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Consulting Rate Card Template

Five sheets and four documents that price the day you spend rather than the day you invoice, then set every rate from its own yield.

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What you get

Pack of 9 files: 4 documents, 5 spreadsheets

Consulting Rate Card Template
  • How the Card Rate Is ComputedDocument
  • Rate CardDocument
  • Positioning NoteDocument
  • Rate Conversation GuideDocument
  • Rate by Engagement TypeSpreadsheet
  • Historic RealizationSpreadsheet
  • Comparable AnalysisSpreadsheet
  • Card Roll ScheduleSpreadsheet
  • Concession LadderSpreadsheet
RiverConsulting Rate Card Template

Rate Card working paper  ·  Hollingbourne Partners  ·  two years of closed work

The floor is per day consumed

Target owner income of $190,000, grossed up at a 32 percent effective rate$279,000
plus practice overhead+$46,000
Revenue target$325,000
260 weekdays, less 25 days of leave taken and 9 public holidays226
less practice administration and finance−18
less selling not tied to any named opportunity−22
Days available to deliver or to bid186
Floor, $325,000 over 186 days$1,747

Every rate by its own two factors

Engagement typeCardYieldRealznEarnsNeedsNew
Workshop and facilitation$3,20050.0%93.8%$1,500$3,728$3,750
Retained advisory$2,60069.6%94.4%$1,707$2,662$2,700
Operations diagnostic$2,40063.2%93.3%$1,414$2,965$3,000
Implementation support$2,00089.7%96.5%$1,730$2,020$2,050
Interim operating role$1,80093.9%98.3%$1,661$1,894$1,900

Yield is invoiced days over consumed days. Needs is the floor divided by yield and realization.

The card is upside down. Its highest rate earns $1,500 per day consumed and ranks fourth of five, because eleven days of workshop prep sit behind fifteen invoiced days. Blended, the practice earns $1,617 a day.

Page one for this query is one calculator, repeated. Target income, gross it up for tax, add practice overhead, divide by realistic billable hours, publish the answer as a floor. Every version warns against dividing by 2,080 and tells you to use 1,100 to 1,500 hours instead. The most advanced of them divides the result once more by a realization rate, so a $238 rate becomes $264. That is the ceiling of the category.

Two things are missing. The unit is wrong: dividing by billable hours prices the day you invoice, and the day you spend is what runs out. A proposal, a scoping call, an absorbed review round and a workshop's unbilled prep are all days gone. Federal cost rules count exactly those, defining bid and proposal costs as preparing, submitting and supporting bids whether or not solicited. One blended haircut is also wrong, because a rolling interim role converts 94 percent of the days it consumes into invoiced days and a workshop line converts 50.

Hollingbourne Partners, a solo operations consultancy, bills $2,037 per invoiced day and $1,617 per day consumed against a floor of $1,747, so it is $38,750 a year short while the card reads healthy. The republished card runs from $1,900 to $3,750, and $21,350 of the increase is uncollectable in the first four quarters. Run the practice itself on the consulting practice dashboard pack, reconstruct one finished engagement with engagement profitability analysis, then price the next one in the proposal template.

$1,617 a day earned against a $1,747 floor, and where the increase goes

The Rate by Engagement Type, Historic Realization, Card Roll Schedule and Concession Ladder sheets.

Consulting Rate Card Template
RiverRate by Engagement Type

Rate by Engagement Type

The two columns the category leaves out entirely: days consumed, and the yield that produces. Sell days include the pitches that were lost.

TypeBasisWonInv.SellAbs.Cons.YieldEarnsNeeds
Implementation supportDay rate4 of 578548789.7%$1,730$2,020
Retained advisoryRetainer3 of 432594669.6%$1,707$2,662
Interim operating roleDay rate2 of 21084311593.9%$1,661$1,894
Workshop and facilitationDay rate9 of 12154113050.0%$1,500$3,728
Operations diagnosticFixed fee5 of 114818107663.2%$1,414$2,965
Practice281363735479.4%$1,617$1,747

Two lines earn under $1,550 and neither of them is the cheap one. The diagnostic line carries 18 sell days because it took eleven pitches to win five, and the workshop line carries eleven absorbed days of prep against fifteen invoiced. The implementation line wins 4 of 5 for 5 sell days, because it follows a diagnostic that already proved the case and nobody has to be convinced again.

