Set up custom rates or prices for employees, vendors, or customers

QuickBooksHelp · ‎January 22, 2019

When you set up new items, you enter a standard service rate or price. After you have set up your items, you can set up custom rates or prices for particular employees/vendors or customers:

Use billing rate levels to set up custom rates for service items performed by particular employees or vendors.
Use price levels to set up custom pricing for particular customers or jobs.

Billing rates levels

Important: The feature is only available in the Contractor, Professional Services, and Accountant editions.

Billing rate levels let you set custom service item rates for different employees and vendors. You might want to use them if you find that one standard rate for a given service is not always sufficient. For example, different employees doing the same service might bill at different rates based on experience level or labor burden costs. Or you might charge different rates for an employee based on the difficulty of the task.

Once you create billing rate levels and associate them with employees and vendors, each time you create an invoice with billable time, QuickBooks automatically fills in the correct rate for each service item based on who did the work.

To create a billing rate level

From the Lists menu, select Billing Rate Level List.
Select the Billing Rate Level drop-down then choose New.
Enter the billing rate level name then choose the billing rate type.
- Fixed Hourly Rate if you want the billing rate to be fixed. When you choose this, you need to enter the hourly rate in the Hourly Rate field.
- Custom Hourly Rate Per Service Item if you want to use a different hourly rate for each service item performed by people with this billing rate level.

To use billing rate levels

Assign each billing rate level to people on the Employees, Vendors, or Other Names list.
1. Open the list to which you want to add a billing rate level
  - For employees: Select the Employees menu then Employee Center.
  - For vendors: Select the Vendors menu then Vendor Center.
  - For Other names: Select the Lists menu then Other Names List.
2. In the list, double-click the name to which you want to associate a billing rate level.
3. Go to Additional Info (for employees) or Payment Settings (for vendors) tab.
4. Select the Billing Rate Level drop down then choose the billing rate level you want to associate with the name.
5. Select OK.
Track the time you want to invoice. When you track the time, assign the hours to a customer or job. Note that when you track time, the time information can be used for customer invoices, payroll, or both. Billing rate levels, however, are used only when invoicing your customers and have nothing to do with payroll.
Create the invoice. Select Add Time/Cost on the Main tab at the top of the form to add your billable time. The appropriate billing rate will then be used for each service item, based on who did the work.

Price levels

Important: QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise Solutions has Advanced Pricing option that gives you more power and precision to set conditions when QuickBooks changes an item price.

Price levels let you set custom pricing for different customers or jobs. Once you create a price level and associate it with one or more customers or jobs, each time you create an invoice, estimate, sales receipt, sales order or credit memo for those customers or jobs, QuickBooks automatically pulls up the correct custom price for a customer or job. You create price levels, then use them on sales forms to adjust the price of an item. You can also manually adjust the prices while creating a sales form.

Price levels associated with customers are automatically used for billable time and reimbursable mileage items. They are not automatically used for reimbursable items and expenses from purchase transactions or invoices created from estimates.

To create a price level

From the Lists menu, go to Price Level List.
Select Price Level at the bottom then choose New.
Enter the price level name then choose the price level type.
- Fixed Percentage Price Levels: Lets you increase or decrease prices of all items for a particular customer or job by a fixed percentage. For example, you may use a fixed percentage price level for a customer who gets a 10% discount on all the products and services you offer. You can choose to round sales prices up to the next whole dollar by setting this Company preference when you use fixed percentage price levels.
- Per Item Price Levels: Lets you set custom prices for items associated with different customers or jobs. For example, you might use a per item price level for your preferred customers who are charged $8 for product A (regularly priced at $10), $5 for product B (regularly priced at $5.50), and your standard price for product C. In another example, you might have a specific customer you agreed to charge $50 per hour for research time (regularly priced at $70) and $30 per hour for administrative time (regularly priced aT $35 per hour). This is only available if you have QuickBooks Desktop Premier or Enterprise editions.
Select OK.

To use price levels

You can use price levels in two different ways:

Option 1: apply a price level directly to items on a sales form

Create an invoice or any sales transaction
Go to the Rate column then select the drop-down and choose a price level to apply to the item. Note that the amount shown next to each price level is the adjusted amount of the item.
Save the transaction.

Option 2: Associate a price level with one or more customers or jobs.

Select the Customers menu then Customer Center.
Double-click a customer in the list.
Go to the Payment Settings tab.
Select the Price Level drop-down and choose the price level you want to associate with the customer.
Select OK.

Note: If you associate a price level with a customer, whenever you create a sales form for that customer, items will automatically appear with the new amount. Applicable sales forms are invoices, estimates, sales receipts, credit memos, or sales orders.