At Float, we’re committed to providing you with tools that enhance your planning, estimation, and financial tracking processes. With our rates feature, you can track both what you charge clients (bill rates) and what it costs to employ your team (cost rates), giving you deeper insights into project profitability.

Bill rates represent what you charge clients for your team’s time. These rates are used to calculate project revenue.

Cost rates represent what it costs your business to employ people, including salary and overhead costs. These rates are used to calculate the actual cost of delivering projects.

The difference between these rates determines your project’s profit margin (except in the case of fixed fee budgets (fixed-price projects), where you can choose between two different margin calculation options.

Each rate type follows its own hierarchy, determining which rate takes precedence when multiple rates are set.

The hierarchy for rate application is as follows:
​Role bill rate > Person bill rate > Project bill rate > Phase bill rate. 

You may choose to manage bill rates at the role level, but some of your team members - due to their location, experience, or specialized skills - might have a unique rate. In such cases, you can set a person-level bill rate, which will override the default bill rate set for their role. If needed, you can also override the bill rate again at the project level, and even further at the phase level, by assigning custom project or phase bill rates. This ensures you always have full control and can apply the most accurate bill rate for any specific scenario.
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As an example:

The hierarchy for cost rate application is Role rate > Person rate. This means:

📝Note: Unlike bill rates, cost rates don’t vary by project or phase. They represent the consistent cost of employing people, regardless of which project they’re working on.

Both rate types are optional. You can use just one type of rate or both.

Role bill rates and role cost rates can be set up and managed by the Account Owner and users with Admin access in Team settings > Roles & rates.

To set the role rates:

To update the role’s rates:

​📝Note: When you update a role rate, you’ll be asked to confirm that this change affects people already assigned to that role. The new rate will not affect custom rates (if set).

When you edit the cost rate at the role level, the Apply to and Effective date fields are displayed. With Apply from a specific date onward, you can set the effective date for the cost rate in the past (helpful for accurate reporting on historic projects), today, or in the future (for example, for planned promotions or upcoming rate card updates).​ You can also choose to update the rate for all the past and future dates. This change does not affect custom person rates.

The default effective date is "today." Once set, the cost rate displayed is the rate that currently applies. If you save a cost rate with a past effective date but already have a future effective rate saved, the future rate still takes precedence over the current rate.
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For example:

To view the change history, use the View changes button. You can delete any intermediate or current rates with the trash bin icon.

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Person bill and cost rates can be set in the Info tab of each person's profile. If a person is assigned a role, their rates will be automatically inherited from the role-level, but they can be overwritten as needed.

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). Under the View changes button, you can review what was added, including the effective date.

​To set or update personal rates:

Once a person has personal rates set, the role rates are strikethrough to indicate that they have been overwritten.

When you edit the cost rate, the Apply to and Effective date fields are displayed. With Apply from a specific date onward, you can set the effective date for the personal cost rate to be in the past (so the rate is applied for historical projects), today, or in the future (for example, for planned promotions).​ You can also choose to update the rate for all the past and future dates.

The default effective date is "today". Once set, the cost rate displayed in the person's profile is the rate that currently applies. To view the change history and delete any intermediate rates, use the View changes button.

Project bill rates can be set in the Team tab of a specific project and apply to that project and its phases only (unless phase-specific rates are set).

By default, phase bill rates are inherited from the project level (if project rates are set), but you can choose to set phase-specific bill rates instead. This can be done in the Team tab of a specific project phase. The phase bill rates apply to that phase only.

📝Note: Project and phase rates only apply to bill rates, not cost rates. Cost rates remain consistent across all projects.

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). Under the View changes button, you can review what was added, including the effective date.

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.

Cost rates, just like role changes, support a point-in-time effective date, which allows you to specify when the change takes effect. This maintains historical accuracy for reporting and enables you to plan for future rate changes. 

When you edit the cost rate at the role or personal level, the Apply to and Effective date fields are displayed.

With Apply from a specific date onward, you can set the effective date for the cost rate in the past, today, or in the future.​ Choosing All the past and future dates updates all points-in-time.

The visible cost rate field always reflects its values as of today. Once changes are made, a View changes button appears, allowing you to track and manage historical updates.

Example:

Example:

You can view the history of role and cost rate changes under the View changes button in the Info tab of a person’s profile. This is where you can delete specific role changes or custom cost rates, delete a role change, and re-add it with a different effective date, or override existing history entries by assigning a new role or rate for the same date.

Changes in the View changes are not saved until you click Update person.

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📝Note: Deleted entries revert to the last known role or cost rate. Custom rates are preserved unless explicitly removed.

📝Note: Role-level changes are listed in the history as well, but they cannot be removed from the personal level. To modify them, navigate to Team settings > Roles & rates.

To review the role level cost rate history, use the View changes button in Team settings > Roles & rates. You can delete any intermediate or current rates with the trash bin icon.

Personal bill rates do not have an effective date. When you update personal bill rates, they take effect immediately for new projects or phases you create after the change. Existing or historical projects and phases are not updated when bill rates are modified.

The Account Owner and team Admins can review any roles and rate changes in Team settings > Activity.

​💡 Here's a tip: You can also access the already filtered activity feed with the View activity button on the Roles & rates page in Team settings.
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Rate visibility depends on access rights:

These permissions can be set individually in the Access tab of a Manager's profile.

💡 Here's a tip:  Cost rates often contain sensitive salary information. Make sure you only grant access to users who need this information. By default, Managers do not have view and/or edit access to cost or bill rates. You can enable this manually at any time.

In Team settings > Roles & rates > Who can see rates, the Account Owner and Admins can quickly check who has access to bill rates and cost rates, making it clear exactly who can see what.

You can update role rates for multiple people at once using the bulk edit feature:

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. 

The updated bill rates will apply to selected individuals on the person level and will be applied to new projects and phases. They will not affect the current project or phase bill rates.

With both bill rates and cost rates set up, Float automatically calculates profit metrics for your projects. Here are some calculations to keep in mind:

These metrics are currently available on the Project view and the Single Project Report, which provides a detailed profitability breakdown for a specific project.

📝Note: On the Project Reports, you can see fees (Scheduled and/or Logged, or Past Logged, Future scheduled), costs (Scheduled and/or Logged, or Projected), and budget for each project. The margins are currently not available for multiple projects report.