Setting up your retainers, fixed and hourly rates, and fixed fees is very important to ensure your billing reports work accurately. Once set up, this will drastically reduce your billing time at the end of each month.
This post is a guide to creating Rate Groups and setting up your Rates, Retainers and Fixed Fees for billing and timekeeping purposes.
1.1. To get started, please download the file below.
You will use this file to add your fees to DataGrows.
1.2. Start on the Rate Groups sheet.
This is where you will set up retainers and billing packages.
The second row is a guide row that will explain how to populate each column.
The current rows are examples only. You can add your rate groups by altering the current information in the sheet or by deleting the current rows and adding your own information into each column. If each client has a unique retainer or rate, please create a rate group for each client.
1.3. Next, you can add included services to each retainer.
Do this by populating the Included Services Sheet. For each row, add the Rate Group name (retainer name) and one task included in that rate group. Repeat this for as many rows as you need until all services for that rate group have been added. You can then move on to the next Retainer and add this in the rows below the first, as shown in the example data.
1.4. Next, move on to rates.
Rates can be added for each task within a Rate Group. This is where you will assign all of your fixed and hourly rates. If the Rate Group is a retainer but includes some tasks that fall outside of the negotiated amount, those rates can also be set up in the Rates Table.
1.5. Lastly, add your Fixed Fees.
Fixed fees refer to anything you need to claim back from the client. This could be things like a Xero or Sage subscription every month.
1.6. You are now ready to do the upload.
We recommend scheduling a meeting with one of our support staff to assist you with the upload. You can book a meeting by clicking on the button below.
* If you do not want a staff member to assist you, you can proceed as follows:
Start by deleting the guide rows (second rows) in each of the sheets
Save each sheet as a CSV. Remember that when you save an Excel file to a CSV file, only the first tab/sheet in the Excel file will be saved. This means that you must move each sheet in the Excel file to the position of first tab/sheet tosave each one to its own CSV file.
2.1. Upload Your Rate Groups
Then remove all the current Rate Groups by:
Click on the square next to the column headings to select all the records (see the little blue ticks below)
Click on Actions
Click on Delete Selected
To upload the Rate Groups CSV:
Click on Menu (see above).
Select Upload.
Then drag and drop the first CSV into the window.
* If an error indicates that only one column was identified, please click cancel and change the separator by selecting another separator from the dropdown. (The separator is dependent on the operating system you use). Click Save again.
A notification will pop up in the left-hand corner, indicating that the upload was successful.
You can confirm that the correct nr of records have uploaded by comparing the number in the bottom right corner of the Rate Groups table in DataGrows to the number of rows in your Excel.
2.2. Upload Included Services
To upload your included services CSV:
Click on any Rate Group Record
Click on Included Services in the top right corner.
Click on the square icon with the arrow pointing up right above the title Included Services
Click on Menu (see above).
Select Upload.
Then drag and drop the first CSV into the window.
* If an error indicates that only one column was identified, please click cancel and change the separator by selecting another separator from the dropdown. (The separator is dependent on the operating system you use). Click Save again.
A notification will pop up in the left-hand corner, indicating that the upload was successful.
You can confirm that the correct nr of records have uploaded by comparing the number in the bottom right corner of the Included Services table in DataGrows to the number of rows in your Excel.
2.3. Adding Rates and Fixed Fees
Repeat the steps discussed in 2.1 for both the Rates table and Fixed Fees table.
You are all set!
Congratulations, your rate groups, retainers and fixed fees have been set up correctly. You can now start timekeeping in the app.