At Float, you can set up two types of rates: cost rates and bill rates. While both are optional, together they move you beyond scheduling and into real financial visibility—giving you a complete picture of how profitable your work actually is.

Cost rates reflect the real expense your business incurs to employ people, including salaries and overhead. They're internal-facing, often contain sensitive salary information, and are used to calculate the true cost of delivering projects.

Every employee has a cost—whether their time is billed or not. Even if a team member is not assigned to project work, is working on an internal or non-billable project, or their work is not invoiced to a client, there is still a real cost to your organization.

To operate profitably, your revenue must exceed the combined cost of employee time, overhead, and operational expenses.
​

Setting up cost rates allows you to:

​💡 Here's a tip: Grant access to cost rates carefully. These figures often reflect individual salaries and should only be visible to people who need them to manage budgets or report on profitability.

At Float, cost rates apply to a role or to a person. They cannot be customized per project or per project phase.

​

Cost rates on the personal level are set in the Info tab of each person's profile. They can be set and edited by the Account Owner, Admins, and Managers with permission to edit people.

Cost rates follow a simple hierarchy: Role cost rate → Person cost rate.

Account Owners and Admins can set and manage role cost rates in Data studio > Roles.

When role cost rates are set, any new person assigned to that role automatically inherits the role’s cost rate.
​

To add a new role and set its cost rate:
1) Navigate to Data studio > Roles

2) Click the (+) plus button

3) Enter the role's name

4) Add cost rate

2) Click the role's name

3) Click +Add a rate

By default, the rate will apply to anyone with that role assigned, both to all past and future dates. The new role cost rate does not affect a custom personal cost rate (if set).
​

To update the existing cost role rate from a specific date:

2) Click the role's name

3) Click +Add a rate,

The Cost rate activity shows the full history of changes for that role's rates.

Cost rate effective date on role level

When you update a role cost rate, Flot shows an Apply to field where you can set when the new rate takes effect - in the past (for accurate historical reporting), today, or in the future (for a planned promotion or upcoming rate change).

The default effective date is today. If you save a rate with a past effective date but a future rate is already saved, the future rate still takes precedence over the current rate.
​
For example:

To view the change history, click the role name and review the Cost rate activity section. You can delete any intermediate or current rates from the action menu. If you delete the oldest rate, the next available rate applies "from the start."

Anyone with permission to edit people can set and manage personal cost rates in the Info tab of each person’s profile. If a role is assigned and has a cost rate, the person inherits that rate by default, but you can override it at any time.

2) Enter the cost rate in the Cost rate field

3) In the Appy to field, set the effective date: apply the rate to all past and future days or from a specific date onward.

4) Save with Update person

Changes will affect costs in past and current projects if the effective dates overlap existing allocations.

Once a person has a personal rate set, the role rate is strikethrough to indicate it has been overwritten.

Cost rate effective date on the personal level

As with the role-level cost rate, you can set a person cost rate's effective date to a past, current, or future date. You can also apply the rate to all past and future dates. The default is today. To view the person's rate change history and delete intermediate rates, click View changes below the Cost rate field.

When you first assign a role to a person, it applies from their start date. If no start date is set, the role applies to all points in time. The default cost rate and bill rate are inherited from the selected role (unless a custom rate is applied).

When role-rates are in use, and you change a person’s role, you will be prompted to select the effective date:

Once you select the effective date, click Update person to save the changes.

Each role update:

When changing the role of a person who already has custom person rates set, you will also be asked to:

If you choose to use the existing person rates, they will be preserved and applied from the selected effective date, while the role itself will be changed.

If you choose to apply the new role rates to all past and future days, any historical personal rates will be removed.

The role and rate changes, along with their effective dates, are saved and can be reviewed and edited under View changes.

You can update rates for multiple people at once using the bulk edit feature on the People page.

Updating cost rates applies the new custom rate for the selected people. The change is applied from the selected effective date. Updating cost rates does not affect bill rates for current projects.

Understanding your team’s cost is essential for managing profitability. Once cost rates are set for each team member, you can use the Report pages to analyze the true cost of your team’s time.
​
See these articles to learn more: People Report, Projects Report, and Single Project Report.

The type of cost data available depends on your plan:

In Report > People, you can analyze scheduled costs across different dimensions to understand how team time translates into financial impact.

In the People tab of the People Report, you can review the scheduled costs for each team member. You can use the drop-down arrow next to the person's name to view the scheduled costs for each project they are assigned to.

Scheduled cost is calculated based on:

Non-billable hours are included because—even though they are not invoiced—they still represent a real cost to your organization.

In the Roles tab of the People Report, you can review scheduled costs grouped by role. This includes:

In Report > Projects, you can review the scheduled cost of each project across your workspace. If a project has phases, you can use the drop-down next to the project name to display the phase details. 

The Single Project Report allows you to analyze the actual costs of a specific project.

The project total cost includes scheduled team costs and recorded expenses.

Costs = (team's scheduled hours × cost rates) + expense costs

Project costs are included in margin calculations for the Time & Materials and Fixed Fee projects.