Planning, pricing and tracking items in Streamtime is a breeze. Follow our guide as we go through our three pricing methods, and what you might use them for.
🔤 Fields in a Job Item
Each field in a job item is essential for calculating the total amount. From the item name to the job item team member logged hours, each field plays an important role. We've broken it down for you below:
Item Name: This field allows you to enter the name of the job item. You can either type in the name or select it from a drop-down list of pre-entered items in your master item list.
Used Hours: This field displays the total number of hours that have been logged against that specific item.
Planned Hours: This field displays the total number of hours entered in at creation. This is the number of hours you are estimating the item will take.
Item Sell Rate: If the item has been selected from your pre-entered master item list, the rate figure may automatically populate. Alternatively, you can enter the rate at which one hour of this item will be sold to your client at.
Total Used Sell: This field displays the calculation of used hours multiplied by the item sell rate. Depending on how the item is set up, this figure is not always a straight calculation.
Total Planned Sell: This field displays the calculation of planned hours multiplied by the item sell rate. If your figures include decimals, they may not be displayed here.
Job Item Team Member/Role: This field displays any team members or roles assigned to this item.
Job Item Team Member Logged Hours: When you've planned hours on the item as a total, this field displays the time logged by each individual team member on this item.
💸 Pricing configurations
Selecting your pricing method is as easy as clicking the icon in the total field and selecting the way you'd like to price. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy!
Hang on... this seems a bit different to what I am used to in Streamtime!
Alongside our job page redesign, we have made a small change to how item pricing works in Streamtime in our May 6, 2023 release. For more info, check out this article.
There are three core methods of pricing that you can select.
🎯 Price by Item Rate
With item rate pricing, you can set a rate for each hour spent on the item, and the total planned sell price will be calculated based on the number of hours planned. You can assign hours per team member, or have a set number of hours to be shared among everyone.
For example, 30 hours x $200 per hour to a make a total planned sell price of $6,000. Useful when you're selling one type of service by the hour, no matter who's working on it.
🙋♀️ Why is my total field blank?
Price by item is the default setting. If you plan time on your team members, and your total field is blank, this will be because you have not yet entered an item rate to be used as the hourly rate for each team member. If you want to charge your team out at their different billable rates you will need to change your price configuration to Price by person... which we'll go into now.
💁♀️ Price by Person/Role
With price by person, you can plan specific hours for each team member/role at different rates. This allows for the most granular planning, and you can customize the sell rates per team member to make up the total item price. Particularly useful when you're setting up an item where different seniority levels will be working on it. For example, 30 hours x $200 per hour for Sally plus 10 hours x $120 per hour for James. This will set up a total sell price of $7,200.
This will give you the most granular planning and allow for differing sell rates per team member to make up the total of your item price. It's no surprise that this is our most popular configuration. You will need to assign team members to the item to price in this way.
🔒 Fixed Price
If you're going to charge the same amount no matter what, use fixed price. Set the price, and that's all you'll charge. You can now chose to track logged time in two different ways.
🔒 Fixed price - same rate for all hours tracked
Streamtime will automatically calculate a blended rate based on the fixed price value, For example, if you set the fixed price of $6,000, and plan hours at 30, Streamtime will calculate an hourly rate of $200 for any hour logged to that item, no matter who is logging the time. Useful for when you've got your quote approved, and you have agreed to the price of the item. This is the default method for fixed price items.
🔒 Fixed price - track hours by team member sell rate
Say you want to track hours at different sell rates by different team member rates — those of a senior level might burn through your budget faster than their junior colleagues, so you may want to see how you're tracking against the item with that nuance.
To switch to tracking the fixed price per team member, hover over the team member sell rate. You'll see a lock icon, a tooltip, and the team member sell rate. Clicking the lock will switch your item to tracking each logged hour at the team member's individual sell rate. At this stage, you can add additional markup to the fixed price and still analyse the true progress of an item against a marked-up budget.
Changing it back is just as easy, hover over the item rate cell and click the lock to track all hours at the same rate. Note that changing the method will change all time logged to the item at once.
What happens to my planned total per person?
You can see that the planned total per person doesn’t change regardless of the item's total and the total may differ from the fixed price set. If the price by person figure differs from the fixed price, a tooltip will appear to let you know of the price difference in % and $ (higher or lower) in the total.
Workflow Tip: Once the 🔒 Fixed price - track hours by team member sell rate pricing configuration is selected, you're able to start plotting in planned time against team members and roles to get to the wanted fixed total. At that stage, Streamtime provides an item total suggestion to use when fixing the price of that item.
Feel free to click on the suggested fixed-price price to update your item total and apply an additional mark-up percentage for extra 🍞 Great for when you want to head towards a number in particular, get close, then adjust the total figure to give you wiggle room.
Pro Tip: Want to make your life even easier? Use the items list under Master Settings in the ⚙️ menu to pre-populate your services. This will help you quickly create your job, estimate hours, and arrange your workflow.
Each configuration has its own unique setup and purpose. So, choose the one that best fits your needs. Mix and match your item pricing based on your customer or job. Streamtime will remember the pricing method you last used, so if you only use one type, you'll rarely have to change it.
😱 I've left something blank?
There are some instances where Streamtime will fill in the blanks for you. It's worth knowing these, as there are a few use cases that might be handy.
Priced by item rate, with blank item rate
Streamtime will set the planned total amount for this at $0, as we don't have an item rate. However, you can still plan for team members to spend time on this item. All time logged will be logged at the team member's sell rate at that point in time (either set by their individual profile, or rate cards if you've got those enabled).
Useful if you've got a scoping or discovery item you're not planning to charge for, but you want to capture the potential sell price of the time spent. Or if you're invoicing by time and expenses, and want to ensure that what you charge for your time entries updates per person as soon as their sell rates change.
Fixed price, with no planned hours
Since Streamtime doesn't have hours to calculate an average rate for, as above, time logged will be logged at the team member's sell rate at that point in time (either set by their individual profile, or rate cards if you've got those enabled). This is the same for both fixed price variants.
Pro tip: With both the above cases, be aware that the logged time rates will update if the rate card or individual sell rate is updated. This is handy in some cases, but if you need to 'lock in' a sell rate per person, then ensure you're using price by person or fixed price (team member sell).
Project management can be daunting, but our item pricing is set up to allow you to flexibly plan, price and track your jobs using items with confidence. Reach out if you've got any other questions: remember, stay classy! 😎