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6 votes
Hi everyone, appreciate you highlighting this improvement. We can see how having separate staff cost rates and charge-out rates in Xero Projects could provide a more accurate view of project profitability.
While Projects doesn't currently support individual internal cost rates for each user, some businesses use Tracking Categories alongside payroll and project reporting to compare revenue and staff costs. We appreciate this isn't the same as having dedicated cost rates built directly into Projects.
I've updated the status of this idea to Gaining Support so we can continue tracking interest from the community. If there are particular reporting views or profitability metrics you'd like this to support, let us know as those examples help us better understand how this could fit into your workflows.
Roland Short
supported this idea
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50 votes
Hi Cody, thanks for sharing such detailed feedback on progressive billing for fixed-price tasks. It’s really helpful to hear how this could support projects that run across multiple stages.
We’ve reviewed your idea and moved it to Gaining support, so it’s now open for votes and comments from the wider community. If others have similar experiences with fixed-price project billing, we’d love for them to add their voice — it helps show how broad the need is and gives the product team clearer context.
Thanks again for raising this, and we’ll keep you posted on any progress.
An error occurred while saving the comment Roland Short
supported this idea
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This is a critical gap that makes Xero Projects genuinely unfit for purpose across most consulting work.
Fixed-price tasks assume the entire fee will be invoiced in a single transaction, or a subset of whole tasks. There is no ability to draw down against the fixed budget progressively, no visibility into charge-out rate erosion against the task budget, and no meaningful way to track what has been billed versus what remains. The Task & Expenses overview shows cost, not charge-out value, which is the wrong metric for any revenue-focused project manager.
Time and materials tasks are equally problematic. Most consulting tasks involve multiple people at different charge-out rates, but Xero cannot apply more than one rate to a single task. The workaround is to create individual line-item tasks per person per role, which explodes the task list, destroys reporting coherence, and creates significant admin overhead.
What consulting businesses (and others I assume) actually need is straightforward: assign multiple people with different charge-out rates to a single task, track the financial erosion of the task budget at charge-out rate (not cost), see that erosion in real time on the Task & Expenses overview, and invoice progressively against the fixed-price ceiling until it is fully drawn down.
This is not an edge case. It describes the standard operating model for professional services firms across consulting, engineering, advisory, and similar sectors. Until both billing modes are overhauled to reflect how multi-person, fixed-budget consulting engagements actually work, Xero Projects will continue to fall short of what the market needs.