Understanding where your project money is going — and whether you're profitable — requires more than just tracking hours. Everhour's billing and budgeting features let you assign monetary value to every hour of work, set budget limits at the project level, and monitor actual costs in real time as your team logs time throughout the day.
This video explains how to configure billing rates at different levels of the hierarchy — team, client, project, and per-person — and how to set up time-based or monetary budgets so you always know where you stand relative to your original estimate or contract value.
What's covered in this video
Billing rates in Everhour follow a hierarchy that gives you both a sensible default and the flexibility to override it at any level. At the top of the hierarchy is the team-wide default rate — the fallback used whenever no more specific rate has been configured. Below that, a client-level rate overrides the team default for all projects under that client. A project-level rate overrides both the team and client defaults for all time logged on that project. Finally, a per-member rate on a specific project overrides everything else, allowing senior and junior team members to be billed at different amounts on the same project. A task-level rate sits alongside the per-member rate and can be used when the type of work — rather than the person doing it — determines the billing amount. This layered system means you configure rates once and let Everhour apply the correct value automatically, rather than manually calculating each line item on every invoice.
Budgets can be set in two modes. A time budget specifies a maximum number of hours the project should consume. Everhour tracks hours logged against this limit and displays a progress bar in the project detail view that fills as time is spent. A monetary budget specifies a maximum cost or revenue figure. Everhour converts logged hours to money using the applicable billing rates and adds any expenses, giving you a real-time cost figure that you can compare against the budget. Both budget types support configurable alert thresholds — you can set Everhour to notify relevant team members by email when a project reaches 75%, 90%, or any other percentage of its budget, so that overruns are flagged before they happen rather than discovered after the fact.
Every time entry in Everhour carries a billable flag that can be toggled on or off. Non-billable entries — internal meetings, training time, overhead — are excluded from invoice calculations but still contribute to cost calculations if an internal cost rate is configured. This distinction lets you track the true cost of a project on one axis and the amount you'll bill the client on another, giving you the profitability picture that's often invisible when teams only track billable hours.
Key features shown
The billing and budgeting system in Everhour is designed to handle the full spectrum of service business pricing models. Multiple billing rate types — a flat project rate, per-member rates, and per-task rates — cover everything from simple fixed-fee projects to complex engagements where different types of work carry different price points. Time-based and monetary budget types with percentage alert thresholds ensure that project managers are never surprised by overruns. The hierarchy of rates from team level down through client, project, and member levels means configuration effort is minimal — set a default once and override only where needed. Non-billable flags on tasks and entries allow internal overhead to be tracked accurately without polluting client-facing reports or invoices. Real-time budget burn calculations incorporating both time costs and direct expenses give you a complete and current financial view of every project.
