Best Practices For Updating Legacy Client Rates

If you have legacy client rates (meaning, rates offered to long-term or existing customers that are no longer available to new customers) and need to update those legacy rates, or you want to remove them altogether, you can use the Bulk Custom Client Rate tool to get the job done quickly without having to edit each client individually. In this article, we'll review a few different scenarios so that you can pick the most efficient way to accomplish your rate updates.

Reviewing All Rates Currently Charged To Your Clients

Depending on how you may have set up custom rates for your clients, you may wish to view a complete list of your company's services and the rates you are currently charging each of your clients for them before updating any legacy rates. To do so, you will want to navigate to Settings > Advanced > Bulk Custom Client Rates.

While you can use this tool to set up or remove custom rates for your clients in bulk, you can also download a full report of your service by clicking the "Download Full Service Rate List" button.

Once you click the download button, a CSV file will be downloaded to your device.

Removing All Legacy Rates

If you previously set legacy rates for some or all clients, but you're ready to bring all of your clients up to the same rate, you can quickly remove their legacy rates by using the Bulk Custom Client Rates tool to "Remove All Customizations". This tool is found in Settings > Advanced > Bulk Custom Client Rates tool.

Creating Three Or More Tiers Of Legacy Rates

If you have previously set legacy rates, you are increasing rates again, and you want to lock in legacy rates for all clients at the rates they are currently paying, you can use filters on the Bulk Custom Client Rate tool to quickly raise rates for only specific groups of clients.

Example Case: Breanne's Pet Sitting has a group of clients with legacy rates at $21 for a 15-minute walk. The current default rate for this service is $23. The company will be raising rates for new clients to $25 soon and wants to set legacy rates on all existing clients at their current rate so that there is one group of clients paying $21, another group paying $23, and all new clients will pay the new rate of $25. 

1. In the Bulk Custom Client Rate screen, click "Filter Clients For Rate Adjustments."

   

2. Select the filter "Clients With Custom Service Rate." When prompted, select the service "Dog Walk 15" with Rate Is being "Not Customized," then click to "Select Filter":

   

3. Now, any changes you make will apply to only clients that do not already have a legacy/custom client rate, so we can go ahead and click "Set" on the "Dog Walk 15" service to set the current rate for these clients to $23:

   

   After setting your default service rates for the "Dog Walk 15" service to $25, you will then have three tiers of client rates, with one group of clients paying $21, one group paying $23, and all new clients will pay the default rate of $25.

4. Repeat steps 1-3 for all services you need to create multiple tiers for. 

Updating Multiple Tiers Of Legacy Rates

If you have multiple tiers of client rates and you want to raise all clients' rates by a certain amount, regardless of what they're paying now, you can accomplish this using filters in the Bulk Custom Client Rate tool. 

Example Case: Breanne's Pet Sitting has a group of clients paying $21 for a 15-minute walk. Another group of clients is paying $23. The current default rate for this service is $25. The company is raising rates for all clients by $2 so that those paying $21 will pay $23; those paying $23 will pay $25, and those paying $25 will pay $27.

1. In the Bulk Custom Client Rate screen, click "Filter Clients For Rate Adjustments":

   

2. Select the filter "Clients With Custom Service Rate". When prompted, select the service "Dog Walk 15" with Rate Is being "Exactly $23", then click to "Select Filter". (Note that we aren't selecting clients with a custom rate of $25 because that is the default rate assigned to this service, so clients currently paying the default $25 will automatically be increased when the default service rates are increased.)

   

3. Now, any changes you make will apply to only clients that currently have a custom client rate of $23 for the Dog Walk 15 service. Since this group of clients is being raised to $25, we can ensure the rate in the "New Cost" column says $25 and then click "Set":

   

   After completing step 3, all clients that were previously given legacy rates at $23 are given legacy rates at $25.

4. Refresh the screen. Then, repeat steps 2 and 3, but this time make sure to change the filter to "Dog Walk 15" with Rate Is being "Exactly $21", then change the rate to $23. Repeat steps 1, 2, and 3 for each service and each tier of rates, remembering to start with the highest rate for each service.
5. Navigate to your Services List and update your default rates to the new rates that all new clients will pay.

Using The "Flag Method" For Rate Increases

One way to quickly select clients for rate increases is by using the "Flag Method". With the Flag Method, you will create a Client Flag for each tier or set of rates you offer and apply the flag to the clients that pay the specified rates. Then, when you need to increase rates for each group of clients, you can quickly select those clients for rate editing by using the "Clients With A Flag" filter in the Bulk Custom Client Rate tool.

For example, Breanne's Pet Sitting has three tiers of client rates. The first tier is paying $23, $33, and $53 for a 15-minute dog walk, 30-minute dog walk, and 60-minute dog walk, respectively. The second tier is paying $25, $35, and $55. The third tier is paying $27, $37, and $57. The first tier of clients has a Flag that says "Tier 1", the second tier has a flag that says "Tier 2" and the third tier has a flag that says "Tier 3":

When Breanne's Pet Sitting needs to increase rates, they can easily select each group of clients to update rates in the Bulk Custom Client Rate editor by adding the filter "Clients With A Flag":

Then changing the rates for all clients with that Flag: