Rate Models
Summarize
Summary of Rate Models
Rate models enable ServiceNow customers to define date-effective, criteria-driven hourly rates for resource costs in projects or demands. Unlike basic labor rates that depend solely on user attributes, rate models derive rates based on multiple attributes such as projects, demands, users, and roles. This allows for more precise and flexible cost calculations aligned with organizational requirements. From the March 2026 release onward, rate models can also be created based on primary attribute mappings for resource assignments.
Show less
Key Features
- Rate Lines: A rate model consists of multiple rate lines, each defining an hourly rate for a unique set of criteria within a specific date range. Multiple rate lines can exist for the same criteria as long as their date ranges do not overlap.
- Rate Model Processing: Associating a rate model with a project or demand enables the system to evaluate rate lines and return the appropriate hourly rate during resource planning and time card processing. If no rate model is associated, the system defaults to labor rate cards.
- Criteria Evaluation: The system filters rate lines by date range, then by criteria in priority order, applying fallback checks such as NULL values or “All other ()” matches to find the best rate.
- Multiple Rate Application: When multiple rate lines cover different date ranges for the same criteria, the system prorates the requested hours accordingly and applies each relevant rate.
- Rate Line Management: Customers can create or modify rate models and rate lines to define hourly rates. Rate lines can be exported to Microsoft Excel or CSV files for bulk updates and then imported back to streamline management.
Practical Benefits
- Derive flexible, accurate hourly rates for resource costs tailored to multiple criteria and date ranges.
- Ensure cost calculations reflect organizational policies and resource attributes beyond just user attributes.
- Facilitate efficient bulk updates of rate lines through export/import functionality, saving administrative effort.
- Maintain cost accuracy during both resource planning and time card processing for projects and demands.
Use a rate model to derive date-effective, criteria-driven hourly rates for calculating planned and actual resource costs for a project or demand.
Unlike labor rates, which are based on the user attribute only, a rate model can derive hourly rates based on attributes. These attributes can be selected from predefined entities such as projects, demands, users, and roles.
Starting March 2026 release, you can create rate models for resource assignments based on the primary attributes mapping to meet with the organizational requirements.
Rate lines
A rate model is a collection of multiple rate lines. A rate line is a unique combination of different criteria values that defines the hourly rate for a resource, group, or role for a specific date range. For the same set of criteria, you can create multiple rate lines with different rates for different date ranges provided that the dates don't overlap.
Rate model processing
The rate model associated with a project or demand evaluates the rate lines to find and return the hourly rate that matches the requested criteria. The rates are derived from the rate model during resource planning or allocation, and during time card processing.
The rate is returned in the functional currency specified in the matching rate line.
The following video describes how to set up a rate model and the evaluation method to find and return the hourly rate for a request.
When a rate is requested, the rate model uses the following process.
- Finds the rate lines in the requested date range and discards the remaining rate lines.
- Evaluates the identified rate lines to find values matching the requested value in the first criteria column and discards the remaining rate lines.
If the requested value is empty, it checks for rate lines containing NULL.
If no exact match is found, it checks for the rate line having the value
All other (*).The evaluation is repeated for the other criteria columns in order of priority until all criteria columns are processed.
- Returns the rate if one or more rate lines match the request.
-
If a single rate line is found, the corresponding rate is returned.
- If multiple rate lines are found, the system determines the number of hours in the request that applies to each rate.
- For example, say the rate requested is for resource allocation from July 1 to July 30. The rate model has one rate from July 1 to July 15 and a different rate from July 16 to July 30 for the same set of criteria. The rate model applies the first rate to the requested hours for July 1–15 and the second rate to the requested hours for July 16–30.
If no rate lines match the request, then the request uses the default rate card.
-