Setting Up Master Billing Rate Roles
Under Contract Management Settings, Roles and Billing Rates are the master price sheets you'll import into projects and proposals. This article covers how they're structured and why they're called "roles."
Why "Roles"?
Roles are named this way because of how they're used in budgeting — you can budget hours and labor by role rather than by a specific named individual. Think of it as two parts:
- Role — the name (Firm Principal, Project Architect, Production Personnel, Administrative Staff, etc.)
- Rate — the dollar value tied to that role
When budgeting a proposal or project, you often don't yet know exactly who will do the work — you know you'll need a certain number of Firm Principal hours, or Project Manager hours, without knowing which specific person will end up filling that role. Budgeting against roles lets you plan hours and cost before staffing decisions are made.
When someone actually records time, they select a billing rate/role for that time slip, which is what drives billing.
Rate Groups (Price Sheets)
Roles and rates are organized into groups — for example, Government and Private Sector in the example above. Think of each group as its own price sheet, tailored to a category of client work.
Grouping rates this way lets you import an entire set at once when setting up a new project or proposal — for example, selecting "Government" and pulling in every rate in that group as a batch, rather than adding rates one at a time. You're not limited to two groups either; you could create separate groups for state, city, and federal work if your rates differ across those categories.
Editing a Role
Each role includes:
- Name — the role label.
- Value — the dollar rate associated with the role.
- Template Group — which price sheet group the role belongs to. You can assign it to an existing group or select Create New Template Group to set up a new one on the fly.
Master Rate Changes Don't Affect Existing Projects
Once rates are imported into a project or proposal, they're stored independently on that record as its own set of billing roles and rates. This means:
- Editing a master rate here will not retroactively change rates already imported into existing proposals or projects.
- If you want existing projects or proposals to reflect an updated master rate, that's done separately through Maintenance, which lets you push updates to match your current masters.
This separation protects contracted work from unintentionally shifting rates after the fact, while still giving you a path to update in bulk when you do want changes applied.
Archiving Roles
If a role is no longer in use, you can archive it rather than deleting it. An archived role:
- No longer appears as an option when importing rates into new projects or proposals.
- Does not affect any existing proposal or contract that already has that role assigned.
Custom Roles Outside the Masters
You're not required to use only master roles and rates. Any proposal or project can also include custom, unrelated billing roles and rates set up specifically for that record. Masters simply make setting up a new project or proposal fast, since you can import a whole price sheet in one step rather than building rates from scratch each time.
Best Practice
Organize your master roles into groups that reflect how your pricing actually differs across the kinds of work you do — government vs. private sector, or further split by state, city, or federal if your rates vary that much. This turns project and proposal setup into a quick import rather than manual rate entry, while still leaving room for one-off custom rates when a specific job calls for something different.
Summary
Master Billing Rate Roles, found under Contract Management Settings, define the roles and dollar rates used for budgeting and billing across projects and proposals. Roles are grouped into price sheets (such as Government and Private Sector) for quick batch import. Changes to master rates don't retroactively affect existing projects or proposals — those changes must be pushed through Maintenance if desired. Roles can be archived without affecting existing records, and any project or proposal can also include custom roles and rates outside the master list.