Handling of mixed cost rates

In Tempo Budgets you have the options to set cost rates per user role or per user. Cost rates can have an effective date that allows you to maintain different cost rates over time. The cost rates are always considered in actual costs.

For our example(s) we assume that we have Stella assigned as a staff member to our Folio. Stella has following cost rates.

until 30.9.2020 a cost rate of 50$

since 1.10.2020 a cost rate of 60$

That means if Stella has logged work for September and October 2020 the costs (planned and actual) within the Folio are calculated using a different cost rate for the month of September and October. Let´s say Stella has:

10h logged for September

20h logged for October

Tempo Budgets will calculate the costs as:

10(h) x 50$ + 20(h) x 60$ = 500$ + 1,200$ = 1,700$

As Tempo Budgets can only display 1 cost rate you will see a blended cost rate in the UI of Tempo Budgets. The blended cost rate is calculated by dividing the total costs by the amount of hours logged (for actual costs) and amount of hours available (for planned costs). The blended cost rate in our scenario is calculated as:

Total costs / worked hours (or planned hours)
= 1,700$ / 30h
= 56.67 $/h

The blended rate is displayed in the UI.

However the behaviour is different when you plan costs based on the staff members availability. In this scenario cost rates are flattened and an average rate is used instead. Let´s say we have assigned our staff member Stella from above to our Folio. We planned a capacity of:

The same blended rate is used in the Expense report! Means if you run an expense report for planned costs for the month of September you will see a total of planned costs of:

15 h x 56.67 $/h = 850 $

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