How do I create a rate card?

Start with a grade ladder that already exists in your market, place your people on it honestly, define what a day is, put the commercial terms on the card, then model the blended rate for the mix of grades you will actually field. The playbook works through each step in order. The number comes out of your own cost base, utilisation and margin, not from a table.

How do you set the rate for each grade on the card?

Work from your cost base upwards: the full cost of employing the person including overhead, divided by the days you can realistically bill in a year, plus the margin the business needs. Then check that number against the borrowed ladder. If the two disagree badly, one of your assumptions is wrong, and it is usually the billable days.

What should a consulting rate card include?

The grades, the rate for each, what a day is (hours, location, what is included and what is billed separately), and the commercial terms: payment, expenses, cancellation and minimum booking. A card that carries only a number per grade is a menu, and every gap on it becomes an argument later. The playbook works through each line in order.

Should I publish my rate card?

The playbook's position is yes, once the card carries its day definition and its terms. A published card filters out buyers who were never going to pay it, saves the first conversation, and makes it harder to discount on the spot. It also commits you, which is the point.

Playbook

How to build a consulting rate card with no billing history

How to set a defensible published rate card with no billing history, instead of one guessed day rate you spend two years defending.

The methodThe borrowed ladder: three movements, eight steps

This playbook is a method for building a consulting rate card when you have no billing history to build it from: no delivered value to price against, no past deals to average, and a quote due this month. It is written for founders of consultancies, agencies and engineering services firms in their first year or two, and for anyone about to put a guessed day rate in front of a customer. It works from a published grade ladder that already exists in your market, defines what a day is before it prices one, puts the commercial terms on the card itself, and models the blended rate on the grade you will actually sell. The inputs are your own cost base, your realistic utilisation (utilization) and the margin the business needs, and nothing else.

You meet the problem the moment somebody asks what you charge. The advice available says to price on value, which needs a record of value delivered, or to benchmark against similar work, which needs deals you have done. You have neither. So you guess a round number, a customer accepts it, and the number becomes the thing you are. A price is a strategy whether or not you treat it as one: the rate card written in year one decides which buyers take you seriously, which buying frameworks you can get onto, and how far a discount can go before the work stops being worth doing. One guessed day rate is easy to set and takes years to leave.

The borrowed ladder runs in three movements and eight steps. The first movement is calibration: find a grade structure that is already published in your market with public rates against it, and place your people on it honestly rather than inventing a number and hoping. The second is definition: write down what a day is, how many hours, where, what is included and what is billed separately, because a rate without a day definition is an argument waiting to happen. The third is the card itself: put the commercial terms on it, payment, expenses, cancellation and minimum booking, so the card reads as a summary of the contract and not as a menu, then model the blended rate across the grades you will actually field on a real engagement. The playbook closes on how to hold the rate and flex the effort when a buyer pushes, rather than discounting the rate and keeping the effort.

There is no table of what consultants charge and no suggested number. Rates move by market, by country and by year, and a figure printed here would be wrong for you by the time you read it. That is deliberate: the playbook teaches the arithmetic and where to find the ladder, so you arrive at a defensible number from your own inputs. It is also not a value-pricing method. Value pricing becomes available once you have delivered value you can point to, and this playbook is for the period before that.

I learned this the slow way. In the early years of the business my co-founder Steve and I started, which became DevOpsGroup, a services company helping other businesses build and run software, our rate cards were not designed. One was borrowed from a public sector buying framework, because getting listed on that framework required a rate card in a particular shape, and the shape came with a published grade structure. We copied the structure, placed ourselves on it, and got listed. The plainer five-grade house card we sold to private buyers was mapped onto the same levels. Those cards then did far more than put a number against a day. They decided which buyers we looked credible to, they capped what we could charge the customers who found us through the framework, and we lived inside them for years. There were two of us when we published the five-grade card. Nobody asked why, and I did not ask myself.

The playbook is in development, alongside an interactive rate card builder and a worksheet that covers the day definition and the commercial terms. Joining the waitlist means you hear when it is ready, and it tells me who is waiting for it, which shapes what goes in. Nothing is for sale yet and there is no date.

What you will get

01The full playbook: the borrowed ladder in three movements and eight steps, with the criteria at each step.

02An interactive rate card builder that models a graded card and the blended rate from your own inputs.

03A rate card worksheet covering the day definition and the commercial terms that belong on the card.

04How to hold the rate and flex the effort when a buyer pushes, rather than discounting.

Who it is for

Founders of consultancies, agencies and engineering services firms with no billing history who have to price work this month.

Anyone about to quote a day rate they guessed, or already defending one.

Firms repricing after discovering the first card decided more than they realised.

Questions

How do I create a rate card?: Start with a grade ladder that already exists in your market, place your people on it honestly, define what a day is, put the commercial terms on the card, then model the blended rate for the mix of grades you will actually field. The playbook works through each step in order. The number comes out of your own cost base, utilisation and margin, not from a table.
How do you set the rate for each grade on the card?: Work from your cost base upwards: the full cost of employing the person including overhead, divided by the days you can realistically bill in a year, plus the margin the business needs. Then check that number against the borrowed ladder. If the two disagree badly, one of your assumptions is wrong, and it is usually the billable days.
What should a consulting rate card include?: The grades, the rate for each, what a day is (hours, location, what is included and what is billed separately), and the commercial terms: payment, expenses, cancellation and minimum booking. A card that carries only a number per grade is a menu, and every gap on it becomes an argument later. The playbook works through each line in order.
Should I publish my rate card?: The playbook's position is yes, once the card carries its day definition and its terms. A published card filters out buyers who were never going to pay it, saves the first conversation, and makes it harder to discount on the spot. It also commits you, which is the point.

Terms this playbook uses

Ships with

Consulting rate card builder: model a graded day rate card