This article explains what happens during the rate lifecycle when adding or changing a user’s pay/bill rates.
Table of contents
- New user rates
- Changing from “None” to any rate
- Transitioning from one pay/bill rate to new rate
- Special cases with a rate defined for a project/user
New user rates
- When we add new users to the platform, we typically assign a specific pay and bill rate. The pay and bill rates for users who are not invited using the wizard will set to “None.”
- This means that any time tracked before the employee was added will be billed at a $0/hour rate since no rates were set for that user at that time. The rate applies to the entire day.
- The minimum time a rate a user can have is one day. The new rate will overwrite the existing rate if we change the rate within the same day.
If we have a weekly pay period, and we change the rate on Thursday, the new rate will be applied from Monday (given weekly pay periods start every Monday). So we can change the rate at any moment of current unpaid period, and it will be applied from the beginning of specified period.
Changing from “None” to any rate
Below are our available pay periods:
Monthly – 1st of the month
Weekly – 1st day of the week (usually Monday, but can be changed in settings for the organization)
Bi-weekly – here 2 options, 1st day of that week or 1st day of the week before,
Twice a month – 1st and 16th of the month
The fact that currently pay period is set to “None”, does not mean that there were no paid periods before that that can intersect with the one we are trying to set.
How is this possible? Periods such as weekly, bi-weekly depend on the day of the week, but monthly and bi-monthly can start and end on any day of the month.
So, if we have a monthly pay period, then we change it to a “None” period, and then switch to a weekly period, it is possible that the new weekly period would intersect the previous monthly period. Thus, the new rate would completely replace the “None” rate and would start at the beginning of the pay period set to “None,” because it is impossible to have paid activities during the time the pay period is set to “None.”
Changing from one pay/bill rate to new rate
New rate starts on beginning of the current pay period. So, if you had a weekly payment period, and you changed your rate on January 19 to a monthly rate, the new rate will start on the current Monday. But the automatic payment will be generated on January 31, because that’s the end of the new pay period. And the next pay period will be from February 1 to 28.
Special cases with a rate defined for a project/user
Currently, you can only set an employee’s rate for a project. We don’t keep historical records of user project rates.
The Project rate is always has a priority over users rates. So first we check if the user has a rate set for that project, and if so, we use it. If not, the system checks if the user has a rate, and if so, we use it. If not, we use the 0$/h rate for that project. As a result, if at some point the client sets a rate for an employee for a project, it will be used for all reports/invoices/widgets/payments.
