Corvata Rate Studio — User Guide
Indirect Rate Strategy · Pricing — Version 3.0.7, current as of August 28, 2026.
What Rate Studio does, in nine steps.
Corvata Rate Studio is a modeling tool for designing, calculating, and comparing indirect rate structures for government contractors, built to FAR and DCAA guidance (the DCAA ICE Model is the reference methodology). It runs entirely in your browser — nothing you enter is sent anywhere unless you explicitly choose the optional AI-assisted account mapping feature and supply your own API key. There is no login and no account; your work exists only in the browser tab until you export it as a file.
| Step | What happens |
|---|---|
| Mode & Purpose | Choose whether you're calculating a single set of rates, designing and comparing up to five structures, or designing and comparing with What-If adjustments layered on. Enter company info. |
| Structures | Name each structure you're building (e.g. "Baseline," "Split OH Alt"). |
| Configure Structures | Build each structure's rate design — fringe, intermediate pools, overhead, MSOH, G&A, unallowables, B&P/IR&D — one tab per structure. |
| Data Requirements | See what level of data granularity your structural choices require, before you commit to entering cost data. |
| Configuration Summary | A full configuration summary — cost element routing, the computation cascade, and your first chance to save a JSON configuration file. |
| Enter Cost Data | Upload a trial balance or enter costs manually — shared across every structure, entered once. |
| Calculate & Reconcile | Rates, full cascade detail, reconciliation checks, and Excel/PDF exports. |
| Pricing & Comparison | Wrap rates, cost multipliers, and a contract-pricing test (Cost-Type, Fixed Price, or T&M). |
| Hiring | Reverse-calculate the maximum salary you can afford to offer, given a billing rate and target profit. |
Which modes and how many structures, fringe pools, intermediate pools, and overhead pools you can configure may depend on your subscription plan. A mode or option your plan doesn't include shows a note explaining what's needed to unlock it — nothing is ever silently disabled without explanation.
Read this first.
When to save
You can save as soon as you've filled in company info and continued past Step 1 (Mode & Purpose) — the sidebar's Save button appears right away and works from any screen. Save when you continue from one screen to the next, and at any point in between using the sidebar Save button. There is no auto-save.
Where to save
We recommend creating one dedicated folder on your computer (e.g. "Rate Studio Clients") and keeping every client's file there, named for that client. This makes files easy to find again and keeps actual-vs-budget or year-over-year files from getting scattered.
Two ways to make repeat saves easier
One-click re-save
Chrome/Edge only. After your first save, the sidebar's Save button writes back to that exact file with no dialog. Look for a separate "Save As…" link next to it if you want to save a copy under a different name instead.
Connect a client folder
Chrome/Edge only. Browse, open, and save directly within one folder of client files, without picking a location every time. Available from the Mode & Purpose screen.
A yellow banner appears at the top of the screen whenever you have unsaved changes, and a brief reminder toast appears if you click Continue with unsaved changes — both are reminders, not a guarantee. Get in the habit of saving proactively rather than relying on them.
Reusing a configuration year over year
Every export follows one consistent filename pattern so files never collide and you can tell what's inside without opening it:
client-fiscalyear-actual|budget-modetype-date-rate-config.json
e.g. acme-federal-services-llc-fy2026-budget-compare-2026-08-27-rate-config.json
To reuse last year's structure for a new period (e.g. 2025 Actual → 2026 Budget):
- Import the 2025 Actual JSON (Step 1's "Import configuration," or Step 5's Import button). This restores the full rate structure and the 2025 cost data, and takes you to the configuration summary.
- Go to Step 1 (Mode & Purpose) and update the Fiscal year field and the Data type selector to Budget, then continue.
- Go to Step 6 (Enter Cost Data) and replace the numbers — re-upload a 2026 budget trial balance (the tool reuses your existing account mappings and only asks you to review what's new or changed), or edit manual entries in place.
- Continue through Step 7 to get 2026 budget rates against the same structure.
- Save as a new file — the filename will automatically reflect the new year and data type, so it will never overwrite your 2025 Actual file.
You never have to touch Structures, Configure Structures, or Data Requirements again for this workflow — that's the entire point of reusing the JSON.
Always one click away.
The Instructions screen is always available from the sidebar (the compass icon above the numbered steps) and never locks, so you can return to it any time. It contains a short walkthrough of how the wizard works, the Saving Your Work guidance above, and six pieces of domain guidance worth reading once before your first structure:
- Splitting pools or adding intermediate pools requires real data to support it — this is the most common issue when a client wants to model an alternative structure.
