Cost rates & margin
Add what time costs you, and ProjectPacer turns revenue into profit and margin.
A bill rate tells you revenue. A cost rate tells you what that hour cost you — and together they give you profit and margin. Cost rates are set per person (their loaded cost per hour).
Profit, margin, and expense cost are gated behind See costs & profit, which owners and admins have by default and a manager doesn't. An admin can grant it to another role on Roles & permissions — a teammate without it sees revenue but no cost or margin.
See costs & profit is the deliberate "may see compensation" grant: with it, a manager sees cost and margin including per person — the by-person Profitability view and the per-person cost rate on the rate card, scoped to the clients and projects they can reach. So grant it only to people who should see what others are paid. Setting cost rates still never leaves owners and admins.
Why margin sometimes reads "partial"
ProjectPacer only knows cost for hours that have a cost rate. If any hours in the view lack one, the numbers can't be trusted, so margin shows "partial" or a dash rather than a confident figure.
- On a fixed-fee engagement, the baseline ("already used at start") has no tracked cost, so margin stays partial while the baseline is in play.
- A person with no cost rate makes every hour they logged uncosted. Coverage flags exactly who.
Fill the gaps and margin resolves to a real number.
How expenses fold in
Billable expenses count on both sides: their cost always lowers profit, and a "bill on top" expense adds revenue (its markup is your margin). A "draw from budget" expense adds cost but no extra revenue — it's already covered by the fee.
Reading the numbers
- Profit = (labor + expense) revenue − (labor + expense) cost — shown only when cost is complete.
- Margin = profit ÷ total revenue, colour-coded so a thin engagement stands out at a glance.
- Margin at budget — on a fixed-fee or retainer engagement, the detail page's Profit tile shows the margin you sold beside the one you're delivering (e.g. "41% margin · 58% at budget"). At budget is the fee less the cost of the budgeted hours at your current rate; the gap is what over-servicing — or a discount — is costing you. It appears only once a fixed fee is far enough along for the delivered margin to be trustworthy, and only when the two have actually drifted. On time-and-materials you bill the extra hours, so there's nothing to compare.
- Effective $/hr is revenue-based and always shows, even without cost — see Rates & profitability.
Revenue, cost, and margin across all your work.