Fees, Rates, and Invoice Lines
Three separate money figures live on a project, and they’re easy to confuse because all three look like “the price”. None of them is calculated from the others — with one exception: when you bill logged time, a person’s professional rate fills in the price on the invoice line.
1. The fee structure — what the contract says
Section titled “1. The fee structure — what the contract says”Set on the project or proposal, this is the deal you agreed. It records a fee type and the figures that go with it — a total fee, an estimated cost with a percentage, a guaranteed maximum price, a square footage and cost per square foot, a retainer — depending on which type you chose.
Alongside it you list fee items: the named pieces of work the fee covers.
This is the shape of the agreement. It is not a rate, and it is not what appears on an invoice.
See Set fees & contract terms.
2. Professional rates — what an hour is worth
Section titled “2. Professional rates — what an hour is worth”Also on the project, this is a small rate card: a name, an optional description, and a rate. Typically one line per role — Principal, Project Architect, Drafter.
These describe what your firm’s time is worth on this job. Each person on the project’s team can be given one, and it’s the price their hours come in at when you bill logged time on an invoice.
They are not what costs your labor internally. A project’s Labor cost on the Profitability tab uses each person’s hourly rate from their own compensation record — not these project rates. See A project’s margin looks wrong.
3. The invoice line — what you’re charging on this bill
Section titled “3. The invoice line — what you’re charging on this bill”Each invoice line has a description, a quantity (1 unless you change it), a unit amount, and optional tax. The line total is quantity times unit amount.
On a line you add yourself, the unit amount is not filled in for you. It doesn’t come from the fee structure — you type what you’re charging. That’s deliberate: what you bill this month is a judgement, not an arithmetic result.
On a line built from logged time, it is. Add Unbilled Time sets the quantity to the hours and the unit amount to the person’s professional rate on the project. It’s a starting point, not a lock — change either before you save.
Two optional fields on a line are worth setting:
- Phase — which phase the line belongs to.
- Fee item — which piece of the agreed fee it draws against.
Both are optional, and skipping them costs you nothing today but leaves phase- and fee-level reporting with nothing to group by later.
Which one moves the margin?
Section titled “Which one moves the margin?”Only the invoice. A project’s Invoiced figure is the sum of its invoice totals — the contracted fee and the professional rates never enter that calculation. A project can have a large agreed fee and zero invoiced.