Budget rates
Rates are a specialized functionality in Budgety Advanced Edition designed to simplify and automate the creation of budget costs derived from personnel work. By standardizing pricing based on professional roles rather than individual contributors, organizations can maintain data integrity and ensure centralized pricing across a project.
A Rate is defined by three core components:
Role Name: A descriptive title for the professional profile (e.g., Technical Expert).
Hourly Price: The fixed monetary value assigned to one hour of work for that specific role.
Assigned Users: The specific team members whose work hours will be governed by this Rate within the budget.
Accessing the Rates Interface
To manage your budget rates, navigate to the specific budget view. Locate and click the [Budget Rates] button, situated immediately next to the budget selection dropdown menu.
If no rates have been defined for the selected budget, the interface will display an "Empty State" screen. You can initiate the setup using either of the following UI elements:
The [Create Rates] button located in the center of the Empty State screen.
The [Create Rate] principal button located at the top of the page (this remains the primary entry point once rates are established).
Creating New Rates
Establishing rates allows you to group users under a single financial profile, reducing manual entry for every cost item.
Open the Configuration Modal: Click the [Create Rate] button. A modal window will open, providing a brief overview of rate behaviors and inheritance.
Define the Role Name: Enter the functional title for the position (e.g., "Technical Expert" or "Product Manager").
Set the Hourly Price: Enter the standard hourly rate for this role (e.g., $80).
Select Users: Use the dropdown menu to select the specific users assigned to this role for the current project. You can also select Jira groups — when you do, Budgety will add the individual members of those groups to the rate at the time of saving.
When you select a group, Budgety resolves it into its individual members at the moment you save the rate. The rate is not kept in sync with the group — if members are added or removed from the group afterwards, the rate will not update automatically. To reflect group changes, you'll need to edit the rate and add the group again.
Note: The system supports a maximum of 100 individual rates per budget.
Managing Rates: Editing and Deleting
Editing Rates
You may update the name, price, or user list at any time. However, because Rates use an inheritance model, you must exercise caution:
Any modifications made to an existing Rate configuration will automatically update all budget costs currently associated with that Rate. For example, if you increase the Hourly Price, the system will immediately recalculate the "Total Cost" for every linked entry in your budget to reflect the new price.
Deleting Rates
Rates that are no longer required can be removed from the list. If the rate is used in at least one cost, it cannot be deleted.
Applying Rates to Budget Costs
Once defined, Rates are used during the cost creation process to automate financial tracking based on logged work.
Defining the Cost Basis: When creating a new cost entry, toggle the setting for [based on logged work]. In the "Source" selection, choose Rates instead of individual users.
Inheritance Behavior: Upon selecting a specific Rate, the Hourly Price is automatically pulled from the Rate configuration. This field is locked and cannot be edited within the cost creation screen. To change the price for a specific cost, you must navigate back to the Rates Management interface and update the master Rate; the change will then propagate to the cost entry.
Calculation Logic: The system generates a dynamic Total Cost using the following formula:
(Sum of all hours logged by assigned users within the specified date range) × (Fixed Rate Price)
Example: If two users assigned to the "Project Manager" rate ($90/hr) log a combined 320 hours between your start and end dates, the system will automatically calculate a total cost of $28800.
Key Considerations & Best Practices
Budget-Specific Scope: Rates are defined at the individual budget level. If you move to a different budget, you must define your rates again. This provides the flexibility to assign different prices to the same professional role across different projects based on client contracts or project complexity.
Operational Efficiency: Utilizing Rates eliminates the need to manually select individual users for every cost entry. By grouping users under a single role, you save administrative time and significantly reduce the risk of manual entry errors.
Centralized Data Integrity: Because costs inherit their values from the Rate, you can update your entire project's labor financial data from a single location rather than editing dozens of individual cost items.