Adding billing roles

SECURITY  Security level with Admin permission to configure Finance, Accounting, & Invoicing. Refer to Admin security settings.

SECURITY  Security level with Admin permission to configure Resources/Users (HR). Refer to Admin security settings.

NAVIGATION   > Admin > Organization Settings & Users > Resources/Users (HR) > Resources/Users (HR) > Roles

NAVIGATION   > Admin > Features & Settings > Finance, Accounting & Invoicing > Roles

BEFORE YOU BEGIN  Before you begin setting up your Roles, refer to Introduction to billing for labor.

Will you need roles?

Yes.

Roles establish the base billing rates for hourly labor. Each role is associated with a billing rate, and optionally a block hour multiplier. The role rates are used as the default rates when billing for labor by the hour. The number of roles you require depends on how your company charges for resource labor. Refer to Introduction to billing for labor.

Resources often fill multiple roles, and can therefore be associated with multiple billing rates.  In this case, the resource can be added to a department's resource list multiple times, once for each role, or added to additional departments.

NOTE  Best Practice: Set up the fewest number of roles possible.
You may be able to make do with one billable role (call it something generic like "Support" or "Consulting"). Then use work types to modify this base rate based on the type of labor by charging for example 1.5 times the base rate for "On-site Support". Refer to Work types.

How to

To open the page, use the path(s) in the Security and navigation section above. Populate or modify the following fields:

Column Name Description
General Tab
Role Name* (Required) The name your company uses for the role. The roles' primary function is to establish a billing rate, so the names should reflect this appropriately.
Active Indicates whether the role is available for use.
Role Description A brief optional description of the role.
Default Tax Category (when quoting Labor items) The tax category you select here will populate the tax category field on quotes when you quote labor, but can be edited.
Hourly Billing Rate* (Required) The hourly rate that customers will be billed for work performed by resources using this role. If Multi-currency is enabled, the rate is displayed in your internal currency, as indicated by the currency indicator. For information on how to set role rates in other currencies, refer to Managing your price list.

NOTE  Roles can have a billing rate of 0.00. Applying a zero-amount role rate is one of way to not bill customers for your time, while still counting the work as billable for the resource's Weekly Billable Hours Goal.

NOTE  If you change the Role Rate and there are unposted labor items associated with the Role, the rate change will apply to all those unposted labor items. If you do not want the new rate to apply to existing unposted items, you must click Cancel on the message page, go to Contracts > Approve and Post > Labor and post all items associated with the role. Then return to the Organization Your Autotask instance may be configured to use one of the following terms instead: Account, Business Unit, Client Company, Customer, Site. Setup > Roles tab and change the role rate.
Block Hour Multiplier * (Required) The Block Hour Multiplier assigned to this Role. The Block Hour Multiplier allows you to compensate for a fixed hourly contract rate by applying the multiplier to certain Roles.

EXAMPLE  If the contract hourly rate is $60, but the Hourly Billing Rate for the Senior Engineer role is $120, applying a Block Hour Multiplier of 2 would use two hours of contract time for each hour worked by a Senior Engineer.
Conversely, an Administrative Assistant Role with a Block Hour multiplier of .5 would have to work two hours in order to deduct one hour from the contract.
Excluded from New Contracts If you do not want resources to use this role when entering time against any contracts created in the future, select this check box to exclude this role from all new contracts created after this option is enabled. The excluded role will appear on the contract Exclusions page after the contract is created. This option does not impact existing contracts and can be overridden for individual new contracts as needed.

Clear the check box to make this role available to all new contracts.

NOTE  To exclude this role from all current, active contracts, use Exclude role from all current active contracts (right-click menu option on Roles table).
Resources Tab
Resource Name The names of all resources associated with this Role.
Department The department through which this role is available to the resource.

NOTE   The list is read only. Refer to Manage department resources or Adding, editing, or copying a resource.

The View Price List button is only displayed for users with Admin > Finance, Accounting & Invoicing permissions. Click the button to open the Price List page, where you can set prices for all billing item types. If you have Multi-currency enabled, this is also the page where you set prices for billing items in other currencies. Refer to Managing your price list.

At some point you may have an active role that you no longer want resources to use when entering time on any currently active contract. This right-click option, when selected, will exclude the selected role from all currently active contracts. That is, the role will no longer be available for resources to use when entering time against any contract that is current and active when the right-click option is selected.

NOTE  The exclusion will not impact existing time entries.

  1. Locate the role you want to exclude from all currently active contracts.
  2. Right-click and select Exclude Role from All Current Active Contracts.
  3. Read the confirmation messages.

IMPORTANT  Once you click OK, the exclusion can only be reversed for each contract individually.

  1. If you want to proceed, click OK to confirm.

NOTE  This feature has no impact on new contracts created after the time that the option is selected. To exclude a role from all new contracts, edit the role and select the check box "Excluded from new Contracts". See Add or Edit Roles, above.