How Profitability Works
Profit = Revenue - Cost
- Revenue -- money earned from billable work (based on your billing model)
- Cost -- money spent on labor (based on team member cost rates)
Rize calculates profitability at the team, client, project, and member level.
Billing Models
Hourly Billing
Clients billed by hours worked multiplied by hourly rate.
Example: 10 hours at $100/hour = $1,000 revenue.
Retainer Billing
Fixed monthly payment regardless of hours. Revenue is recognized daily: retainer divided by days in the billing period.
Example: $3,000/month retainer = roughly $100/day in revenue.
Hybrid Billing
Fixed retainer plus an hourly rate for hours beyond the included amount.
Example: $2,000/month with 20 hours included, then $150/hour for additional hours.
Setting Up Profitability
- Create your workspace and add members -- the workspace should reflect your actual delivery team
- Set up clients, projects, and billing model -- choose hourly, retainer, or hybrid based on your real commercial relationships
- Add rates and costs -- set billing rates per client and cost rates per team member
- Stabilize tagging quality -- use integrations, rules, and daily inbox review until time consistently lands on the right client and project
- Review dashboards regularly -- once the foundation is clean, use profitability views for budgets, utilization, and client health decisions
Common Pitfall
Teams often try to use profitability before their tagging workflow is mature. If inputs are messy, margins will be misleading. Clean tagging comes first -- get accuracy right, then trust the numbers.
What Gets Updated
Profitability statistics update automatically when:
- Time entries are created or modified
- Billing rates change
- Retainers are created or updated
- A daily background job ensures retainer revenue is recognized even on days without time entries