How to Set Billing Rates When You Are a Two-Person Team Invoicing Under One Name

You are not a solo freelancer anymore. There are two of you, you invoice under a single business name, and clients expect one number. But you and your partner have different skill sets, different experience levels, and realistically different values per hour.

If you charge everyone the same rate, someone is being undercharged for their work. If you charge different rates for different team members without a system, your invoices get confusing fast.

Here is how to build a structure that makes sense and holds up under client scrutiny.

Decide Whether You Are Blending Rates or Separating Them

You have two basic options. You can set a blended rate that averages the team's hourly value and apply it to all work regardless of who did it. Or you can set individual rates per team member and log hours under the correct person, resulting in an invoice that breaks out who did what.

Blended rates are simpler to manage and easier to explain to clients. Individual rates give more accurate data for your own profitability analysis and are more defensible when a client asks why certain work costs more.

For most two-person teams, individual rates work better. Clients can see where their money went and you can run reports that show your actual cost per person per project.

Set Up Each Team Member in Time-Trak

Time-Trak supports multiple users, which means each person logs their own time under their own account. When you pull project reports, you can see hours by team member alongside the applicable rate.

Before the project starts, configure the billing rate for each person inside the project settings. If one of you does strategy work at a higher rate and the other handles execution at a lower one, those rates need to be attached to the right accounts before anyone starts a timer.

Do this at setup, not at invoice time. Trying to retroactively assign rates to logged sessions is painful and error-prone.

Be Consistent With What You Call Each Role

When you have two people working on the same project under different rates, your invoices need to be clear about why. The cleanest way to handle this is with role labels rather than names.

Instead of "Jane - 6 hours" and "Marcus - 4 hours," use "Strategy / 6 hours" and "Production / 4 hours." This keeps the invoice professional, avoids any internal politics if a client starts asking questions about your team structure, and still gives a clear breakdown of where the time went.

Agree on Internal Minimums Before You Quote Anyone

If one person consistently works at a lower rate, make sure that rate is still above your individual floor rates. Two people means two sets of overhead, two sets of taxes, and likely doubled administrative time per project.

Run the floor rate calculation for each person separately. Take their target income, add their portion of shared expenses, estimate their tax burden, and divide by realistic billable hours. That is the minimum rate for each of them. Neither person's rate should sit below their floor.

Communicate Rate Structure to Clients Simply

You do not need to over-explain this. When you introduce a project, you can say something like: "Our team includes senior strategy work at X per hour and execution work at Y per hour. Your invoice will break out which hours fell into which category."

Most clients appreciate the transparency. It also sets the expectation that different work has different costs, which makes future conversations easier if the mix shifts.

Use Your Reports to Catch Imbalances Early

At the end of each project, pull the hours by team member in Time-Trak. Are the hours distributed how you expected? Is one person consistently over-delivering while the other is under? That pattern, visible in your data, is a signal about how you are quoting and staffing work.

The data does not lie. If one person is doing seventy percent of the work on a project priced at a fifty-fifty split, the pricing or the staffing needs to change. You can only see that problem if you tracked it honestly from the start.

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