SECTIONS
For general information about rate cards, see Rate Cards Overview.
General Configuration
If you are an administrator, you can determine the behavior of rate cards in the following ways.
Disabling Object Restrictions
The Rate_Card_May_Not_Have_Multiple_Targets validation rule on the Rate Card object prevents a rate card from being related to more than one of account, region, practice, or group. Deactivate this validation rule to enable a rate card to be related to more than one of these objects.
Enabling Duplicate Rate Cards
The RateCardValidator configuration option in the ASM Triggers configuration group prevents the creation of duplicate rate cards. Rate cards are considered to be duplicated if they have the same values for all the following fields: Currency, Resource Role, Account, Region, Practice, Group, Start Date, End Date, and Dated Resource Rate Type. This does not prevent rate cards that have overlapping dates, only ones that have the same start and end date. Disable this configuration option to enable duplicate rate cards. For more information, see Trigger Settings.
For more information about how precedence affects rate card matching, see Account, Region, Practice, and Group.
Configuring Precedence
The precedence-for-rate-cards configuration option in the Resource Requests configuration group enables you to specify the precedence of the Account, Region, Practice, and Group fields when matching rate cards. The default precedence is:
- Account
- Region
- Practice
- Group
If you want to change the default precedence, you must remove the pse__ prefix from the field names in the configuration value. For example, if you want Group to be given precedence over Practice, set the value of the configuration option to: Account__c,Region__c,Group__c,Practice__c
For more information about how precedence affects rate card matching, see Account, Region, Practice, and Group.
Enabling Rate Cards Usage
The Rate Card Settings custom setting enables you to configure the Certinia Help rate card usage against resource requests and assignments asynchronously. For more information, see Rate Card Settings.
Rate Card Matching
The rate cards that are matched to resource requests and assignments depend on various factors. The following are criteria for matching rate cards, and their precedence varies.
Resource Role
Rate cards are matched using the resource role of the resource request or assignment. If no matching rate card can be found for the specified role, the default rate card is used. For more information, see Creating Rate Cards.
Rate cards that have no resource role specified and have at least one of account, region, practice, or group are not considered for matching.
Dates
If a rate card has a start date, end date, or both, it's considered for matching according to the start date of the resource request or assignment. If the start date of the resource request or assignment is within the start and end date range of one or more rate cards, then those rate cards are considered for matching based on any of the other criteria.
Resource requests and assignments are only matched to one rate card. For example, if rate cards are set up yearly, and a resource request or assignment spans multiple years, the rate card is still only matched based on the record's start date. The rates on the resource request or assignment do not change over its duration unless the record is using dated resource rates.
Currency
Rate cards can only be matched to resource requests or assignments that have the same currency as the rate card.
Account, Region, Practice, and Group
Rate cards are matched based on only one of Account, Region, Practice, or Group, and precedence determines in which order to apply those fields in order to determine a match. For example, if Account is first in the precedence order, a rate card that matches the account on a resource request or assignment is preferable to one that matches the record's region, practice, or group. Similarly, if there are no rate cards that match a record's account, but there is one that matches the region, that rate card is preferable to any that match the practice or group. If there are no rate cards found that match a record's role and account, region, practice, or group, then rate cards that match the role and have no account, region, practice, or group are considered for matching.
For more information about configuring the precedence of these fields, see Configuring Precedence.
Cascading Role
If the Cascading Role checkbox is selected on a rate card, it will be matched to resource requests and assignments using the region, practice, and group when they are lower in the hierarchy than the region, practice, and group on the rate card. For example, if a rate card's region is North America and the Cascading Role checkbox is selected, resource requests and assignments for the USA and Canada regions could be matched with the same rate card.
However, rate cards that are a closer match in the region, practice, and group hierarchies are always preferable. In the same example, for a resource request or assignment in the USA region, a USA rate card will always be chosen over a North America rate card if one exists.
Choosing Between Multiple Matches
You can configure how a rate card is selected for matching when multiple equally viable matches are found.
Bill Rate or Margin
You can use the use-highest-bill-rate-cost-rate-margin configuration option in the Resource Requests configuration group to determine if a rate card is selected by comparing either the suggested bill rate and choosing the greatest one, or by choosing the greatest margin. The default of this configuration option is true, which means the rate card with the highest suggested bill rate is used by default.
Rate Card Matcher Plugin API
You can use the Rate Card Matcher plugin API to customize how the best matching rate cards are chosen. The plugin takes all of the rate cards that are equally matched according to the matching criteria, and applies custom logic to choose only one matching rate card. This overrides the use-highest-bill-rate-cost-rate-margin configuration option. If there are no matching rate cards for a resource request or assignment, the plugin will not execute because there are no rate cards to choose between. For more information, see Permission Sets and Other Technical Documentation.
If the Disable Rate Card Matching field is selected in the Rate Card Settings custom setting and a plugin is used, no rate cards are passed to the plugin. The resource requests and assignments that need matching are passed to the plugin which must independently query the available rate cards and apply logic to choose one matching rate card for each record.