How Rate Cards Affect Project Budgets and Billable Time

A Rate Card is your firm's price list inside Drum. It sets a billable rate for each staff role such as Designer, Project Manager, or Senior Staff and can also have a separate rate for an individual team member when needed. Every project in Drum has a Rate Card assigned to it, and Drum uses that Rate Card to determine how much each hour of logged time is worth.

Rate Cards affect two things: your project's budget burn and the billable rate applied to each time entry. Using the correct Rate Card and keeping its rates current helps your budget burn and invoices reflect the appropriate figures for the hours logged.

When a team member logs time against a project, Drum matches their default billable role against the Rate Card assigned to that project and applies the corresponding rate automatically.

By default, every project uses your account's default Rate Card, often named something like “Standard Rates.” You do not need to assign it manually. If a project needs different rates, you can assign it a different Rate Card without changing your default Rate Card or other projects using it.

The project uses your account's default Rate Card automatically. There is no need to set a separate Rate Card unless the project requires different rates.3

Each team member has a default billable role. When they log time on a project, Drum matches that role to the corresponding role on the project's Rate Card and applies that rate. For example, if Senior Staff and Junior Staff both log time on the same project, each time entry uses the rate for that person's role.

No. Team members simply record their hours. Drum determines the rate automatically from the team member's default billable role and the project's Rate Card.

The billable rate determines the value applied to logged hours. When a Rate Card rate changes, future time entries that match that role use the new rate. This changes how quickly the project's budget burns and can affect the invoice total.

Updating a Rate Card affects time logged going forward. Time entries that were already recorded keep the rate that applied when they were logged. If those entries need to reflect the latest rate, they must be specifically updated.

Think of a Rate Card as your firm's price list in Drum: it tells Drum which billable rate to use for each role on a project. Drum then applies the matching rate automatically when time is logged.