For organisations which re-charge their time and expenses onto their clients, it is essential that the solution you utilise provides you with the flexibility to mirror the way in which you charge.  There are many methods in which companies charge, however, at a minimum a competent solution should offer:

• Resource/Role specific charge rates with the ability to override the charge rate on a project by project basis
• Ability to establish multiple rate cards
• Client and Project specific charge rates
• Activity based Charging

Resource/Role Specific Charge Rates

At a minimum, a solution should allow you to establish a charge rate for each resource.  Depending on your organisation this may be specific to the actual resource or reflect the roles which you deliver as an organisation, for example: Consultants, Designers, Developers, Project Managers or Partners.  Each resource will have a default charge rate which is then used to calculate the chargeable time when chargeable work is recorded.  This is ideal for time & materials projects or for comparing the potential revenue generated versus any fixed price billing.  For flexibility with this type of billing, features are required to enable the role/rate charged per resource to be changed on a project by project basis.  For example, I may be charged as a developer on project 1 but as a senior developer on project 2.

Multiple Rate Cards

For many organisations having one charge rate per role is too simplistic.  Rates are negotiated on a project by project basis meaning the ability to specify a rate card per project is a must.  Systems like Atlantic Global which include a comprehensive project charge rate matrix, mean you can establish different charge rates for different roles on different projects without the need to create hundreds of charge rates in the system.  Such functionality reduces the administration overhead, ensures the system remains streamlined and ensures each resource is charged out at the correct rate on each project without any interaction from the end user other than selecting the project and entering their hours worked.

Client/Project Specific Rates

One area of re-charging time that is often overlooked by solution providers, is client or project specific charge rates.  Whereby, a fee is agreed for all work, not matter who undertakes the work.  Although a very simple requirement, if this is common to your organisation, to reduce administration you will need to look for a solution that provides the ability to override the standard resource charge rate at the client/project level

Activity Based Charging

The final method of charging is Activity based charging, whereby, a specific charge rate is applied based on the activity booked by the user.  In this scenario, the solution should allow you to create a charge rate against each activity, or provide sufficient configuration options to allow you to select a specific charge rate based on the activity the user is carrying out.  To avoid cluttering the system with hundreds of charge rates, ideally the activity based charge rate mechanism should also offer the ability to override each specific activities charge out rate on a project by project basis, to allow for discounts and other rate negotiations.

No matter which charging mechanism is used in your organisation, important factors are to ensure your supplier understands the way you charge, can make recommendations for improvements, as well as provide the flexibility to change the way you charge in future.  Even if all of your organisations projects are delivered on a fixed price basis, collating revenue data provides an excellent metric.

For example, comparing your fixed price bid against the actual revenue you could have generated with your standard charge rates enables you to establish the effectiveness of your bid process.  Other examples include, justifying annual support and maintenance contracts – if your customer queries the cost, by recording the potential revenue of each support call or site visit you can easily give the customer a fair idea of what this might cost on a time and materials basis.

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