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New Rates and Rate Types – Workshop
New Rates and Rate Types – Workshop

A Workshop to take you through each element of setting up new Rates and Rate Types as your Firm grows!

Vaughn avatar
Written by Vaughn
Updated over 2 years ago

Introduction

So your Firm has decided to change their hourly Rates and you’d like to do it en masse, maybe even on a set date. The good news is that, if you do your preparation right (outlined in this Guide), you can change all of your Rates at once with just a few button clicks.

To start, if you’re not completely familiar with the Rates system and how it all comes together, you should start by looking at this Workshop for Rates. This link will take you to a Guide that will walk you through Rates from start to finish. And if you already know the system, we can move on to the individual parts of updating your Rates, now!

Create a new Rate Type

First, we’ll want to create a whole new Rate Type. This will allow us to set the new Rate Type on Matters going forward and even change existing Matters to the new Rate Type if we choose to. To create a new Rate Type, first, click the Rate Type Entity on the left side of your screen.

Then click +New at the top.

Here, you need to (1) put a Name, (2) an optional Description, and finally, (3) click Save & Close.

Now your New Rate Type is almost all set and ready for new Rates to be created! This newly-created Rate Type will need to be Activated, as seen below.

Create New Rates

Next, we’ll need to create new Rates that include our new Rate Type. For a full Guide on Creating Rates, click here, but in general, we want to create a Rate for our new Rate Type for each Resource Type (that you use).

Again, check the Full Rates Workshop, found here, but below is a screenshot (and included in the video) of some of our new Rates after they’ve been created.

Note that the Rates above are in the Draft Rates list. For now, we’re simply setting the groundwork for everything, but we’ll go through how to set everything to its active state in the next section.

Pulling the Trigger

Once everything is set up (a new Rate Type and all new Rates created), we need to run through a couple of processes in order to set it all in motion and step one will be to Activate all of the new Rates that we created. We’ll start by going back to our list of Draft Rates, shown above, and then selecting a few in the List/Grid View.

You’ll note that there is no option to Activate these Rates en masse.

Instead, you’ll have to access each Draft Rate individually and click Activate on the Record level.

Once all these Draft Rates have been Activated, you’re READY TO START USING YOUR NEW RATES ON ALL NEW MATTERS, and when you create a New Matter, selecting the new Rate Type will allow you to use your new Rates!

What About Existing Matters

If you only want your new Rates to apply to New Matters (Matters created AFTER you completed the steps above) then congratulations, you’re all done! Simply select the new Rate Type on Matter creation and you’ll be good to go.

If, however, you want these new Rates to apply to existing Matters, you have another step to take. First, you have to isolate the Matters on which you’d like these new Rates to apply. Whether that’s all of them or only a few that you access via a specific View (or even if you just manually check them in the list), you need to select every Matter that you want to get the new Rates. Once you select them, click the Edit button at the top of the screen.

Find the Field for Rate Type, find your New Rate Type and select it.

Then click Save on the bottom right.

And finally, you’ll need to find the Add Missing Rates button on the top of the screen and click it for your selected Matters. This will update the specific Matter Rates for that Matter to the new Rates associated with the new Rate Type.

Two things to note here:

1 – This process will remove all currently-existing Matter Rates and *replace* them with the new Matter Rates based on the new Rate Type.

2 – This *WILL NOT* apply the new Rates to existing Time Entries on the Matter, but will only apply to new Time Entries going forward. Existing Time Entries will need to be opened and updated to see the new Rates and Amounts if (and only if) you want to change them, but it is not recommended that you do this on Time Entries that have already been Invoiced.

Now you’re ready to charge just a little bit extra going forward!

Bonus! What about Existing Time Entries?

There's a new feature in the form of a Flow called Recalculate Matter Rate and Amount that will allow you to update existing, uninvoiced Time Entries to reflect the new Rates that you just set. Check this Guide here for a Quick Tip video!

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