Your floor rate and Price check

Your floor rate is the lowest rate per hour of your own time that covers your pay, tax, overheads and a buffer. Cardinal compares the money you earn against it all over the app: effective rates, budgets, quotes and the worth verdicts on My Claude and Insights › Summary.

Setting it up

In Settings, under Pricing floor, fill in:

• Take-home pay, in rands per month.
• Monthly overheads: name, amount and currency for each. Your Claude subscription is added automatically from the Subscription setting above it.
• Working hours a week, billable share (%), weeks off a year, forex fee on non-rand costs (%), and profit buffer (%).

Save, and the breakdown beside the form shows every step: gross pay, salary cost, overheads, revenue needed per year, billable hours, and the floor. It uses South African tax tables for the tax year. If a date falls outside the tables Cardinal knows, it uses the latest and says the tables need updating.

The same section shows invoiced and paid revenue over the last 365 days against the compulsory VAT registration threshold, with a warning at 80%.

Effective rate

Effective rate is what you earned (invoiced plus paid) divided by your hours. It shows "above floor" or "below floor". Quotes never count as earned. With no earned money or no hours it shows a dash.

Price check

Price check (Sales › Price check, or the button on Projects) is a fast check without making a quote:

1. Pick similar past projects. Cardinal shows their hours (fewest, median, most), costs, earnings and traditional-build hours.
2. Enter a price in rands, excluding VAT.
3. Cardinal shows the rate per hour at the median hours against your floor, and how many hours the price allows before the rate falls to the floor.
4. "Save as a quote" records the price as a quoted amount on a project.

For a full quote with approval and a pitch deck, use Quotes.