A consultant category is the class of person a client is charged for: Senior consultant, Developer, Project lead, or whatever the workspace calls them. Rate cards carry prices per category, not per person, so the category is the link between who did the work and what it costs. Owners and Admins define categories under Settings → Consultant categories, with a key, a name, and an order.
How it relates to other concepts
- Every workspace user has a default category, set per person on the same settings page.
- A project membership may carry a category override for that project.
- A time entry snapshots the category at log time: the project override if there is one, else the person's default. Changing a default or an override affects new entries only.
- At the billing run, the entry's category and work date pick the rate. An entry without a category is a blocker: "No consultant category on the entry."
Rules
- Keys are letters and digits and unique in the workspace; names are 1–60 characters.
- A category in use cannot be archived. Archived categories can be reactivated.
- Setting a person's default is an Owner or Admin action. Setting a project override is an Owner, Admin, or workspace-user Project manager action.
- Owners and Admins may change the category on an existing entry, even in a closed period, since it is a billing fact rather than a work fact.
- Client users never see categories or rates; the category appears on the client timesheet as the label of the line.
Example
Kari's default category is Senior consultant. On retail-shop, where she works as project lead, her membership overrides it to Project lead. Her entries on that project are priced at the Project lead rate; her entries elsewhere at the Senior consultant rate.