14.8. Schedule Time-Bound Rate Changes on MSP Client Contracts

Pricing schedules let you define time-bound rate overrides on a fixed-fee contract. Use them to lock in a future price increase, run a promotional rate for a fixed window, or build an auditable history of rate changes — all without editing the contract's base configuration or its underlying lines.

Navigate to Billing > Contracts > Client Contracts > [contract] > Pricing Schedules.

What a Pricing Schedule Does

By default, a fixed-fee contract line bills at the rate defined on the contract. A pricing schedule overrides that rate for a specific date window. During invoice generation, the billing engine identifies the service period for each fixed-fee line, looks for a pricing schedule whose window overlaps that period, and uses the schedule's custom rate instead of the contract-level rate.

Precedence, highest to lowest:

Active pricing schedule with a custom rate (for the overlapping service period)
Contract line custom_rate (the rate set when the line was added or via Edit Pricing)
Service / plan configuration (the underlying fixed-fee pricing on the contract line's services)

If a schedule applies but is set to Use default rate, the schedule itself does not impose a rate — billing falls through to the contract line's underlying fixed-fee pricing for that window. This is the right way to explicitly document a "back to normal" period between two custom-rate windows.

Pricing schedules apply to fixed-fee contract lines only. Hourly and usage-based lines are not affected.

Viewing Pricing Schedules

The Pricing Schedules tab on the contract detail page shows two views of the same data:

A Pricing Timeline — a visual representation of all scheduled rate changes, with each window's date range (or "Ongoing" when there is no end date), the custom rate or "Default rate," and any notes.
A data table with columns: Effective Date, End Date (or "Ongoing"), Custom Rate (or "Use default rate"), Notes, Actions.

Each row in the table has a kebab menu with two actions: Edit Schedule and Delete Schedule. Clicking a row also opens the editor.

If no schedules exist, the tab shows: "No pricing schedules yet. Add pricing schedules to define time-based rate changes for this contract."

Adding a Pricing Schedule

Click Add Schedule to open the Add Pricing Schedule dialog.

Effective Date (required) — the date this rate window starts.
Choose how to define the duration:
- Toggle Use duration on to enter a Duration (a positive number) and Unit (Days, Weeks, Months, or Years). The end date is computed for you from the effective date plus the duration.
- Leave Use duration off and you'll see a Has end date toggle. Turn it on to pick an explicit End Date. Leave it off to make the schedule ongoing — it stays in force indefinitely until you edit it or add an end date.
Choose the rate:
- Toggle Use default rate on to mark the window as using the contract line's underlying fixed-fee pricing. Useful for documenting a "back to normal" period between two custom-rate windows.
- Leave it off and enter a Custom Rate in dollars — this overrides the contract line's underlying pricing during the window.
Add Notes (optional) — for example, "2026 annual rate increase" or "Q1 promotional rate."
Click Add Schedule to save.

No-overlap rule. Pricing schedules on the same contract cannot overlap. If you try to add a schedule whose window touches an existing one, Alga returns "This schedule overlaps with an existing pricing schedule" and refuses to save it. A later schedule will not silently supersede an open-ended one — you must first close out the prior schedule by setting its end date.

Editing and Deleting Schedules

Edit Schedule lets you modify the dates, rate, or notes. The same overlap and date-order checks apply on save.
Delete Schedule removes the schedule. Already-generated invoices are unaffected. For service periods previously covered by the deleted schedule, future runs fall back to the contract line's underlying fixed-fee pricing (its custom_rate, or the service/plan configuration if no line-level rate is set).

How Pricing Schedules Affect Invoices

When an automatic invoice is generated for a fixed-fee contract line:

The billing engine determines the service period for the line.
It queries for a pricing schedule on the contract whose effective date is before the service period's end and whose end date is either null or after the service period's start — that is, [start, end) semantics. A schedule starting exactly on the service period's end date does not apply to that period; it applies to the next one.
If a matching schedule has a custom_rate, that rate is used for the charge calculation for the period.
If no matching schedule has a custom rate, billing falls back to the contract line's custom_rate, and then to the line's service/plan configuration.

Already-generated invoices are not retroactively recalculated when schedules change.

Constraints

Per-contract scope. Schedules are configured on the contract, not on individual services or contract lines. When a schedule applies, it affects fixed-fee pricing for the contract's recurring fixed-fee lines during that window.
Fixed-fee only. Hourly and usage-based contract lines are unaffected by pricing schedules.
System-managed defaults are read-only. The auto-created attribution contracts that capture uncontracted work are system-managed defaults; pricing schedule authoring is disabled on them. The tab displays "This system-managed default contract is attribution-only. Pricing schedule authoring is disabled."
No overlap. Two schedules on the same contract cannot share any time. Close out an open-ended schedule before opening a new one.

Example: Annual Rate Increase

A managed services contract for an MSP client has a base rate of $2,000/month. You've negotiated a $2,200/month rate effective January 1.

Click Add Schedule.
Effective Date: January 1.
Use duration: off. Has end date: off (this is an ongoing increase).
Use default rate: off. Custom Rate: 2200.00.
Notes: "2026 annual rate increase."
Click Add Schedule.

From January 1 forward, every invoice generated for this contract's fixed-fee lines will bill at $2,200. The change appears in the Pricing Timeline alongside any prior schedule history, giving you a clear audit trail of how the contract's effective rate has evolved. The base contract configuration remains untouched, so renewals, exports, and contract templates still reflect the negotiated baseline.

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