Rocket Matter gives you the ability to create Firm Roles that assign specific roles to billing users in your firm. You may create these roles in Settings. Once the roles are created, you may assign them to users in their user profile, or from within the Firm Role tool in Settings.

Why create firm roles? Creating these roles allows you to set up custom role-based rates. You will then have the option to create a Client Custom Rate for specific Clients, using these role-based rates. This option can be enabled in the Client's Contact record.

Client Custom Rates are designed to allow you to bill the Client a special (role-based) rate, that is different than the default hourly rates. Once enabled for a Client, all Matters created from that point on will use the role-based rates assigned to the client.

Client Custom Rates do not apply to pre-existing Matters. Once enabled for a Client, these rates will be used on all new Matters, going forward.

The same logic applies to billing users. Once a billing user is assigned a role, then on all new matters for that client, their rates will be tied to the Client Custom Rate.

TIP: If you assign a firm role to a new billing user and they begin to bill on a preexisting matter (which does use client custom rates) their rate will default to the regular hourly rate in the user profile; as they were not associated with the firm role at matter creation.

To add the client custom rate to preexisting matters for the new billing user, you may create a custom rate on the matter level or create custom rates for them in bulk, using our bulk rate tool.

Note: The billing user wishing to utilize the client custom rate must have a firm role associated with their user profile before matter creation. This role must be enabled on the client contact record. in order for the billing to save under the custom rate.

Tip: If you have client custom rates already set on a matter and you would like to add a new billing user with a firm role to that matter, you must make that change on the matter custom rate tool or in bulk. For any brand new matters going forward, you will be able to use client custom rates for your new billing users.