What it does. A staff role is a job you bill for, like server or bartender, saved once with its rate. After that you add it to an event by name and quantity instead of retyping the rate every time. Each role stores what you charge and what it costs you, so labor shows up in your profit numbers instead of disappearing.
When you’d use it. Your first week, to set up the handful of roles you actually staff. Later, when you raise your bartender rate and want every new event to pick it up.
How to create one
- Click Catalog in the top navigation, then Staff.
- Click New Staff Role.
- Enter a Name, like Server or Chef. This is what shows on proposals and invoices.
- Add a Description if the name doesn’t say enough on its own.
- Choose a Pricing Method: Hourly if you bill by the hour, Flat Rate if it’s one fee however long the job runs.
- Enter the Default Price. For hourly roles this is the rate per hour, for flat rate it’s the whole fee.
- Enter the Default Cost, which is what you actually pay. Filling this in is what makes your profit reports mean anything.
- Check the settings you want applied automatically whenever this role is added to an event:
- Gratuity Eligible by Default and Service Charge Eligible by Default both start on.
- Tax Exempt by Default starts off.
- Click Create Staff Role.
What you’ll see. The role joins your staff list showing its pricing, like “$35.00 per hour” or “$300.00 flat rate”, and it’s available the next time you add staff to an event.
About the tax category
Staff roles always use the Staffing & Labor tax category. There’s nothing to choose. Whether labor actually gets taxed depends on your tax rates: open Tax Settings and check whether any rate has Staffing & Labor ticked. In a lot of places labor isn’t taxed at all, which is why it ships that way.
Changing a role later
Open Catalog, then Staff, and click the role. From there you can Edit it or Archive it.
Archiving takes the role off your list so nobody adds it to a new event. Events that already use it don’t change: they keep the name and the rate they were built with, so an invoice you sent last month stays exactly as the client saw it.
Changing a role’s price works the same way. It applies to events you build from now on, not to ones you’ve already quoted.