A labor rate is a name and an hourly figure — "Standard", 120.00. Most shops run two or three: a standard rate, a diagnostic rate, maybe a fleet rate. They live in Settings → Labor rates, and one of them is marked as the shop default.
Creating rates
A rate has exactly two fields: what it is called and what it charges per hour. Everything else about labor pricing — hour bands, multipliers, what the customer is shown — is handled by labor matrices on top of this number.
Open Settings → Labor rates
The list shows every rate with its hourly figure and which one is the default.
Add a rate
Give it a name your writers will recognise on a dropdown — "Diagnostic", not "Rate 2".
Pick the default
Use the row menu to promote a rate. There is always exactly one default; promoting a rate demotes the previous one in the same action.
Note
The first rate you create is automatically the default, whether or not you ticked the box. A new labor line falls back to the default rate, so a shop with one unmarked rate would have nothing to fall back to.
Which rate a labor line uses
When a labor line is added to an order, the rate on it decides the unit price: the line's price per hour is that rate's hourly figure, and the line total is hours × rate.
A line gets its rate from one of three places:
- The rate the writer picked on the labor drawer, if they picked one.
- The canned service, if the line came from one — a canned service's labor item can carry a default labor rate, and building an order from it copies that rate onto the new line.
- The shop default, if neither of the above applies.
A labor line can also carry no rate at all. Then whatever unit price is typed on the line stands on its own — the manual path, useful for a one-off quote you do not want a rate to govern.
Rates and matrices together
The rate is the base. A labor matrix multiplies it:
effective rate = base rate × the matrix multiplier for those hours
line total = effective rate × hours
So a 120.00 rate under a ×1.30 band bills at 156.00 an hour. Two consequences worth knowing before you read a total back:
- The number the matrix scaled is the rate on that line, not your headline rate. They are only the same while the line uses the default.
- The customer sees the effective rate, not the base. Your door rate and the multipliers behind it stay shop-internal. That is covered in full under labor matrices.
If the shop has no default matrix and the line has none pinned, no multiplier applies and the line bills at the plain rate.
Changing and removing rates
Editing a rate always changes what new lines pick up. Whether it moves an open order depends on whether a matrix is involved:
- No matrix on the line — the total is computed from the unit price stored when the line was written, so it does not move. Re-pick the rate on the line to bring it onto the new figure.
- A matrix applies and the line is linked to a rate — the base is read from that rate every time totals are computed, so editing the rate re-prices every open order using it. Raising your standard rate mid-week will move estimates you sent on Monday.
Invoiced work never moves either way: an invoice stores its own lines and its own copy of the document when it is issued.
Warning
The default rate cannot be deleted — the request is refused. Promote another rate first, then delete the old one; otherwise a new labor line would have nothing to fall back to.
Deleting a non-default rate is safe for history. Order lines and canned services that referenced it simply lose the link and keep the price they were saved with, so past estimates, repair orders and invoices still read the way they were agreed.
Troubleshooting
"A new labor line came in at the wrong price." Check which rate the line is on. A line created from a canned service carries the rate pinned to that canned service, which is often not the shop default.
"I changed my rate and an open estimate moved with it." The line is on a matrix and linked to that rate, so its base is read live. Invoices, by contrast, are snapshots of what was billed and never re-price.
"Hours × the rate I set doesn't equal the line total." A labor matrix is applied. The rate shown on a customer document is the effective rate, so that multiplication does work out on the document — it is the base rate that no longer matches.