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 (formerly called hourly rates) represent what you charge clients for your team's time. These rates are used to calculate project revenue.

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

The hierarchy for rate application is as follows: Phase rate > Project rate > Person rate > Role rate. This means:

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

📝Note: Unlike bill rates, cost rates don't vary by project or phase since 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 by the Account Owner and users with Admin access in Team settings > Roles rates. To set a 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 Person, Project, or Phase rates (if set).

Cost rate changes include an Effective date to maintain historical accuracy. You can set the effective date for the cost rate in the past (helpful for accurate reporting on historic projects; bill rates and budgets won’t be impacted) or in the future—for example, for planned promotions or upcoming rate card updates.​The Effective date field appears once you edit the cost rate.

📝Note: 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 there's already a future effective rate saved, the future rate still takes precedence as the current rate. For example:

Person bill rates and person cost rates can be assigned to specific people in the Info tab of their profile. To set a person's rates:

📝Note: Person rates will override their role rates for all projects unless project-specific or phase-specific bill rates are set. Example: Your team can manage rates at the role level, but there are some people who, due to location or skills, have a unique cost rate and/or bill rate. In that case, you can set the unique rate on the person level, and it will override their role rate. You can override this further on a project level, if needed, by setting custom project rates.

Cost rate changes include an Effective date to maintain historical accuracy. You can set the effective date for the personal cost rate to be in the past so the rate is applied for historical projects or in the future—for example, for planned promotions.​The Effective date field appears once you edit the cost rate.

📝Note: The default effective date is "today". Once set, the cost rate displayed 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 only (unless a phase-specific rate is 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 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.

Cost rates include the effective date feature that allows you to set when a rate change takes effect. This maintains historical accuracy for reporting and allows you to plan for future rate changes. To view the history of rate changes:

Rate visibility depends on access rights:

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

📝Note: 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.

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:

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 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.