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Setting Service Items & Billing Rates
Setting Service Items & Billing Rates
Updated over a week ago

In this article:

  • Billing Settings including:

    • Service Items

    • User Rates

Navigate to your firm’s Billing Settings by:

  1. Click your profile picture

  2. Choose Settings

  3. Select Billing Settings

This is where you can access:

  • Service Items

  • User Rates

Add Service Items

Now, let’s add Service items to reference in future invoices.

Service items automatically set the billing rate and other information on invoices. By adding service items for each service your firm offers, you can efficiently invoice your clients for the services rendered.

To make a new service item:

  1. Click add new service item

  2. Name your service item

  3. Include an optional description

  4. Enter a Billable Rate

  5. Enter a service charge

  6. Then choose if this should be charged per service (flat rate) or per hour.

  7. Enter a Tax Rate

  8. Then enter a service item code or an SKU.

If you have integrated with QBO, you can also assign an Income account and a product category. These fields are synced from QBO and can be used in Canopy. For more, click here.

Then click Save.

Edit a Service Item

You can edit a service item by clicking the name in the table.

You can make any changes here. Then click Update.

Archive Service Items

You can also archive service items by selecting one or more items - on the checkbox. Then clicking the archive button that appears on the table header.

This moves the item to inactive status, so you can’t pull this into an invoice. To access inactive items, click the three dots icon. To move it back to active status, click the checkbox and select Move to Active.

Set User Rates

Lastly, let’s talk about setting user rates.

Canopy allows you to set custom rates for each team member in Canopy. You can also set a default company rate.

These rates are applied when viewing WIP reports and configuring invoices. If you link time entries to invoices, setting a user rate is super nice because Canopy will do all the math for you!

Setting these up is quite easy. You can set a default company rate here. And this applies to all of your team members in your Canopy instance.

You have the option of filling in rates for each team member as well. If you leave any blank, it defaults to the company rate above.

Any changes you make here are saved automatically.

Set Adjusted User Rates

You can assign multiple rates to an invoice based on who in the firm performed the work and what kind of work was accomplished.

For instance, your firm has a default rate that you charge for a particular service. However, in certain circumstances, you may want to charge a higher or lower rate based on when a specific staff member performed a service OR if a different service was performed by that staff member than they typically perform.

Use Cases

Rates for More Experienced Staff or Specialized Services: A CPA at your firm typically doesn’t perform tax preparation for individual clients, but took on a special case and wants to charge a higher rate for when they perform that service.

Rates for Discounts: Your firm is trying to get more bookkeeping clients and you want to offer those services at a discounted rate for a few of your staff members.

Special Cases: Your firm typically doesn’t offer a service like auditing to the majority of your clients, but there are some exceptions you make for large clients. In these cases, you want to charge a higher rate when a designated staff member performs these services.

You might need to adjust rates for team members depending on the service. If you are working with hourly rates, this allows firms to set up different rates for each team member for the same service item.

Click on the dashed line under this column. In this window, you can choose the item and enter an adjusted rate.

Now, when this team member invoices for that item - it will be given that rate instead of the default service item rate.

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