What are they?

Rate cards are a mechanism whereby you can establish billing rates by either Resource Type/Role, by setting a default rate for the rate card or by using a combination of the two.  When used on a project, PI "looks up" what rate applies based on the rate card you attached to the project and the resource assignments.

Why would I use them?

Rate cards are typically used when you have customer facing projects, i.e. you are billing your customers for your services or work product. Rate cards are a convenient way to price your projects based on rates you negotiated with your customer.

How do I use them?

There are some things you'll need to know when using rate cards.

1. There is a rate card number. This is really like a name. Name the rate card something that will help you know what you are picking when assigning that rate card to a project. Don't go crazy-long on it though as you will need to be able to read it in the combobox on the project add/edit form.
2. Rate cards are attached to companies in PI, therefore, if you have negotiated a specific rate card with a customer, you will create that rate card on that company's profile.
3. Rates on a rate card are entered in in rate per hour.
4. Rate card rates are entered in for Resource Type/Roles (e.g. a Systems Architect role may be billed to the customer at $190/hour while a QA Tester may be billed at $130/hour), so make sure you set up your roles before adding rate cards.
5. A default rate can be entered on the rate card. If there is a default rate, it will only be missed if there is no role rate for an existing role. In our above example, the rate card with the customer contains Systems Architect role is priced to the customer at $190/hour while a QA Tester is priced at $130/hour. There is also a default rate of $165/hour on the rate card. There are 10 total roles but only the two listed here have rates. So...all assignments that are for a Systems Architect will be priced at $190/hour, all assignments that are for the QA Tester will be priced at $130/hour and all other assignments for all other roles will be priced at the default rate of $165/hour.
6. There are dates on the rate cards but currently, these are for informational purposes only.
7. You need to turn on using rate cards in the Administration > Projects > Default Project Options.

I have a company standard rate cards, not a rate card per customer. What do I do?

You can solve this in a very easy way by following these steps.

1. Create your your own company and be sure to check the "Is Internal" box if you are on the company admin list (make sure you add that column to your view) or the "Indicates the company is internal" box on the full add/edit page.
2. Create your standard rate card(s) under your own company.
3. When adding companies to your project, pick your customer. You will see that it is also in the "Company Default" selector.
4. Select a rate card. You will see that all of your standard rate cards you created under your own company are there for selection.

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