Cost rates allow you to keep track of internal costs and billable rates allow you to generate a billable amount to charge your clients. By setting these rates, you can track your projects' progress and get paid for the work you do.

Cost rates

The cost rate is your internal rate—what an employee or contractor costs you as a business. Cost rates apply to any time a person tracks to any project. 

Setting up cost rates

1. Go to Team.
2. Click the Actions dropdown to the right of the teammate you’d like to update.
3. Select Edit.
4. Go to their Basic info (left menu).
5. In the Cost rate field, enter the person’s hourly cost rate.
6. Click Update info.

We’ll use these cost rates to automatically calculate your project costs. You’ll see that reflected on your project reports and in exported time reports. We’ll also use cost rates to calculate costs in the Contractor report.

Each teammate has one cost rate for all projects at a given time. If you need to update a person's cost rate (e.g. they get a raise), you can enter a date for the new rate to go into effect. You can learn more in our article about Changing cost rates and billable rates.

Who can see cost rates

Only Administrators can see costs and export time reports that include costs.

Billable rates

The billable rate is the external rate you charge your client. We use billable rates to calculate your invoice amounts for Time & Materials projects. All people and tasks in Harvest can have default billable rates. You can also set custom billable rates per project.

Setting default billable rates for people

You can set a default billable rate when you add a person to your team. You can also add a default billable rate later:

1. Go to Team.
2. Click the Actions dropdown to the right of the teammate you’d like to update.
3. Select Edit.
4. Go to their Basic info (left menu).
5. In the Default billable rate field, enter the person’s hourly billable rate.
6. Click Update info.

This default billable rate will be automatically used for all projects (existing and new) that bill by Person billable rate, except any projects where you’ve already set a project-specific custom rate for the person. 

If you need to update a person's default billable rate, you can enter a date for the new rate to go into effect. You can learn more in our article about Changing cost rates and billable rates.

Setting default billable rates for tasks

1. Go to Manage > Tasks.
   • Only Administrators and Managers with permission to manage tasks can access Manage > Tasks. 
2. Click the Edit button beside the task that you’d like to edit.
3. Enter the billable rate.
4. Click Update task.

Note that changing the default billable rate for a task will only apply to new projects that bill by Task billable rate. Any existing projects that bill by Task billable rate will continue to use the previous default task rate. 

As with person rates, you can override the default task rate on any specific project by editing the project from your Projects section and changing the rate there.

Who can see billable rates

Only Administrators and Managers with the optional permission to see and edit billable rates and amounts can see and edit billable rates. Administrators can view and edit billable rates for everyone and Managers can view and edit billable rates for their assigned people and for projects they manage (if they have permission to edit projects). 

Managers with permission to view rates and who have access to Manage > Tasks can also view and edit default billable task rates.