RiverHistoric Realization

Historic Realization

Fifteen closed engagements, eight shown. Sell and absorbed days sit beside invoiced days.

RefEngagementCardInv.SellAbs.FeePer inv.Per cons.vs floor
E-01Ashwell diagnostic$2,4001542$34,500$2,300$1,643−104
E-02Cranmore diagnostic$2,400933$20,500$2,278$1,367−381
E-05Marden diagnostic$2,400632$12,500$2,083$1,136−611
E-06Bexhill implementation$2,0004122$79,500$1,939$1,767+19
E-10Marden retainer$2,6001424$34,500$2,464$1,725−22
E-13Nine workshops$3,20015411$45,000$3,000$1,500−247
E-14Thurlow interim role$1,8008222$145,000$1,768$1,686−61
E-15Selmeston interim$1,8002621$46,000$1,769$1,586−161

Across all fifteen: 281 days invoiced, 36 sell days, 37 absorbed, 354 consumed of 372 available, $572,500 collected against a two-year target of $650,000.

Thirteen of fifteen land under the floor and every one was accepted at or near card. E-13 is the clearest: $3,000 a day achieved against a $3,200 card is 93.8 percent rate realization, which any practice would report as healthy, and it earns $1,500 because the prep was never on an invoice.

RiverCard Roll Schedule

Card Roll Schedule

The card rises 9.2 percent weighted on 1 April. Nothing on the book changes with it.

EngagementRate mechanicFirst quarter at the new cardWhy it cannot move sooner
Thurlow Foods interim role31 AugQ112 month SOW, rate fixed to the anniversary
Bexhill Group implementation30 JunQ3Fixed-price SOW, no rate mechanic at all
Marden Care retainer1 JulQ312 month retainer, renews at the anniversary
Selmeston Group retainer1 JanQ112 month retainer, renews nine months out
Cranmore diagnosticn/aQ3Proposal accepted in March at the old card
QuarterInvoiced daysAt the new cardIncrease forgone
Q29112 (13%)$13,850
Q36324 (38%)$3,900
Q47438 (51%)$3,600
Q16767 (100%)$0
Year295$21,350

The card is worth $27,475 a year and $21,350 of the first year is uncollectable. The last locked engagement rolls on 31 August, eleven months after publication. A practice that plans the increase from the publication date has budgeted money it will not see, and it will read the shortfall as a demand problem.

RiverConcession Ladder

Concession Ladder

Priced against one reference engagement: a 14 day diagnostic at $3,000, plus 3.6 sell days and 2 absorbed days, so 19.6 consumed and $2,143 per day consumed.

What the client gets instead of a discountFeeCons. daysOther valuePer cons. dayBeats the ask by
Their own team produces the four system extracts—−2.0—$2,386$4,200
Window extended from four weeks to seven——+$3,495$2,321$7,695
Remote readout instead of the on-site day—−1.0—$2,258$4,200
Named case study, approved in writing at closeout——+$2,097$2,250$6,297
Half the fee on signature rather than at closeout——+$233$2,155$4,433
Drop the third workstream from the scope−$9,000−4.0—$2,115−$4,800
Ten percent off the fee−$4,200——$1,929—

Five of the six alternatives beat the discount and four of them cost the client nothing they value. The extended window is worth $3,495 because it converts two of the practice's own idle days rather than displacing paid work, and the case study is worth $2,097 because it cuts 1.2 sell days off the next diagnostic. Both are free to grant and neither is on any rate card in this category.

Cutting scope is the one trade that looks generous and is not: the fee falls $9,000 while consumed days fall only 4.0, so it lands $4,800 worse than simply agreeing to the ten percent.

Edit with AI

What's in the pack

01

Rate by Engagement Type

One row per type carrying its yield, its rate realization, what it earns per day consumed, the card rate it needs, and the republished figure.

02

Historic Realization

Fifteen closed engagements rebuilt with sell days and absorbed days beside invoiced days, so each one shows its rate per day consumed against the floor.

03

Comparable Analysis

Six market rates each marked card or achieved, with what is not comparable on the row and a verdict on whether it can anchor anything at all.

04

Card Roll Schedule

Every live engagement with the first quarter its rate can move, the share of invoiced days at the new card per quarter, and the increase forgone.

