Guides

T&M Rate Sheet: What to Include (+ Free Excel Template)

Updated Jul 12, 2026

On a time-and-materials job, the rate sheet is the deal. It's the exhibit attached to the contract or change order that says what one hour of each craft bills — and once it's signed, every hour on the job flows through it. A good one gets agreed in minutes and survives an audit; a bad one leaks money on every invoice or hands the client's auditor a reason to strike it.

This guide covers what belongs on a T&M rate sheet, where the numbers behind it should come from, and gives you a free Excel template — live three-tier formulas, no email required — that does the math the defensible way.

In this guide:

• What a T&M rate sheet is
• What to include — the checklist
• The free Excel template
• Where the numbers come from
• Surviving negotiation and audit
• The gaps that cost money
• From template to tool

What a T&M rate sheet is

A T&M rate sheet is a table of billable hourly labor rates — one row per craft or classification, one column per pay tier (straight time, overtime, double time) — plus the terms that say what those rates include. It shows up as the pricing exhibit on T&M contracts, the labor-rate schedule inside change orders, and the rate agreement behind service and maintenance work. The client signs the rates, the contractor bills actual hours against them, and nobody re-negotiates labor pricing mid-job.

That's the point — and the risk. The sheet is signed before the hours are known, so every error in it repeats on every hour, for the life of the job.

What to include — the checklist

• Every craft you might staff — including the ones you might need (foreman tiers, night shift, specialty classifications). Adding a craft after signing means a change order to the change order.
• All three tiers, honestly computed. ST, OT, and DT each built from that tier's own wage — never the ST rate times a multiplier (more on that below).
• An effective date and escalation language. Wages and benefit rates step on scheduled dates; say what happens to the rates when they do (fixed for the job vs adjusted on the agreement's schedule).
• What the rate includes — and excludes. Typical inclusions: wages, benefits, payroll taxes, insurance, small tools and consumables, overhead and profit. Typical exclusions billed separately: per diem and travel, equipment, materials, subsistence. Ambiguity here is where invoice disputes are born.
• Premium-time conventions. When OT starts (after 8? after 40? weekends?), what triggers DT, and shift-differential handling — these should reference the governing agreement or your stated policy.
• Markup transparency, to the level the contract requires. Public force-account work often dictates the burden structure and audits line by line; private clients may accept a single composed rate. Know which job you're on.

The free Excel template

The template is the checklist above, in a workbook: a config block for your burden percentages and finalize convention, one row per craft, and live formulas that compute all six numbers per craft — ST/OT/DT cost and billable — the same way this site's burden guide and calculator do it: each tier from its own wage, premium wages rounded to cents first, WC/GL on the straight-time base, one rounding at the end.

The example row is the same carpenters-agreement chain used across these guides — $46.28 base wage building to $88.74 / $119.51 / $150.27 billable — so you can check the formulas against the worked example before trusting them with your own numbers.

Where the numbers come from

A rate sheet is only as defensible as the build-up behind each cell. Every rate on it should decompose into wage → wage-attached additions → benefit contributions → payroll burdens → insurance → overhead → markup — the labor rate build-up. If you can't produce that decomposition for a rate on your sheet, neither can your invoice when the client's auditor asks. The burden guide walks the math and its live calculator runs your own numbers in the browser.

Surviving negotiation and audit

• Bring the decomposition, not just the rate. A client estimator who can see wage + package + statutory percentages argues about the markup — one who sees only "$142/hr" argues about everything.
• Match the governing paper. On agreement work, your wage and package lines should tie to the published schedule to the penny; on force-account work, mirror the agency's prescribed structure.
• Don't hide overhead in two places. If it's inside the rate, it isn't also a line on the invoice. Auditors look for exactly this.
• Version and date every revision. When a wage step reprices the sheet mid-job, both parties should be able to say which version priced which invoice.

The gaps that cost money

1. OT and DT as multiplied ST rates. The flat layers — benefits, ST-rated insurance, consumables — don't scale with premium pay. Multiplying overstates OT by real dollars per hour, and it's the first thing a sharp reviewer checks. (The full math.)
2. Missing crafts and missing tiers. No DT column because "we never work Sundays" — until the outage schedule says otherwise and the rate gets negotiated under pressure. (Which days go full-DT is schedule math — the OT & DT guide works the examples.)
3. No effective date. The agreement steps in June; the sheet was signed in March; every June-forward invoice is now a discussion.
4. Silent inclusions. If small tools are in the rate but the client assumes they're not — or vice versa — someone eats the difference.
5. A sheet nobody can reproduce. The spreadsheet's author left; the formulas are hard-coded numbers; the next change order gets priced by guesswork.

From template to tool

The template holds one job's rates. The step after that is the reason CrewMix exists: keep the agreements, build-ups, and rate sheets as living data — import a union Schedule A with AI, define your burden structure once in the build-up editor, and every estimate prices whole crew schedules from rates that are snapshotted, dated, and decomposable on demand. When the agreement steps, you re-run the build-up — not the spreadsheet archaeology.