Staff Rates are directly related to a Matter Rate Type (MRT). Every Matter must have a MRT defined e.g. Discount, Base, Premium. You specify your Matter Rate Types under the settings ribbon in the organization settings dashboard. When you create a Event and link it to a Matter the MRT is used to lookup the staff's rate.
For example, you have a base rate of $300 an hour. You would create a MRT called "Base Rate". You would then set your rate for the MRT Base Rate under your profile located in the settings ribbon. An admin-enabled account can also set the rate for you via the "Staff Rate" tab of the user's account settings. In this case, we'll specify $300 per hour. When you create a Matter, you select which MRT to use for billing purposes. When you create an Event | Task and link it to the Matter HoudiniEsq uses the Matter's MRT and the Rate you specified in "My Profile" to calculate the fee for the given Event/ Task.
This will all be clearer after you follow the steps below OR you can watch the billing setup video here.
Setting Staff Rates in "My Profile"
Rates are directly related to Staff, therefore each Staff member should enter their Rates from the 'My Profile' menu item located in the Settings ribbon.
The General tab
This will be the first tab your Staff see when they click Profile under "my Settings." They can enter this information as they wish, but for now click on the "Staff Rates" tab.
The Matter Rates tab
This tab is where a Staff member can define or edit their current Matter Rates. To do so, utilize the Plus (+) or Edit (pencil) buttons at the bottom of the window.
Set Matter Rates
A Matter Rate Type or MRT is a billing classification e.g. Base, Discount, Premium, etc. It is not a monetary value. MRTs are used when you create Matters. A MRT simply states what bill rates are to be used when a Staff member creates a billable Event | Task for any given Matter. For example, three staff members are working on the same matter. The matter has its MRT set to "my firm's base rate" (you can name it anything). John, Jane and Kevin have set their bill rate for the selected MRT to $250, $300, and $90 respectively. When John performs a Event | Task the rate used will be $250 and when Jane performs a Event | Task the rate will bill $300. By using a MRT as a classification for bill rates each Staff member can bill differently on the same Matter. This is in stark contrast to placing a billing rate at the Matter level as some products do. In this scenario all Staff could only bill at the same rate. MRTs offer the greatest flexibility. Of course the rate assigned to a MRT isn't concrete. Staff can override a billable amount at anytime and even create Event | Task overrides. Once you have created all the MRTs you should have your staff enter their rates for each MRT under Settings 'My Rates'. You can add as many MRTs as you like and you can rename them at anytime. For fixed fee arrangements, create a MRT for that purpose e.g. Contingency. Have your staff enter their rate for this MRT as $0. Time will be recorded but no billable amount. When you are ready to bill the client you can create an Event | Task and set the billable amount to the agreed value or percentage. As mentioned above, staff members can optionally create Event | Task overrides. These overrides take precedence over the a staff rate. For example, you and your staff can set an Event | Task override for the Event | Task types 'Read Email' and 'Compose Email' to a reasonable amount to avoid sticker shock (example: a $400 per hour rate would mean that reading an email (.1 or 6 minutes) would be billed at $40). You use Event | Task Rates to set 'Read Email' to $20 instead.
Rates must be entered by each Staff Member. You should make sure all Matter Rate Types have been defined that way each Staff Member only need select the Matter Rate Type (e.g. Discount, Base, Premium, etc) and enter their Rate Amount for each.
From the Matter Rates tab you will find two sub tabs. Matter Rates and Event | Task Rates.
The Event | Task Rates tab
From the Matter Rates tab you can specify rates for individual task via the Event | Task Rates tab. Keep in mind that Event|Task rates ALWAYS override any current Matter based billing rates.
NOTE: Any Events that you commit with either a Matter or EventTask Rate will retain that rate when saved, even if the Matter or Event rate is updated. In order to change that Event's billing rate to the updated value, you will need to open the record and then Save it again.
Now that you have defined your rates for all Matter Rate Types you can create a new Matter. When you do this you will have to specify a MRT or Matter Rate Type. Now whenever you create a Event | Task that is linked to a Matter HoudiniEsq will use the associated Matter's MRT and your rate to calculate the appropriate fee for the given task based on its duration.
Follow this link to Part 3: Interface, getting around
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