Why one rate per client is not enough
Charge a single blended rate and you lose money in both directions: routine remote work is overpriced enough to invite pushback, and the onsite day or the 11pm production call is underpriced for what it actually costs you. Senior consultants price the work, not the client, and that means several rates living side by side.
Named rates, chosen per entry
The clean model is a set of named rates on each project, picked one at a time as you log:
- Standard. Remote, in-scope work. The default for most entries.
- Onsite. A higher rate for showing up in person, often with its own minimum.
- Emergency. After-hours or urgent work, priced for the interruption.
Per-rate minimums
Some rates carry their own floor. Onsite work is the common one: if you are going to travel, you bill at least half a day. A per-rate minimum means selecting Onsite automatically floors the entry at, say, four hours, without you doing the math or remembering the rule. It pairs naturally with the per-call minimums you set for billing calls.
The snapshot: why old reports never change
Here is the part that matters when a client reviews an invoice months later. When you log an entry against a rate, the dollar value of that rate is frozen onto the entry. Raise your Standard rate next quarter, or retire the Emergency rate entirely, and every report you already produced keeps the numbers it had when the work was done. Your history stays correct and defensible, instead of silently rewriting itself the moment you update a rate.
That combination, named rates picked per entry with the value snapshotted at log time, is rare. It is one of the two reasons Paidwell exists, alongside getting call billing right.