Person (User) Rate

Solution Overview

Rates are used when it comes to estimating and calculating work costs or labour expenses. There can be a Cost rate and a Sell rate.

• Cost rate refers to how much an employee or a team costs the company.
• Sell rate refers to how much we earn selling the services of an employee or a team.

The solution enables Rates for a Person (or a User). The Hourly Rate field is intended for keeping information about a person's Hourly Cost Rate. Rates are set for a specific Period – using Planned Start and End Dates – so you can track the change of rate evolvement over time. The information about people rates is used to calculate labour cost, as well as work cost using, for example, time spent working on a work item, effort and cost per point or cycle time. The solution can be extended with additional custom fields to track more information, such as Sell Rate, Profit, etc.

After solution installation, you'll find a new Rates tab on a User view. It won't have any costs right away, however later will show all the previous, current and future person rates with the start/end dates.

Solution Configuration

To make Rate information available to a limited group of people, we need to hide Rates and other sensitive records in a separate portfolio (project) called 'Budgeting', for example. After creation, all the Rates will move to this secret project, even if created in a different project by mistake. By assigning people to this project, you will provide access to the Rate details. People who don't have access to the 'Budgeting' Portfolio (Project) won't see anything on the Rates tab on a User view.

• Create a 'Budgeting' Portfolio
• Copy a 'Budgeting' Portfolio ID
• Go to Settings -> Automation Rules
• Replace the Project ID parameter in the following rules:
  • Create Rates for Existing Users
  • Generate User Rates automatically for newly created Users
  • Change Rate project to Budgeting

Note: After adding a new Budgeting Portfolio (Project) go to User Rates view, click Actions -> Setup View -> Portfolios (Projects) context filter and choose newly added Budgeting portfolio in the “Portfolios selected by default” section then click Save. 

Create Rates for Users

Note: Skip the following sections in case you plan to install Person (User) Blended Rate solution.

Now a Rate record will be added automatically for each newly created User. However, we need to generate rate records for existing people (active and inactive).

• Go to Settings -> Automation Rules
• Enable Create Rates for Existing Users rule
• Open the rule and click the Save and Trigger Now button (make sure it has the correct Project ID from the previous step)

Note 1: The rule has to be disabled after rate records for people are generated.

Note 2: In case there are more than 1000 users in the system, you'll need to trigger the rule multiple times until rates are created for each user (message about 0 records processed will be shown in the rule log).

Set Rates for people

• Go to User Rates view
• Click Setup View
• Select the created earlier 'Budgeting' Portfolio (Project) in the context selector, so the data from this Portfolio (Project) is visible on a view. Now you should start seeing all the created for users Rates in the list.
• Update a Rate for each Person.

When a new rate is created for a User and Planned Start Date is not set, Planned End Date = today-1(day) is set for a previous Rate and a Planned Start Date = today is set for a newly created Rate. If Planned Start Date is set for a new Rate, then Planned End Date for the previous Rate is set as new rate Planned Start Date - 1(day). The Current Rate = true property is updated based on the dates of the Rate, if it's in between of the Planned Start and Planned End dates.