How to Set a Default Billing Rate for New Projects Without Guessing

The worst time to figure out what to charge is after the work starts. By then you have already committed to the project mentally and you are tempted to just pick a number and move on.

Setting a default billing rate before a project opens in your time tracker is a ten-minute process. It also happens to be one of the most important financial decisions you make per client.

Here is how to do it with data instead of gut feel.

Pull Your Last Three Comparable Projects First

Before you open Time-Trak and start a new project, go look at your existing project data. Find the last two or three projects that are closest to what you are about to do.

Look at actual hours logged. Look at what you charged. Calculate the effective hourly rate you earned on each one. This is total invoice amount divided by total hours tracked.

That number will often surprise you. Projects that felt well-priced sometimes reveal an effective rate that is much lower than your stated rate because the scope grew or the revisions ran long.

That history is your real pricing data. Use it.

Factor in What Is Different About This Project

Once you have your effective rate from past projects, adjust for what is different about this one. A few things worth thinking through:

Is the client new or returning? New clients come with onboarding hours that established clients do not. Those hours are real and they need to be covered somewhere in your rate.

Is the scope well-defined or loose? Loose scope almost always means more hours than quoted. If you cannot get a clear brief before work starts, your rate needs to account for that risk.

Is there a fixed deadline that will require you to compress your schedule? Time pressure changes how you have to work. That has a cost.

None of these adjustments need to be precise. You are just making sure your default rate is not blindly copied from a project that had none of these variables.

Set the Rate in Time-Trak Before You Start the First Timer

Time-Trak lets you set billing rates at the project level. Do this before any work is logged. Once you have hours in a project at the wrong rate, correcting it is an annoying manual process.

If this project has multiple service types, set task-level rates instead of a single project rate. A strategy session should not bill at the same rate as production work if they genuinely require different things from you.

Take two minutes to get this right. Future you will thank you when the invoice generates cleanly.

Write Down Why You Chose That Rate

This is the step almost nobody does and it is genuinely useful. In the project notes or even a text file you keep with your project, write one or two sentences explaining the rate you set and why.

Something like: "Set at $140/hr. Based on last two similar projects plus adjustment for loose scope and new client onboarding." That is it.

When you close this project and go to quote the next similar one, you will have a real explanation to build from instead of trying to remember what you were thinking six months ago.

This is how your pricing gets smarter over time. Not by reading articles about pricing, but by keeping a small, consistent record of your own decisions.

What Happens When You Skip This Step

You quote by memory. You set a rate that felt right in the moment. The project runs long or grows sideways and you end up with an effective rate that does not match what you intended to earn.

Then you quote the next similar project the same way. The pattern repeats.

Two minutes at the start of a project breaks that cycle. Set the rate, write down why, start the timer.

Track your time, bill every minute.

Time-Trak is a native Mac and Windows time tracker with a floating timer, automatic screenshots, and one-click invoicing.

Free during beta.

macOS + Windows · Floating widget · Auto screenshots