WHAT'S NEW

What's new in Rate Studio.

A running log of new features and improvements, most recent first. Rate Studio ships planned, batched updates rather than a constant drip of tiny releases — when something changes, it lands here.

VERSION 3.12.1 · OCTOBER 14, 2026

A Chart of Accounts, Cost Rollup by pool, and a budget you can load into your accounting software.

  • New: Chart of Accounts. Each period keeps its own chart, with each account's type, calculation category and a recommended subcategory. Import a chart from CSV or Excel, add accounts, and organize costs by what they are. Subcategories organize the budget and never change a rate.
  • Importing a new chart when accounts already exist now asks what to do: replace the chart (older accounts move to a Prior accounts list so you can link them), update and add, or add new accounts only.
  • Prior-year links: when the chart changes between the baseline year and the budget, link each older account to its new one. Rate Studio proposes links from a crosswalk file or from matching names, adds the old dollars to the new account in the baseline column, and moves any budget lines with the link.
  • Departments inside pools: budget by department within a pool, such as Accounting, Business Development and HR inside G&A. You name the column the way your accounting software does (Class, Department, Dimension). Departments never change a rate, and fringe is never split by department.
  • Budget: Cost Rollup is now one tab per pool, with labor and applied fringe from the Labor tab, expenses added by choosing an account from the chart, a required note on every line, and a reconciliation to the calculation engine on each pool. Intermediate pool allocation drivers show in their own units, such as square feet and dollars per square foot.
  • New: GL accounts and budget export. Map each budget item to a chart account, then export the budget as Excel or as a flat CSV (one row per account across January to December, or one row per account per month). The export ties to the budget computed from your sources, and is also available from the File menu.
  • Budget: Labor adds benefit classes, first and last name columns, percentages typed as percentages, and a smart Excel employee template with drop-downs, number limits and a check column. Baseline now comes before Revenue and clearly shows what is loaded; the old Cost Rollup import was removed.
  • Version 3.12.1 fixes a column heading on the GL accounts tab.
VERSION 3.11.0 · OCTOBER 4, 2026

Periods: budget, actuals and year over year in one file.

  • New: periods. One saved file can now hold a budget, monthly or quarterly actuals, and prior years, each with its own cost data, structures, What-If and account mappings. Switch between them from the Period box in the sidebar.
  • Start a new period from an existing one: copy the structures, mappings and cost treatments with no dollars (the usual choice for a new year or month) and import the new trial balance, or copy everything to model a budget from a locked one.
  • Lock a period when it closes. A Final period is read-only, can only be locked when its rates reconcile and use all of its cost data, and unlocks only with a typed reason that is kept in a lock history.
  • Compare any two periods stage by stage, with the change in percentage points and the pool and base dollars behind it, and export the comparison to Excel. A budget and its actuals for the same year should use the same structure, so Rate Studio warns you if they differ.
  • Reports, exports and file names show the period and whether it is Draft or Final. The company name is protected from accidental edits once Mode & Purpose is complete.
  • Mode & Purpose now opens with Open Existing Work, then Company Information, then the three modes. Files saved in earlier versions open as a single period with the same results as before.
VERSION 3.10.0 · OCTOBER 3, 2026

Safer trial balance imports, and rates you can trust to tie out.

  • Re-importing a trial balance now works the way you expect: new amounts replace the old ones automatically, your account mappings and names are kept, and any account number or name that changed is highlighted for you to confirm.
  • Import checks that catch problems before they reach your rates: a warning for duplicate account numbers, and a row-and-dollar comparison between your file and what was imported.
  • Every structure now shows a "cost data used" check. If a structure leaves any of your dollars out of its pools, Pricing, Hiring and the reports stay blocked until it is fixed, so no one relies on rates that are missing dollars.
  • The three modes are now named for what they do and what they lock: Calculate Single Set of Rates; Perform a What-If Analysis (the structure is locked and only dollar amounts change); and Model Multiple Rate Structures (the dollars are locked and only the structure changes). Every difference in a rate traces to one cause.
  • The cost treatment screen shows only the pools in the structure you are editing, and optional MSOH base elements such as Travel and ODC can now be routed in the pool mapping too.
  • File handling: Save As is always available, an imported file keeps its name when you save, company information edits are saved, and changing modes warns you before it removes structures.
  • Fixes: credits inside expense accounts keep their sign, so pools are no longer overstated; a renamed account keeps its correct amount and mapping; and Enter Cost Data no longer goes blank after importing a saved file.
VERSION 3.9.0 · OCTOBER 2, 2026

A Budget Module, and a guided mapping workflow.

