Rates & Schedule Differentials
How pay and bill rates are configured on placements, and how to use Schedule Differentials to add shift premiums for nights, weekends, and other time windows.
Hire2Hero prices work through two mechanisms that operate together:
- Placement rates — the base pay and bill rates (Normal / OT / DT) entered on each placement.
- Schedule Differentials — reusable, named premium rules (e.g. a night-shift or weekend premium) that add a flat amount or a percentage on top of the base rate whenever hours fall inside a defined time window.
This article covers where each lives, how differentials are calculated, and how the premiums flow through to invoices and payroll.
Base rates live on the placement
Every placement carries two rate grids — Pay Rates (what the candidate earns) and Bill Rates (what the client is charged). Each row has Normal, OT, and DT columns plus an Effective Date, so you can schedule raises or corrections by adding a future-dated row. Hire2Hero uses whichever row is effective on the date a timecard covers.
Rates are configured per placement — there is no separate rate-card library, and clients don't carry rates directly. See Managing Placements for the full grid reference.
What clients and billing contacts do carry is a default Schedule (see below). New placements inherit it, so you only wire up differentials once per client rather than on every placement.
What a Schedule Differential is
A Schedule is a named container of differential rules. Each rule inside it says: when hours land on these days and/or inside this time window, add this premium. Typical uses:
- Night shift premium — e.g. +$2.00/hr for time between 18:00 and 06:00.
- Weekend premium — e.g. +10% for hours on Saturday and Sunday.
- Bill-only surcharges — a premium the client is charged that doesn't change candidate pay (or vice versa).
Differentials are adders, not multipliers: a flat $/hr amount, or a percentage of the base rate added on top. To pay time-and-a-half for a window, enter a Percentage of 50 (base rate + 50%).
Differentials match on days of the week and time of day only. There is no holiday-calendar or on-call rule type — a premium for a specific date (e.g. December 25) can't be expressed as a differential. They also require clock times: placements on the Hours time card type record no in/out times, so no differential is ever generated for them.
Create a Schedule with differentials
In the sidebar, open the Administrator settings group and choose Schedule Differential. The list shows all schedules defined for your agency.
Click + New to create a schedule, or click an existing row to edit it.
In Basic Information, enter a Name (how the schedule appears in pickers) and optionally an ATS Name.
In the Differentials section, click Add Differential for each premium rule you need, and fill in the rule's card (fields below).
Save the schedule, then attach it to placements, clients, or billing contacts (see Attach a schedule).
Differential rule fields
| Field | Required | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Name | Yes | Label for the rule — appears on timecard breakdowns and invoice lines (e.g. "Night Shift"). |
| Affects | Yes | Pay And Bill, Pay, or Bill — whether the premium changes candidate pay, the client charge, or both. |
| Days | No | Days of the week the rule applies to. Leave empty to apply every day. |
| Start Time / End Time | No | Time-of-day window. Leave empty for all day. A window like 18:00–06:00 wraps past midnight. |
| Included | Yes | Only Time In Period — only the minutes inside the window earn the premium. Has At Least One Minute In Period — if any part of the block touches the window, the whole block earns it. |
| Flat Rate | No* | Fixed $/hr added on top of the base rate. |
| Percentage | No* | Percent of the base rate added on top (e.g. 10 = +10%). |
| Payroll Earnings Code | No | Earning code stamped on the premium's payroll blocks for your payroll provider. |
* Enter a Flat Rate or a Percentage. If both are set, the flat rate wins.
Overlapping rules stack. Every rule whose window matches a block of time is applied — there is no priority or "highest wins" ordering. If a Saturday-night entry matches both your weekend rule and your night rule, the candidate gets both premiums.
Attach a schedule to work
The Schedule picker appears in three places:
| Where | Effect |
|---|---|
| Placement form | Drives the actual calculation — this is the schedule used when the placement's timecards are processed. |
| Client Corporation form | Default inherited by new placements created under this client. |
| Billing Client Contact form | Default inherited by new placements created for this contact. |
Schedules are optional at every level. A placement with no schedule simply pays and bills at its base rates.
Where the premiums show up
Once a schedule is in place, differential premiums flow through automatically:
- Timecard detail — the calculated-hours breakdown includes a Differential column showing which rule each premium block came from.
- Invoices — each premium generates a separate Differential Premium line, described as Differential: (rule name), so clients see the surcharge itemized rather than blended into the hourly rate.
- Payroll — payroll record details show the differential blocks alongside regular/OT/DT time, and exports carry the differential's name and its Payroll Earnings Code. See Payroll.
Editing a differential rule has no effective dating — changes apply wherever the schedule is recalculated, including reprocessed historical periods. If terms change going forward, consider creating a new schedule and switching the placement to it, rather than editing rules in place.