Rates: billable & cost

Rates are what turn tracked hours into dollars. Every person has up to two:

• Cost rate — what an hour of their time costs you (salary + overhead, per hour). Powers labor cost and margin numbers.
• Billable rate — what you charge clients for their hour. Powers revenue on time-and-materials work.

Set them in People, on each team member. Only admins and owners can edit rates.

If you don’t set rates

Everything still works — you just see hours instead of money. Revenue and cost show as zero until rates exist, which is why setting rates is step one after connecting ClickUp.

Role rates

Instead of (or alongside) individual rates, you can price by role — e.g. every “Designer” bills at $120/hr. Roles come from a dropdown custom field in your ClickUp workspace, so people’s roles live where the rest of their info does. A project set to “role rate” uses these instead of individual rates.

Which rate applies on a project?

Each billable project picks its pricing (see Projects):

• Project rate — one flat rate for all hours on the project
• User rate — each person’s billable rate
• Role rate — each person’s role’s rate

Cost rates always come from the person, regardless of project pricing — cost is about what your team costs you, not what you charge.

Changing rates over time

On Pro and above, rate changes are effective-dated: raise someone’s rate today and history keeps the old rate, so last quarter’s margins don’t silently rewrite themselves. Pro also unlocks per-project rate overrides.

A simple starting point

If you’ve never calculated cost rates: annual salary ÷ ~1,700 working hours ≈ hourly cost, then add 20–30% for overhead. Rough is fine — you can refine later, and rough rates already make the profit numbers directionally right.