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A rate turns an hour of work into money. TimeTracker keeps two of them for every person – a billable rate (what you charge) and a cost rate (what that hour costs you).

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What a rate does

Every time entry is priced the moment it is saved. TimeTracker looks up the rates that apply to that person on that date, multiplies them by the hours, and stores the result on the entry. That one step is what makes the rest of the product work:

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The two rates

Billable rate

What you charge a client for one hour of this person’s time.

Cost rate

What that same hour costs your business.
Sarah Lin at Northwind Studio is billed at 100/hour∗∗andcosts∗∗100/hour** and costs **45/hour. Three hours of her time are worth 300∗∗totheclientandcostNorthwind∗∗300** to the client and cost Northwind **135. The margin is $165.

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Where rates live

There are four places a billable rate can be set. Only one of them can hold a cost rate. A cost rate is a property of the person, not of the work. Someone costs you the same whoever they are working for, so there is no project or client cost override. See /rates/cost-rates.

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How one rate is picked

When several levels have a rate, the most specific one wins: Task → Project → Person → Client If no level has a rate, the hour has no billable value. TimeTracker never guesses a rate and never falls back to zero. The full rules, including what happens with different currencies, are on /rates/how-rates-are-chosen.

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Rates are dated, and history never changes

Every rate you set has an Effective from date. Setting a new rate adds a new dated row – it never overwrites the old one. That matters because a time entry keeps the rate it was recorded at. Raising Sarah’s rate in July does not re-price the work she did in June, and it does not restate an invoice you already sent. See /rates/rate-snapshots.
Because entries snapshot their rate, a rate you set today only prices work recorded from its effective date onward. If you set a rate late, the time already tracked keeps whatever rate applied when it was saved.

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Who can see what

Rates split into three separate permissions: Cost is a firewall, not a hidden column. A Project Manager who opens the rates page never receives a cost figure at all. See /rates/rate-permissions.

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Plans

Billable rates are free. Setting a cost rate needs the profitability feature, which is on Pro. Cost figures already recorded stay readable if a workspace drops to Free. See /concepts/plans-and-features.

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Common questions

No. Time tracking works without any rates. The entries carry no billable value, so invoices and budgets have nothing to price against.
Yes, and that is the normal setup. Rates are per person. Sarah is 100/hour,Jonasis100/hour, Jonas is 120/hour, Ana is $80/hour.
Yes. Set a Default rate on the client record and leave the person rates for everything else. See /rates/project-and-client-rates.
Each rate carries its own currency. The winning rate decides the currency of that entry. See /rates/currencies-and-exchange-rates.
Yes. Open the person’s rate history and remove the row. Time already tracked keeps the rate it was recorded at. See /rates/set-a-person-rate.

Billable rates

What you charge, in detail.

Cost rates

What an hour costs you.

How rates are chosen

The exact precedence order.

Set a person rate

Step by step.

Rate snapshots

Why history never moves.

Billable vs non-billable

Which hours can be charged at all.