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Rate Cards and Departments

Departments

Departments categorise your organisation into functional units (e.g., Engineering, Marketing) and enable role-based rate assignment for granular reporting and resource management.

Add a department

  1. Navigate to the Department tab and click Add a Department.
  2. Enter a Name (required) and optional Description.
  3. Ensure Department Status is set to Active.
  4. Save the department.

Tip: If a department is no longer operational, toggle Department Status to Inactive rather than deleting it.

Rate Cards

Rate Cards define the monetary value of specific roles. They link time logged on timesheets to a billable rate, automating profitability tracking without manual calculations.

Add a new rate card

  1. Navigate to the Rate Cards tab and click Add a Rate Card.
  2. Enter a unique Rate Card Name.
  3. Set Start and End Dates to define the card's validity period.
  4. Ensure Rate Card Status is set to Active.
  5. Click Create Rate Card to save.

Tip: Using specific date ranges lets you pre-configure future rate increases without affecting current active projects.

Configure role-based rates

  1. From the Rate Cards list, click View on a rate card.
  2. Locate the relevant Department dropdown to see the roles associated with it.
  3. Enter either a Daily Rate or an Hourly Rate for each role — the system automatically calculates the other based on a standard 8-hour workday.
  4. Assign a team member to the role from the Users section.

Tip — part-time staff: If a user works fewer than 8 hours per day, enter the Hourly Rate directly rather than relying on a daily-to-hourly conversion. Ponyrider will use the hourly rate and ignore the daily rate, ensuring project billing, forecasts, and utilisation calculations are accurate.

How Rate Cards Flow into Project Billing

When a project member is added, Ponyrider auto-populates their billing rate by following this chain:

  1. The staff member must have a role assigned within a department (Settings > Users).
  2. That department role must have a rate configured in a rate card (Rate Cards).
  3. That rate card must be assigned to the client the project belongs to (Clients).

When all three conditions are met, adding a project member automatically fills in their billing rate. You can override the value for an individual member without affecting the rate card.

If any part of the chain is missing, the rate field will be blank and must be entered manually. If the auto-populated rate looks wrong, use it as a prompt to check the rate card, the client assignment, or the staff member's department role.

Next: Clients