A new year is at our doorstep, and with any luck, your company is getting ready to adjust your employees’ rates for the new year.

Rate information is stored in a few different places in Harvest—in a user’s profile and in a project’s settings—but you might not be familiar with how to update those rates.

Rather than spending New Year’s Eve thinking about the changes you need to make for January, here’s a quick rundown so you can spend the evening focusing on what really matters—family, friends, and hopefully some party hats and noisemakers.

Why You Need to Know About Changing Rates

Depending on where you change rates, you’ll see it impact your data in different ways. Some changes affect previously tracked time, while others affect only future time and projects.

It’s important to understand how these settings work in order to keep your data as accurate as possible.

How Rate Changes Affect Your Account

  • Changes to a person’s default billable rate (on a person’s profile in the new Team section) affect only projects created after the change. It will not affect existing projects. From a person’s Basic Info, you’ll see this:

Frost's Basic Info

  • Changes to a person’s billable rate on a current project (under Projects) will affect all historical data for that project. The updated rate will apply to all of the project’s time, both in the past and the future. You’ll see that rate applied in reports and on any invoices you generate after updating the rate. You’ll update this rate from a project’s Billable Rate field, shown here:

Project settings

  • You may have projects that started in 2016 and continue into 2017. However, 2017 may need different rates. In this case, we recommend that you duplicate your original project. Then, enter your new rates into your duplicate project, and archive your original. This preserves your historical billable rates.
  • A person can have only one cost rate in Harvest. Cost rates can be updated in a person’s profile under Team. Changes to a person’s cost rate will affect all cost rate data throughout your account, including data in archived projects.

For more details on how to adjust rates, check out the Changing Cost Rates and Billable Rates article in our Help Center.

You can also reach out to your Harvest Experts if you have any questions about changing rates, and they’ll be happy to help!

We hope 2016 was a paramount year for your business, and we thank you for letting Harvest be a part of that. Here’s to an even better 2017!