Overview
Charge out rates now live at the company level instead of on the individual user. Instead of giving each staff member their own pay rate and charge out rate, you build a list of named rates once, then assign them to the people they apply to. This article walks through where to find that list and how to set one up.
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Where to find it
Go to Settings â Time Entries. The first tab is Labour rates.
This tab is only visible to users with the Can edit pay and charge out rate for all employees permission. If you can't see it, that's why.
The rates list
Each rate shows a row with:
Column | What it means |
Status | Active or Archived. Archived rates can't be picked on new time entries. |
Name | The customer-facing name, with the internal name underneath it. |
Cost | The pay rate multiplier, e.g. 1x or 1.5x. |
Pricing cost | The cost used when you're quoting or estimating. |
Sell rate | The charge out rate per hour. |
Tax | The tax rate on the line. |
Assigned | Avatars of the staff who hold this rate. |
In app | Whether staff can see and pick this rate themselves. |
You can search the list, filter by status, and filter by user. The ⯠menu on each row lets you edit or archive.
Adding a rate
Click New rate. You'll be asked for:
Customer-facing name (required) - The name that shows up outside Fergus. When labour is pulled into a quote or invoice, this is the name your customer sees on the line item.
Internal name (optional) - What your team sees. This appears in the dropdown when someone is logging time, so make it something your staff will recognise.
Pay rate multiplier (required, defaults to 1x) - Multiplies the employee's own pay rate to work out the cost of that time. Leave it at 1x for normal hours, or set it to 1.5x for an after-hours rate. This multiplies cost, not what you charge - the charge out rate is set separately below.
Charge out rate (required) - What you bill per hour on this rate.
Cost when pricing (required) - The cost figure used when quoting or estimating, or when this rate is added to a quote as a price book item. Because each person on a rate can have a different underlying pay rate, this gives you once fixed figure to price against rather than a moving one.
Tax rate (required) - Defaults to your standard rate.
Assigned staff to this labour type - Click + to pick who holds this rate. A rate needs at least one person assigned
Automatically apply this rate when a new user is created - Tick this and every new staff member picks the rate up automatically. It only affects people created after you tick it - existing staff still need adding with the + above.
Naming your rates
You've got two name fields doing two different jobs:
Customer-facing name goes on quotes and invoices. Keep it plain and professional - describe the work, not your internal accounting.
Internal name is what your team picks from. Make it short and unmistakable in a drop down.
Customer-facing name | Internal name | When you'd use it |
Standard hourly | Base rate | Normal weekday work |
After hours | AH 1.5x | Evenings and weekends, multiplier 1.5x |
Emergency callout | Callout | Urgent out-of-hours attendance |
Apprentice labour | Apprentice | Lower charge out for trainees |
Senior technician | Senior | Higher rate for licensed or specialist work |
A couple of habits worth keeping:
Don't put dollar figures in the name - it's wrong the moment you change the price, and it's visible to customers.
Avoid staff names - rates are assigned to people already, and naming a rate after someone falls apart the moment they change role or leave.
Default vs assigned
Assigned means the person is allowed to use that rate. They'll see it in the list when they log time.
Default means it's the one applied automatically when a time entry is created without anyone choosing otherwise.
A person can be assigned several rates but only ever has one default. A person can never be left without a default, and you can't hide a rate that's somebody's default - that would leave them with nothing to fall back on.
Show in app
The In app toggle on each rate controls whether staff see it when logging their own time.
This lets you keep rates for your own bookkeeping without cluttering, what your team sees. Two things to know:
Hidden means hidden - if someone's assigned a rate that's turned off in app, they still won't see it. Visibility overrules assignment.
If someone only has one rate assigned, they won't see a rate picker at all on mobile - there's nothing to choose, so the screen stays simple.
Anyone with the Can edit pay and charge out rate for all employees permission sees every rate regardless of the toggle.
Archiving a rate
Archiving takes a rate out of circulation - it stops appearing as an option on new time entries, but existing entries that used it are untouched.
You can restore an archived rate later and it comes back with its visibility, staff assignments, and tier pricing intact.
If your rates came through as "Rate type A"
If you open this tab and find rates already sitting there named "Rate type A", "Rate type B" and so on, that's expected - Fergus set these up for you automatically based on the rates your team was already on. That's deliberate - Fergus only has your dollar figure to go on, so it doesn't guess what you'd want to call something.
Renaming is the priority: go to Settings â Time entries â Labour rates, click the ⯠button â Edit on each rate, and give it a proper customer-facing and internal name using the guidance above. Worth also checking the Cost when pricing figure (it defaults to the highest pay rate among staff on that rate - a safe but not necessarily accurate starting point) and each person's default rate while you're in there.
Need help?
Reach out to our support team at support@fergus.com