Set Up a First Hour Charge in Tradify

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There are two ways to achieve this depending on how your first-hour charge is calculated. 

1. Set a minimum time that is invoiced per Billing/Labour Rate.
2. Create a Call Out or Travel charge to add to each site visit.
   

Setting a Minimum Billing Rate (Labour Rate)

You can either create a new billing rate for this purpose or edit an existing one. 

1. Navigate to Settings.
2. Select Billing Rates.
3. Select the New Billing Rate (or select the existing rate you would like to use and move to step 4).
   
   
   
   
4. Enter the details for the Billing Rate including the (Display Name, Description, Hourly Cost, Tax Rate, Account Code (Optional) and the Billing Rounding (Optional) ).
5. Now set your Billing Minimum to 60 minutes (1 hour).
6. Click Save to complete the process​.
   
   Configuring a Billing Rate in this way will ensure that a minimum of 60mins will be invoiced if the sum total of time entries on a Job where this Billing Rate is used, amounts to less than 60mins.
   
   
   
   When you select the + Estimated Cost, Account, Billing Rounding and Minimum, this will display as shown below:
   
   

Click here for more information on adding Billing Rates.

Billing Rates Fields

Create a Call Out or Travel charge to add to each site visit

To set up a Billing Rate and a service fee that make up a Set first hour that differs from to your hours ongoing from there, e.g. $100 for the first hour and $65 ongoing after this. This can be done by creating a billing rate for $65 an hour and setting it to have a 1 hour minimum (See above), and then setting up a price list item for the remaining $35 to add to your quote, job or invoice to round out the total cost on the first hour of the billing rate to make $100. 

To do this, see the steps below:

1. Navigate to Settings.
2. Select Price list.
3. Create a New Price List Item for the Call Out or Travel charge.
   
   
   
   
4. Enter the required information, Item Code and Description as shown below. (You can enter here whatever suits you for this charge, i.e. Call out fee, Travel, etc).
5. Select the Pricing Method as; I want to enter the price. This will allow you to set a fixed price per unit on the Price List item.
   NOTE: The Buy Price is optional and if there is a cost associated with the Price List item, enter it in the Buy Price field, e.g. gas cost for a travel fee.
   
   
   
   

6. Enter the Sell Price as required.

7. Click Save to complete the process.

8. Now you can add this as an item to a Quote, job or Invoice to track travel or service costs.
   

Click here for more information on Price List items.

Adding the Travel or Service fee to a Job

The following Steps will take you through how to add the Billing Rate and Call Out Fee to have job and how it will appear on the Job and Invoice.

1. Head to the Job you want to add the time and fee to.
2. Select the Time tab.
3. Select New Timesheet Entry.
4. Select the correct billing rate which has been set up with your billing minimum (Notice how the time entry is for 30mins, yet the charge is $65.00 due to the Billing Minimum set on the Billing Rate).
   
   
   
   
5. Navigate to the Costs Tab.
6. Select New Cost > New Price List Item.
7. Search for and select your Service Fee/Travel Cost item and select OK.
   
   
   
   
8. This will now show on your job cost section, make sure to Select Save and Continue on the Job as well. 
   
   
   
   
9. Now create a time and Materials invoice (this will pull this time and cost items from the job and show this in the line item section as seen below).
   
   
   
   Then the final invoice will view like this for your customer:
   
   

Additional Information

See here for more info on Billing rates: 🎬 Billing Runs in Tradify