For agencies💵 Billing & Payouts
Bill a flat fee instead of by the hour
Set up whole-job dollar amounts, an on-call fee or a tech fee, that either replace the hourly charge or get added on top.
Almost everything OneTerp bills is quantity times rate: hours times an hourly rate, miles times a mileage rate. A flat charge is the exception, a single dollar amount for the whole job that does not move with how long the job runs. Two cases drive it: an on-call fee of a set amount for the shift whatever the hours turn out to be, and an extra fee like video or editing work billed on top of the normal charge.
Step by step
- 1Open Settings, Billing & Subscription, then Rate Differentials. Flat charges sit just below the per-hour differentials, because both answer the same question: what changes this job's price?
- 2Add a charge and give it the name that should print on the invoice, for example "On-call fee" or "Tech fee".
- 3Enter the whole-job dollar amount. This is not per hour.
- 4Pick how it bills: "Instead of the hourly charge" replaces the job's hourly service charge (the on-call case), or "On top of the hourly charge" adds it to everything else (the tech-fee case).
- 5Choose what makes it fire. The usual way is a tag: pick one or more tags, and any job carrying one of them gets the charge. You can instead have it apply automatically to every job in scope, or leave it manual and attach it to one-off jobs by hand.
- 6Under "What it pays your staff", leave the hours blank if pay should be untouched. Enter a number and a W-2 staff interpreter is paid that many hours at their own rate however long the shift actually runs, which is what you want for an on-call shift where the hours are availability rather than work.
- 7Optionally narrow it to a single customer or billing group, so it only ever fires for their jobs. Leave both unset for a charge that is about the work rather than the client.
- 8Use the "Check billing" preview on the booking form or dispatch card to confirm a job charges what you expect before it runs.
Tips
- 🔴 The dollar amount is customer-side only. It never becomes anyone's pay. An on-call shift billed flat at $86 still pays the interpreter for their hours, and that is deliberate. What you bill and what you pay are set separately and are not meant to match.
- The guaranteed hours are the one place a flat charge touches pay, and they are set in hours rather than dollars so they work whatever each person earns. Evening and weekend premiums still apply on top, travel is still paid, and if the person does get called out, that job is closed out separately and paid in full.
- Guaranteed hours only affect W-2 staff. A 1099 contractor is paid from their agreed rate for the job rather than through payroll, so the guarantee does not reach them.
- You can set an amount to bill, hours to guarantee, or both. A charge needs at least one of the two.
- A charge with no customer, no billing group, and no tag cannot be set to apply automatically. With nothing to limit it, it would quietly land on every job you bill, so OneTerp refuses it. Give it a tag or a scope first.
- Tag triggers work with your agency's own custom tags, not just the shared catalog, so you can make a tag purely for pricing.
- Deactivating a charge stops it everywhere immediately, including on jobs where someone attached it by hand. That is how you retire a fee without deleting the history.
- A tag that a flat charge depends on cannot be deleted while the charge still points at it.
Related articles
Still need help?
If this article didn't solve it, submit a ticket and the OneTerp team will follow up.
Submit a ticket