project rate applies
Ayşe on Website redesign, 12 October	150 TRY	Ayşe has no person-on-project rate
Ali on an internal project without a project rate	100 TRY	Only Ali’s person rate is left
Ayşe on that internal project, without a person rate	Unrated	No layer has a rate

Which rate applies? on the rates page shows, for a person, a project and a day, which rate applies and the candidates of every layer.

Currencies

Project and person-on-project rates are in the project’s currency (rate_currency_mismatch otherwise). A person rate can be in any of TRY, USD or EUR. Amounts are never converted: when a project’s time is priced in two currencies, the report shows one amount per currency, and an hours budget is not affected.

The same rates are used for costs and for invoices; there is no separate cost rate.

Billable time

Whether a time entry is billable is decided in three steps: the entry’s own setting, else the task’s, else the project’s. The cost amount counts all time of a project; the billable amount counts only billable time.

How amounts are calculated

For each group of time with the same rate, the hours are added up and rounded to four decimals, then multiplied by the rate and rounded to the cent (kuruş), with halves rounded away from zero. A report row adds up its groups.

The projects report

Open the Projects report under Reports in the menu, or the Report tab of a project.

• Choose a date range (up to 366 days) and group by one or two of project, task, person, client and day.
• Filter by project, client, team, person and billable or non-billable time.
• Each row shows the tracked, billable, non-billable and unrated hours. Owners and admins also see the cost amount and the billable amount per currency; for everyone else these columns are not shown.
• A time entry belongs entirely to the day it starts, even when it goes past midnight.
• You can also show the productive time inside the project time. It takes longer to calculate.
• Budget cards show how much of each project’s budget is used, over all time: an hours budget against all tracked hours, an amount budget against the cost in the project’s currency (owners and admins only).

Export on the report page offers the Projects template, part of the Pro and Premium plans, with the person, team, client, project, task, period and hours. Owners and admins can include the rate and amount columns with Include rates and amounts; without it, or for anyone else, those columns stay empty (exports and e-mail reports).

Error messages

Code	What it means
rate_overlaps	Another rate of the same layer, person and project is valid on some of these days; change the dates
rate_currency_mismatch	A project or person-on-project rate is not in the project’s currency, or on an invoice a rate’s currency differs from the invoice currency
rate_missing	Billable time on the invoice has no rate on any layer; add a rate and try again
rate_not_found	The rate does not exist any more