Price hours with rates that keep their history

Why a rate can't just be a number you overwrite

Once a rate sits on a person, every hour anyone allocates against them turns straight into cost and revenue. That's exactly why editing a rate in place would be dangerous: bump the number and every project that has ever used it would silently re-price, this quarter's invoice and last quarter's closed report both moving to match a number that only became true today. Monument avoids that by keeping rates as a history instead of a single value, so an annual increase prices new work at the new figure while leaving what you already delivered costed correctly.

We'll set up a Senior Architect billing rate at Northlight Architects, then give it its annual increase without losing what came before.

A rate is a shell, its amount lives in versions

A rate's identity, its name, its type (Billable or Cost), its currency and period, stays fixed. What actually changes over time is the amount, and that lives inside dated versions, each with its own effective-from date. Changing the amount never means editing a field, it means adding a new version: the old figure becomes a past entry on the timeline, still correctly attached to whatever work happened while it applied.

Create the rate

The first version you create isn't dated the way a change later will be. Leave Effective From at today and think of it as the rate that's applied from the beginning, the number this role has always charged out at, right up until the day you actually change it.

1. 1

   Click Add Rate and name it Senior Architect Charge-out.

2. 2

   Confirm Rate Type is Billable, since this is what gets charged to the client, not what the work costs internally.

3. 3

   Enter the amount, one hundred and eighty, at Per Hour.

4. 4

   Leave Effective From at today, since this is the rate's very first version.

5. 5

   Click Create Rate.

When the rate changes, here's how you record it

1. 1

   Open the Senior Architect Charge-out rate. Instead of editing the amount directly, click Update Amount.

2. 2

   Enter the new figure, two hundred, and add a reason, Annual rate increase.

3. 3

   Click Create Version. The previous amount becomes a dated past version rather than disappearing.

   
4. 4

   Click Show under Version History to see both amounts on one timeline, current and past, each with its own reason.

A project can also hold its own copy of a rate rather than always reading the global one live. When that's the case, Update Amount tells you as much, flagging that projects use this rate and may need their own copies updated separately, a prompt to go check them, not something Monument has already done on your behalf.

Troubleshooting

• Worried the increase re-priced old work. It didn't. Versions are dated, so past allocations keep whatever rate applied when they were actually booked.
• An edit didn't produce a new version. Renaming a rate or changing its currency edits the shell directly and creates nothing new on the timeline. Only changing the amount, through Update Amount, adds a version.
• A project's numbers didn't move after the rate changed. That project likely holds its own copy of the rate rather than reading the global one live; a new global version doesn't reach into project-specific copies automatically.

Where this fits next

Rates are how hours become money, so make sure they actually reach everyone: confirm each person carries the right one in set up your team, and see the cost and revenue these rates produce on a live project in revenue from resourcing.