05

Concession Ladder

Six things to trade before the rate, each priced against a reference diagnostic and against the ten percent discount the client is going to ask for.

06

Rate Card

The client-facing card: five lines with their terms, what a day means, when it is invoiced, and a short list of what is deliberately not on it.

07

Positioning Note

What the realized ordering means for what gets sold at the top of the page, written for the practice rather than for the client. Where a line is repeatable enough to sell at a fixed fee instead of a day rate, the productized service design pack sets the boundary.

08

Rate Conversation Guide

The six priced trades in the order to offer them, with the sentence that goes with each and the number that makes it hold up.

09

How the Card Rate Is Computed

The full worked example: $325,000 over 186 days, two years of closed work rebuilt, per-type required rates, and what the new card does not fix.

10

The unit is the day you spend, not the day you invoice

The standing rule. Floor over yield times realization, per line, with the sell load charged to the type that caused it. A rate that has to move mid-engagement is a change order.

How to use it

  1. 1

    Open in River, or take it blank

    Open the pack and send your closed engagements and floor inputs, or download the four Word documents and five CSV sheets and work through the arithmetic yourself.

  2. 2

    Build the floor in days consumed

    Revenue target over the days left after leave, holidays, administration and untied selling. That denominator is smaller than a billable-hours figure, and it is the honest one.

  3. 3

    Rebuild every closed engagement

    Add the sell days including the pitches you lost, and the delivery days that never reached an invoice. Both are usually recorded nowhere, and zero is a wrong answer.

  4. 4

    Set each rate, then date it

    Divide the floor by that type's own yield and rate realization. Then write the quarter each live engagement can first move, because a published rate change lands at the anniversary or the renewal option period.

Frequently asked questions

Is this template free?

Yes. The download is Word documents and CSV sheets, no account and no card. Edit with AI is the optional half: River rebuilds your closed engagements in days consumed and derives a rate per line. The rest sit in the template library.

What format are the downloaded files?

Four Word documents and five CSV sheets in one zip, nothing to convert. The sheets carry the columns that do the work: sell days, absorbed days, days consumed, yield and rate realization per engagement type. Excel, Numbers and Google Sheets open them directly.

I never recorded my proposal or prep time. Can I still use this?

That is the normal case, and it is the reason the sheet exists. Sell days get reconstructed from the calendar in the weeks before a start date and from the proposal file's own revision history, and those rows get marked reconstructed. An estimate beats the zero a timesheet holds.

Why not just apply a realization percentage to my current rate?

Because one percentage across five lines is the error. In the worked example the diagnostic line needs 25 percent and the implementation line needs 2.5 percent. A single weighted 9.2 percent leaves two lines below the floor and prices three above what they need.

Can I raise rates on clients I already have?

Not on the day you publish. A fixed-price statement of work has no rate mechanic at all, and federal service contracts date a rate change to the anniversary of a multiple year contract. The roll schedule prices that delay: $21,350 of a $27,475 increase.

What do I do when a client asks for a discount?

Offer something priced instead. On a 14 day diagnostic at $3,000, ten percent off costs $4,200 and drops the realized rate from $2,143 to $1,929. A named case study approved at closeout is worth $2,097 in saved sell days, and a three-week longer window is worth $3,495.

Does this replace my practice reporting?

No. This sets the forward price once, and the practice dashboard runs the year around it. What one finished engagement actually earned is a separate analysis. What your existing contracts stop you selling is the restriction register, and the agreed rate becomes a term in the statement of work.

Sources

  1. Acquisition.gov31.205-18 Independent research and development and bid and proposal costs (opens in a new tab)
  2. Acquisition.gov52.222-43 Fair Labor Standards Act and Service Contract Labor Standards-Price Adjustment (Multiple Year and Option Contracts) (opens in a new tab)

Written by

Chandler Supple

Co-founder & CEO, River

Chandler has spent the last six years working in AI, building tools for millions of users and Fortune 100 companies. In 2025, he co-founded River to build a new kind of operating system for AI agents.

LinkedInGitHubX

Reviewed by

Brian Joseff, Co-founder, River

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Price the day you spend

Take the Word documents and CSV sheets blank, or send River your closed engagements and get a rate per line with its own yield behind it.

Edit with AI