Charges, Per Diem & Shift Differentials
Beyond labor hours
A real T&M estimate is more than crews × rates. CrewMix prices three kinds of non-labor cost right alongside the headcount grid, so the total you hand a customer covers the whole job: charges (equipment, trucking, materials, and the like), per diem and travel pay, and shift differentials for night work. Each one rolls into the grand total and shows on the proposal and the Excel export.
Add charges to an estimate
Open an estimate and go to the Charges tab. Click Add charge, pick a category — equipment, trucking, materials, scaffold, or other — then set a rate and how it's counted. A charge prices as rate × quantity × periods, and it's a pass-through cost — CrewMix adds no markup.
- The unit decides how it's counted: a flat charge counts once; per hour, day, week, or month — or a custom per-unit where you name the unit ("mile", "load") — multiply by the quantity you enter.
- A per-day charge can tie its period count to the estimate's schedule — worked days or calendar days — so a daily equipment rental follows the length of the job automatically.
- Add a charge From library (search your saved charge types) or Ad-hoc (type it once, just for this estimate).
Reuse charges from a library
Costs you quote on every job belong in your library: open Rates → Charges and add your standard equipment rates, trucking, and rentals once. On an estimate, the From library picker searches them by name and drops the priced values in.
Like every rate in CrewMix, a library charge is snapshotted when you attach it — editing the library later never silently changes an old estimate. If a library rate has moved since you attached it, the charge shows a rate-changed badge with a Re-snapshot action, so taking the update is always your call. Retire a charge you no longer quote by archiving it — it leaves the pickers but existing estimates keep their snapshot.
Per diem and travel pay
Per diem is set per crew line, not once for the whole estimate — different crafts often travel differently. Open a craft line and use its Per diem & pay tab: enter a Per diem rate and a Per diem basis.
- Work day pays the rate per head for every day the crew actually works.
- Calendar day pays every day in the range — including weekends and unworked holidays — using the week's largest crew, the standard estimating assumption when you're covering lodging seven days a week.
- Per diem is a dollar amount per head per day: it scales with heads and days and rolls up in its own Per diem column, kept separate from labor on the grid, proposal, and export.
Need travel, subsistence, or a stipend on top? The same tab's Additional pay streams add more per-day amounts into a separate Other pay bucket.
Shift differentials for night work
Night and swing work is handled by two independent controls — it's worth knowing which does what, because they live in different places:
- A wage differential lives on the craft rate (Rates → the agreement → the craft). Set a Shift differential as either a flat $/hr or a percent — it uplifts the base wage only, so every straight-time, overtime, and double-time rate inherits it while fringes and adders stay flat. See Build a Labor Rate Build-Up for how a base wage becomes billable rates.
- Paid-lunch hours live on the schedule rule set. Add extra paid hours per shift under Schedule Rules and they're added to the day before it splits into straight, overtime, and double time — so a paid night lunch can push hours into overtime, exactly like real worked hours.
One raises the rate, the other raises the paid hours; use either or both. A night paid lunch also appears as a note on the customer proposal.
Good to know
- Charges attach at the estimate level; per diem and shift differentials attach to the crews they apply to. All three flow into the grand total, the Excel export (with live formulas), and the shareable proposal.
- Charges are pass-through with no markup, and per diem carries no tax withholding — CrewMix reports the amounts; how they're marked up or taxed is your call outside the estimate.
- Just building the labor first? Start with Build a T&M Headcount Estimate, then come back and layer these on.