- More than one fringe pool is not standard — the common, defensible splits are SCA/Non-SCA or Union/Non-Union.
- Common intermediate pools are Facilities, IT, and HR — the driver (square footage, headcount, etc.) must have a real, defensible causal-beneficial relationship to the pool.
- Common overhead splits are by division, location, product/service line, or client site vs. company site.
- MSOH typically covers all materials and subcontracts in a service business; in manufacturing, materials may instead run through the appropriate overhead pool.
- G&A is always at the entity level and never split within a legal entity. Total Cost Input (TCI) is most common; Value Added is common with MSOH; Single Element is rare outside the DOT/AASHTO world.
The sidebar also has a permanent License Agreement link and a single Rate Studio Resources link — your gateway to the User Guide, Security Overview, and Help/FAQ on the main Corvata website.
Mode & Purpose
Choose your mode, then fill in company information.
Calculate Single Set of Rates
A single structure, your existing setup only. Actual or Budget.
Design & Compare
A Baseline plus up to 5 alternative structures, compared side by side.
Design & Compare with What-If
Same as Design & Compare, plus each structure can optionally carry its own hypothetical labor/expense adjustments layered on top, without a new trial balance upload. Depending on your subscription, this may model one structure plus its adjustments, or the full range of alternatives each with their own.
Then fill in Company name, Fiscal year / period, Prepared by, and the Data type selector (Actual vs. Budget) — this feeds directly into every export filename so an actual run and a budget run for the same period never collide or overwrite each other. See Saving Your Work for the full save/reuse workflow this enables.
Structures
Name each structure you're building. In Calculate mode there's only one (defaults to "Baseline"). In Design & Compare or Design & Compare with What-If mode, name the Baseline and each alternative — use names that mean something to you (e.g. "Split OH by Division," "Add IT Pool") since these names appear throughout every later screen, report, and export.
Configure Structures
This is the heart of the tool. Each structure gets its own tab, and within a structure you move left to right through the cascade: Fringe → Intermediate → Overhead → MSOH → G&A. This order is fixed and mirrors the actual calculation sequence — every downstream pool and base depends on the ones before it, so the tool always calculates in this order regardless of what order you configure things in.
Every card follows the same pattern: a short instruction, a small cascade diagram showing where you are, then the detailed methodology reference text. Key things each card asks you to decide:
| Card | Key decisions |
|---|---|
| Fringe | Separate pool or embedded in overhead; number of pools (1 is standard, up to 4 depending on your subscription level); allocation base (total W-2 labor $ is most common). |
| Intermediate | Which pools exist (Facilities/IT/HR/custom), their allocation driver, and feed order between them if one feeds another. The number you can configure depends on your subscription level. |
| Overhead | Number of pools (up to 20, depending on your subscription level), each pool's name and base method, and — critically — the cost-element routing table (which pool each of materials/subcontracts/travel/ODC flows into). |
| MSOH | Whether to use a Material & Subcontract Handling pool at all — must be turned on before routing elements to it in the overhead table above. |
| G&A | The G&A base type (TCI / Value Added / Single Element) is derived automatically from your routing choices above — it is never a direct toggle. |
Data Requirements
Before you commit to entering cost data, this screen previews exactly what granularity your structural choices will require. Two severity levels, and they mean different things:
Blocking
Data your structure genuinely requires (e.g. splitting overhead into 2 pools requires direct labor allocated by pool). Nothing on this screen itself blocks you from continuing — it's a preview — but Step 7 (Calculate & Reconcile) will block calculation later if this data is actually missing once you enter costs.
Warning
Items needing acknowledgment rather than a hard block — external data not in the GL, like hours-based rates, or a documented custom allocation basis.
If you see a blocking item you know you can't realistically support with data, this is the moment to reconsider the structural choice on Step 3 — before building further.
Configuration Summary
A complete summary of every structure's configuration — and a natural checkpoint to save if you haven't already (see Saving Your Work). Three things this screen shows you:
Structure Comparison
Every structural choice, side by side across structures.
Cost Element Routing by Structure
One table per structure showing exactly where materials, subcontracts, travel, and ODC each flow (OH base, MSOH, or G&A) for every overhead pool.
Computation Cascade
The fixed 8-stage calculation order, from Fringe through Contract Pricing, so you can see how everything fits together before entering real data.
Two ways to save your configuration:
- Export configuration (JSON) — downloads (or, in Chrome/Edge, lets you pick) a file capturing your entire structure. No cost data yet at this point — just the structure.
- Save to client folder — if you've connected a client folder (optional, Chrome/Edge only), saves directly there.
