Harvest uses tracked time multiplied by billable rates to calculate the revenue for Time & Materials projects—without billable rates, there’s no way to accurately calculate profitability. If your account is missing billable rates, you’ll see a notice about adding missing rates each time you head to Reports > Profitability and you're viewing a time period that includes missing rates. 

You'll also see this message if you have Fixed Fee projects without set fee amounts or start and end dates set since we use that data to calculate revenue for Fixed Fee projects. 

For more information about the profitability report and how we calculate revenue, costs, and profitability, see our main Profitability report article. 

Missing data timeframes

When viewing the profitability report, you'll see messaging around missing data if the timeframe you're viewing is missing any data necessary to calculate profitability. This means that clicking the link to fix missing data will only direct you to fix the data missing for the timeframe you're viewing on the report. 

If you fix the missing data for one timeframe, and then go back to the view the report for a different timeframe with missing data, you'll once again see messaging directing you to the missing rates page. 

Missing rate types 

There are 3 different missing rate types Harvest will ask you to add: team rates, project rates, and task rates. 

Team rates 

These rates include both cost rates and billable rates. 

• Cost rates: The internal rate an employee costs you as a business. 
• Billable rates: The external rate you charge your client—includes both default billable rates and custom, project-specific billable rates 
  • Default billable rate: The rate configured in a teammate’s profile that applies to all projects set to bill by Person billable rate. 
  • Custom billable rate: Project-specific rates configured on a project that only apply to time tracked on that project for all projects set to bill by Person billable rate.    

Project rates 

These rates apply to all projects set to bill by Project billable rate. 

Task rates 

These rates include default billable task rates configured in the account from Manage > Tasks as well as custom task rates set up on specific projects. These rates apply to all projects set to bill by Task billable rate. 

Updating missing rates 

You’ll be prompted to go through the following steps to add rates for people, projects, and tasks, depending on which are missing in the account. 

Updating missing team rates 

In the team tab of the missing rates page, you'll be able to update missing cost and billable rates for your teammates.

• Missing cost rates: You’ll be able to set a single cost rate for any teammates missing a cost rate in the account. 
• Missing default person billable rates: You’ll have the option to set a single default rate for teammates. If the teammate has no default rate set in their profile and they aren’t using a custom project-specific rate, we’ll apply this update as their default rate in their profile and apply it to all projects set to bill by Person billable rate using a default rate. 
• Missing default custom billable rates: If you click the Show X projects link. you’ll see a list of projects with missing custom billable rates. From there, you can either: 
  • Enter a single custom rate that will be used on all projects where a teammate is missing a custom rate.
  • Enter a custom rate for each project listed individually.

Updating missing project rates, fees, and dates

Missing rates for Time & Materials projects

In the projects tab of the missing rates page, you’ll see a list of all Time & Materials projects set to bill by Project hourly rate with missing project rates. You can add a rate to each project on the table. 

Missing data for Fixed Fee projects

In the projects tab of the missing rates page, you'll see a list of all Fixed Fee projects that have missing fees and/or missing start and end dates. You can add fee amounts and start and end dates for your Fixed Fee projects so we can calculate the profitability for those projects. 

Updating missing task rates 

In the tasks tab of the missing rates page, you'll be able to add missing default and custom task rates. 

• Missing default task rates: If a task has no default task rate configured in the account, you’ll able to add a default task rate in the table. From there, Harvest will apply it to all projects set to bill by Task billable rate that are not using a custom task rate.
• Missing custom task rates: If the task has a default task rate configured from Manage > Tasks but the task rate is missing on a project that bills by Task billable rate, you’ll be prompted to add the rate on the missing rates page. From there, Harvest will apply it to all of the projects where a custom task rate is missing. 

A note on budget email alerts  

It’s possible that back-filling billable rates for projects with fee-based budgets will cause the project to exceed its budget since Harvest is now calculating a billable amount for all time tracked to the project. If your team also has budget email alerts enabled on these projects, this update could result in an influx of budget email alerts if the update causes the budget to exceed the percentage threshold set for the alert on the project. 

Budget alert notifications will continue to be sent every week until the project is archived, someone turns off the budget alert, or the budget is updated so that you’re no longer going over.

In this case, we’d recommend letting your team know they can ignore any budget alerts they may receive as you’re making these rate updates for profitability. It’s also possible to disable these alerts at any time. 

You can find more info on who receives these notifications and when they’re sent in: Budget email alerts.