Create and manage labor roles

Labor roles define the hourly cost of each delivery role (such as Help Desk, Engineer, vCIO, or whatever titles match your team). You are able to attach these roles to bundles so ClarityCalc can build cost estimates and derive bundle prices from your actual staff costs and actual delivery hours.

Before you begin

You need to be signed in with Analyst or Owner permission.

Create a labor role manually

1. Open Catalog and select Labor.
2. Select New labor role.
3. Enter the role details:
   • Name
   • Hourly burden rate (See "What is burden rate?" below)
   • Notes (optional, for context you'll want later)
4. Select Create labor role.
5. To update a role later, open it from the Labor list and edit the fields you need.
   • You can update the role name and hourly burden rate.
   • You can add or update notes.
   • You can optionally set a target margin on the edit screen if your target margin for labor is different than your target margin for catalog items.
6. Select Save changes.
7. Use the role in a bundle by opening the bundle and attaching the role in that bundle's Labor section.

Import labor roles from Autotask PSA

If your team already has roles defined in Autotask, you can import them instead of creating them from scratch. You need Owner permission to use this feature.

1. Go to Settings → Integrations → Autotask.
2. Under the Labor Roles section, click Import Labor Roles.
3. ClarityCalc fetches your active, non-system roles from Autotask and shows them in a preview table. No changes are made at this step.
4. All rows start deselected. Check the box next to each role you want to import.
5. Click Import selected.

ClarityCalc creates a new labor role for each selected row. You can also reach this import screen from Catalog → Labor — look for the Import from integrations → link in the Import/Export panel header.

What imports and what does not

The AT billing rate is what Autotask records as the client-facing charge for this role. It is stored in ClarityCalc for reference and shown on the role's edit form, but ClarityCalc's margin calculations use your burden rate, not the AT billing rate. See "Billing rate vs. burden rate" below.

Re-importing a role

If you run the import again later, ClarityCalc matches roles by their Autotask ID. For roles that were already imported:

• The role name and AT billing rate reference are updated to reflect the current Autotask values.
• Your burden rate, margin, and notes are never overwritten.

Billing rate vs. burden rate

These two numbers are different things and it matters which one you use where.

AT billing rate is what the MSP charges clients for this role. It lives in Autotask and is stored in ClarityCalc as read-only context after import. ClarityCalc does not use this number for any calculations.

Burden rate is what it costs the MSP to deliver this role — fully loaded labor cost including salary, benefits, taxes, and overhead. This is the number ClarityCalc uses for margin calculations.

Example: An engineer role might have a billing rate of $150/hr in Autotask (what you charge clients) and a burden rate of $80/hr (what you actually pay, including all loaded costs). The margin comes from the difference. If ClarityCalc used the billing rate as the cost, it would calculate 0% margin on labor — which is wrong.

What is burden rate?

Burden rate represents the actual cost of an employee per hour to the organization. This includes their salary, but also the "hidden costs" such as insurance, benefits, taxes, and overhead. If you know your actual staff burden rates, you can enter them here. If you'd prefer to round or estimate in order to avoid disclosing salary information, or to average the cost out over multiple employees, ClarityCalc offers a Burden Rate Calculator.

By clicking "Calculate from salary," you can use the associated pop up to enter an averaged or example salary typical for that role, and you can adjust the default 30% slider according to your needs.

What to watch for

• Hourly burden rate must be greater than zero. ClarityCalc will reject zero or negative values. Roles imported from Autotask default to $0.00 — set the burden rate before attaching the role to a bundle.
• Labor roles are attached to bundles, not directly to packages. When you build a bundle, you pick which roles do the work (and the associated tools, if you want to calculate it that way. See "bundles" for more information.) Packages and Plans cannot include Labor directly.
• Deleting a labor role cannot be undone and removes the role from any bundle that uses it. Back up your role list if you rely on a specific set.
• The labor list shows how many labor roles your free plan allows. On the free plan, you can create up to 1 labor role. On Paid plans, you can create as many as you need.