You can also Import a configuration here to skip straight back to this summary from a previously saved file.
Enter Cost Data
This step has up to three sub-steps, shown as tabs at the top of the screen (a step only appears if it's relevant to your configuration):
- Data entry & mapping — Upload a trial balance (CSV, pasted text, or a real .xlsx file) or enter costs manually. Trial balance upload runs a rule-based first pass to map each account (optionally supplemented by a real AI call using your own Anthropic API key), but nothing commits until you explicitly review and confirm each row. Re-uploading a later period's trial balance reuses your prior account mappings automatically — you only need to review what actually changed. Cost data is shared across every structure; you enter it once.
- Intermediate pool allocation — If any structure has an intermediate pool (Facilities, IT, HR, or custom), enter the allocation driver data here (square footage, headcount, etc.) as free-form named lines, grouped by pool. This step is structure-aware, since different structures can route the same underlying driver data to different pools.
- Review & structure overrides — Review and, if needed, edit any account or category's mapping. With more than one structure, this is also where a specific alternative can treat a cost category, account, or manual line differently from the shared default — e.g. Facilities booked as plain overhead in the Baseline vs. its own intermediate pool in an alternative — without duplicating the underlying data.
Calculate & Reconcile
Rates for every structure, calculated from the same cost data, with reconciliation checks confirming applied amounts foot to pool totals. The Rate Summary table at the top shows every structure side by side; tabs below give full cascade detail (pool $, base $, rate, at every stage) and reconciliation status per pool.
Export options here:
- Excel report — full workbook: Rate Summary, Rate Details with account-level traceability, Trial Balance, Structure & Sample Calc.
- Summary Print/PDF report.
- Detailed Print/PDF report, showing every underlying line item that flows into each pool and base.
Pricing & Comparison
Wrap rates and burden multipliers per structure, plus a contract-pricing test. Choose a contract type — each produces a different output shape, with column totals shown directly in the table for easy footing and cross-footing:
| Contract type | What you get |
|---|---|
| Cost-Type (CPFF/CPAF/CPIF) | A three-section waterfall (labor+burden, ODCs+burden, fee), with standard non-blocking warnings if your fee exceeds 10% or 15%. |
| Fixed Price (FFP) | A full cost-component breakdown with a markup↔margin toggle — enter either one, see both simultaneously. |
| T&M / Labor Hour | A per-category billing-rate builder — enter a target billing rate or a target profit, solve for the other — plus an all-in external output ending in a contract NTE ceiling. |
Every labor and non-labor row picks its own overhead pool, so one contract can mix pools freely (e.g. Services labor together with Manufacturing materials).
Hiring
The reverse of the Pricing tab: given a billing rate offered for a labor category, find the maximum base salary you can afford while hitting a target profit — using the exact same cost multiplier the Pricing tab already computed, with no layer-by-layer removal of fringe, overhead, or G&A. Click "Detail" on any row to see the full breakdown: annual salary at standard (2,080 hrs), with-leave (1,920 hrs), and custom hours, a cost-multiplier sanity check, and a sensitivity table showing how ±$15/hr around the max rate affects your margin and markup. Check "Show all structures side by side" to see how a structural change affects hiring capacity directly.
Terms used throughout the tool.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Fringe | Employee benefit costs (payroll taxes, health insurance, PTO, etc.), pooled and applied to labor as a rate. |
| Intermediate pool | A pure allocation vehicle (Facilities, IT, HR) that collects its own costs and allocates them into recipient overhead/G&A pools — never directly into a base. |
| Overhead (OH) pool | Indirect costs supporting a specific line of business, applied as a rate against a base such as direct labor. |
| MSOH | Material & Subcontract Handling — a pool covering the cost of procuring/administering materials and subcontracts, applied as its own rate before G&A. |
| G&A | General & Administrative — always calculated last, always at the entity level, applied against a base that is Total Cost Input, Value Added, or (rarely) Single Element. |
| B&P / IR&D | Bid & Proposal / Independent Research & Development — quasi-direct costs under CAS 420 that bear overhead like a direct cost but flow into the G&A pool. |
| Cost multiplier / wrap rate | The fully burdened cost of a labor dollar — direct labor plus applied fringe, overhead, and G&A, expressed as a single multiplier. |
| Reconciliation | A check that the sum of applied amounts across every base exactly equals the pool total, for every stage — zero variance is required. |
Corvata Rate Studio — Indirect Rate Strategy · Pricing. This guide reflects version 3.0.7. For questions about the domain rules behind any screen, see the Instructions screen inside the tool itself.