  • New: the Budget Module. Choose Budget as your data type, then build a budget from scratch — Revenue, an optional prior-year/current-year Baseline, bottom-up Labor, Cost Rollup, and Pro Forma — and run it through the same calculation engine as actual data.
  • Budget: Labor models real payroll variation: an addable list of Paid Absence Types (PTO, Holiday, Sick, and more), allocation percentages based on worked hours, workers' comp by job class, SUTA by state, the FUTA wage-base cap, an optional cap on the retirement match, and bulk employee import from a CSV template.
  • Mapping is now more guided. Map Departments pre-fills each department from its name — Services and Manufacturing to their pools, Facilities to a Facilities pool, Accounting, BD and HR to G&A, MSOH to MSOH — and marks those rows "suggested" for your review.
  • After you accept and save your account mappings, Rate Studio now takes you straight to Intermediate pool allocation if a pool still needs data. Continue to Calculation checks for it too, instead of leaving you to find the gap on the results screen.
  • Hiring now always shows every structure side by side, with a Detail tab for each, matching the Pricing tab.
  • A cleaner, more consistent look: a screen header that stays put while you scroll, uniform structure labels so alternatives read as peers of your Baseline, and a consistent Purple/Teal heading hierarchy.
  • Fixes: a category such as "Intermediate Labor – Facilities" is now recognized as labor (it was being treated as an expense, so fringe was never applied to it); the Sort menu no longer overlaps the "Unreviewed only" checkbox; side-by-side fields on Configure Structures line up; and every screen and sub-step now opens at the top instead of wherever the previous one was scrolled.
VERSION 3.7.0 · SEPTEMBER 25, 2026

Smarter naming recognition, and a security hardening pass.

  • Trial balance auto-mapping recognizes more real-world naming conventions — Direct/COGS, Fringe, Facilities, IT, G&A, and MSOH variants, in both account names and the Category column.
  • Text from your files and the names you type is now safely handled everywhere it appears on screen, closing a class of injection risks.
  • A remembered client folder that has since been moved, renamed, or is on an unplugged drive no longer blanks the Client Folder card — it now recovers cleanly with a clear message.
VERSION 3.6.0 · SEPTEMBER 24, 2026

Hiring reports, and a smarter trial balance.

  • The Hiring tab now exports to Excel and Print/Save as PDF, matching Pricing and Calculate & Reconcile.
  • Trial balance auto-mapping got noticeably smarter — accounts named with common G&A, Overhead, Facilities, IT, and HR prefixes are now recognized automatically instead of needing manual review.
  • When both a Department and a Category column are present in your upload, Department mapping now runs first and helps Category's own suggestions land correctly the first time.
  • Several screen polish fixes: a duplicate button row on Configure Structures, a false "data needed" warning on single-pool structures, and imported sessions now correctly show every completed step.
VERSIONS 3.3–3.5 · SEPTEMBER 2026

A persistent File menu, and Department-based mapping.

  • Save, Save As, Import, and every report export now live in one consistent File menu at the bottom of every screen — no more hunting for the right button on the right screen.
  • New: map trial balance accounts by Department, not just Category — tell Rate Studio once which departments feed which pools, and every account in that department follows automatically.
  • Fixed a data-integrity issue where some trial balance accounts could be silently marked "reviewed" without ever being mapped.
VERSIONS 3.0–3.2 · AUGUST–SEPTEMBER 2026

Subscription tiers, free trials, and a redesigned sidebar.

  • Rate Studio's subscription model went live — Solo/SMB, Small Firm, and Enterprise tiers, each with Single Calculation, What-If, and Multi-Model editions.
  • New: a 30-day free trial on every tier, with a clear "days remaining" indicator while it's active.
  • The sidebar was redesigned to match Corvata's brand — lighter, cleaner, and easier to read at a glance, including your current tier and edition.
VERSIONS 2.5–2.6 · AUGUST 2026

The demo, the User Guide, and the License Agreement.

  • An interactive demo mode, so a prospective subscriber can explore the real tool with sample data before signing up.
  • The full User Guide and License Agreement became available directly from the sidebar, on every screen.
  • A detailed print/PDF report was added alongside the existing summary report, showing every pool and base component account-by-account.
SINCE LAUNCH

The foundation: a complete rate-calculation workflow.

Earlier releases built out the core of the tool — the nine-screen wizard, the full DCAA-aligned calculation engine, and the reporting suite that everything above builds on:

  • Configure a full indirect rate structure — Fringe, Intermediate pools, Overhead, MSOH, and G&A — and compare up to five alternative structures side by side.
  • Upload a real trial balance (CSV or Excel) with rule-based account mapping, or enter costs manually.
  • What-If mode, for modeling the effect of a hypothetical new hire, raise, or reallocation on your existing rates.
  • A full Pricing tab (Cost-Type, Fixed-Price, and Time & Materials) and a Hiring tab, for testing what a given billing rate can actually afford to pay.
  • Excel and Print/PDF exports throughout, plus a connected-folder option for saving and reopening client files without repeated file-picker dialogs.
QUESTIONS?

Something not covered here?

If you're not sure whether a feature you're looking for already exists, or you'd like to suggest something for a future release, we'd like to hear from you.

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