# Staff Rates When you put your own staff on a project, their time is a real cost — and like every other cost in PAI, it works best when the agreement is explicit. The **staff rate card** is that agreement. It lives on each workspace user's record and defines two things: what the person bills to the client, and what they cost your organization. Once it's set, assigning that person to a line carries those numbers in automatically. This is the in-house counterpart to the organization [Rate Card](./Rate-Cards.md). The org rate card prices the work; the staff rate card prices the *person* doing it. When a staff member is assigned to a line, their rates take over. Find it on the **Custom Rates** tab of any workspace user record, under **Settings → Users → (user)**. > [!note] > The Custom Rates tab — and the internal values on it — are gated by the **View Staff Rates** permission. Internal staff rates reveal your true cost of internal labor and the margin you make on it, so by default only Owners can see or edit them. See [Users and Permissions](./Users-and-Permissions.md). --- ## What a Staff Rate Card Contains Every staff rate carries an **external** value (what you bill the client for that person's time) and an **internal** value (what that time costs you). The gap between them is the margin on in-house labor — the same external/internal logic used everywhere else in PAI, applied to your own team. ### Default Hourly Rate A single hourly pair — external and internal — that applies to the person whenever a more specific rate isn't available. Out of the box this is **$0 / $0**, so a new staff member contributes nothing to cost until you set their rates. Set the default hourly rate for anyone whose time is billed by the hour regardless of role. ### Item-Based Rate Card A per-person list of rate-card items, each with its own rates for this individual. Add an item from the organization rate card, then define the person's **hourly, daily, or flat** rate for it — external and internal. Use this when someone's cost depends on the role they're filling: a staff member might be one rate as a Line Producer and another as a Director. ### Default Item Within the item-based rate card you can mark one item as the **default**. This is what PAI reaches for when you add the person to an estimate by name without specifying a role — it's the role they fill most often. Setting a default item is what makes adding staff to an estimate a single action; see [Resolution](#how-rates-resolve-on-a-line) below. --- ## How Rates Resolve on a Line When a staff user is assigned to an estimate or budget line — whether you add them by name or drop them onto an existing line — PAI sets the line's **Resource Type** to **In-House** and resolves the rate in this order: 1. **A matching item in the staff rate card.** If the person has a rate defined for that item, PAI uses it — both the rates and the unit type configured on their card. This overrides whatever the organization rate card says for the item. 2. **The default hourly rate.** If the person has no rate for that specific item but does have a default hourly rate, PAI overrides the line with that hourly rate. 3. **$0 / $0.** If neither is set, the line comes in at zero — a signal that the person's rate card still needs to be filled in. Because step 1 takes the unit type from the staff card, a person configured at an hourly rate will pull onto the line as **Hours** even if the org item defaults to **Days**. ### Example Say the organization rate card and Jack Smith's staff rate card both price the **Line Producer** role — but differently: | | Unit | External | Internal | |---|---|---|---| | Organization rate card | Day | $1,000 | $500 | | Jack's staff rate card | Hours | $200 | $100 | Add the **Line Producer** item on its own and you get the org rate card's version: a Day at $1,000 / $500. Add **Jack Smith** instead, and PAI builds the line from Jack's card: a Line Producer line, assigned to Jack, set to In-House, on an **Hours** unit at **$200 / $100**. Jack's rates win because he's on the line. ### Adding staff by name You can add a line by searching a workspace user's name instead of an item: - **If the user has a default item**, PAI adds that item, assigns the user, sets it In-House, and applies their rate as resolved above — one step, done. - **If the user has no default item**, PAI opens an item-select modal. Choose the role from the dropdown and PAI adds it with the user assigned. Assigning a user to a line that already exists works the same way: the line flips to In-House and re-rates against the user's card. For the full estimate-side experience — the Resource Type field, assigning staff, and how in-house lines display — see [Building an Estimate](../02-Bidding-a-Project/Building-an-Estimate.md). --- ## Changing a Rate A staff rate resolves onto a line at the moment that line is created. Editing the rate afterward does **not** reach back into projects the person is already assigned to — those lines keep the numbers they were built with. > [!important] > Changing a staff rate is not retroactive. If you raise someone's rate from $50 to $75, existing estimates and budgets they're already on stay at $50. The new rate applies only to lines spawned after the change — typically on new projects. This is deliberate: an estimate or budget is a record of an agreement, and PAI won't rewrite the cost of work already sold or committed just because a rate later changed. --- ## Why It's Worth Keeping Current A staff rate card is only as useful as it is accurate. An out-of-date or empty card pulls $0 onto lines, which quietly understates project cost and overstates margin — the opposite of what PAI is for. Treat the rate card as you would a vendor agreement: set it once, keep it honest, and PAI will carry the true cost of internal labor through every estimate and budget the person touches.