Labor Categories Tab

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The Labor Categories tab is where you build and maintain the labor foundation of your pricing model. This is the place to review extracted roles, clean up any missing or incorrect labor categories, and enter the labor assumptions that drive cost rollups throughout Pricer.

If you are pricing a labor-heavy contract, most of your cost model starts here. Once labor roles, rates, and effort are defined, GovDash Pricer can calculate totals, apply indirect wrap rates, and roll labor into CLIN-level pricing.

What You Use This Tab For

Use the Labor Categories tab to:

• Review labor categories extracted from solicitation documents

• Add roles manually if extraction missed something

• Separate Key Personnel from Standard labor roles

• Enter hourly rates and burdened rates

• Define level of effort using hours or FTEs

• Track labor cost totals across base and option years

• Confirm escalation impacts year over year

• Reference extraction source citations when available

Labor Categories & Rates Overview

At the top of the Labor Categories tab, Pricer shows a quick snapshot of what has been loaded into your opportunity. This includes the total number of categories, how many are marked as Key Personnel, and how many are Standard.

If indirect rates have already been configured, you will also see a Wrap Rate. This represents the wrap multiplier currently being used in burdened labor calculations. If wrap hiding is enabled, these sensitive values will be hidden.

This top section is designed to help you confirm that labor and indirect assumptions are present before you begin editing.

Manually Adding Labor Categories

If no categories have been extracted or added, or if you’d like to manually add a labor category, you can do so by using the Add Category button in this section.

Pricer will walk you through adding your labor category by requesting details such as job titles, number of personnel required, labor requirements, and more.

Labor Cost Summary Card

The Labor Cost Summary Card gives you a high-level view of how your labor assumptions are currently pricing out. Once hours or FTE effort is entered, this card becomes one of the fastest ways to validate whether your model is trending in the right direction.

Depending on what data has been entered, this card may show:

• Total labor hours and the FTE equivalent

• Blended hourly rate (direct and burdened)

• Direct labor cost (before indirect burden)

• Total labor cost (fully burdened)

If some categories have rates but no effort entered, Pricer displays a warning such as “X of Y categories missing hours.” This is a useful signal that your model is incomplete and totals may be understated.

If the opportunity includes multiple years, this card also displays year-by-year totals. Option years are visually distinguished, and an escalation badge appears when escalation is active. This makes it easy to see how cost growth is being applied across periods.

How Labor Categories Are Organized

Labor categories are grouped into two expandable sections:

• Key Personnel

• Standard Labor Categories

This structure helps teams separate roles that require special handling in proposals, such as program leadership, from the broader labor pool that makes up the majority of staffing.

Each labor category appears as an accordion row that provides a quick pricing snapshot without needing to open the full details. This includes role name, personnel count, effort, rates, and extended cost.

Working with Individual Labor Categories

Each labor category has an action menu that lets you view details, update the role definition, adjust pricing inputs, or remove the category entirely.

Viewing Role Details

The View Details option opens a modal with key role metadata, such as title, description, personnel count, role type, location, and any certification requirements that were extracted or entered manually.

This is useful for validating whether the role definition matches what the solicitation requires, even before you start adjusting pricing.

Editing a Labor Category

Edit Category is used when the role itself needs to be updated.

For example, you might use this if:

• The extracted title is too vague

• The personnel count is incorrect

• A role should be classified as Key Personnel

• Requirements or certifications were missed

• The description needs clarification

This is focused on the definition of the role, not the pricing.

Editing Labor Rates

The Edit Rate option is where labor pricing assumptions are maintained. This is one of the most important workflows in Pricer because it controls the math behind labor rollups, burdened totals, and labor-linked CLIN pricing.

In the Edit Rate dialog, you can enter¹:

• Hourly rate (required)

• Fully burdened rate (optional)

If indirect rates are configured, Pricer can also auto-calculate the burdened rate using the current wrap multiplier. This is controlled through an Auto-calculate toggle². When enabled, the burdened rate stays aligned with the indirect structure. When disabled, the burdened rate can be overridden manually.

You can switch between Hours mode and FTE mode³. The non-active field automatically converts using the Hours per FTE value defined in the Overview tab. Pricer also provides a conversion hint such as “1 FTE = X hours per year” to make the relationship clear.

Before saving rate changes, Pricer shows an extended cost preview⁴. This helps validate the impact of the rate and effort inputs before committing them. The preview multiplies hours by the selected rate. If a burdened rate is available, it is used. If not, the hourly rate is used.

Pricer also includes sourcing fields to help track where labor pricing assumptions came from. You can select a Rate Source⁵ such as:

• Manual

• GSA

• Wage Determination

• Historical

• Market

• Internal rate card

• Extracted

A Source Reference⁵ field is available to capture details such as a contract number, wage determination identifier, or other supporting reference.

Viewing Extracted Source Citations

If extraction citations are available, labor categories may include a View in Document option. This opens the document viewer and highlights the source sentences that contributed to the extraction result.

This option may not appear for all opportunities. For example, if a solicitation begins inside the Proposal Cloud, citations may not be available.

Deleting a Labor Category

The Delete option removes the labor category from the opportunity. This should be used carefully, especially when working with extracted categories that may be referenced later in labor rollups or line item calculations.

How This Tab Connects to the Rest of Pricer

The Labor Categories tab is tightly connected to other pricing areas.

The Overview tab uses labor category records to display summary counts and rollup totals. Hours per FTE and escalation assumptions from Overview also influence how labor is displayed and projected here.

The Indirect Rates tab drives burdened labor calculations. With the auto-calculation for burdened rates, the wrap multiplier configured in Indirect Rates directly impacts labor totals in this tab.

The Line Items tab can use labor categories to build labor CLINs automatically. When CLINs are calculated from labor categories, updates to labor rates or effort will flow through and affect downstream pricing totals.

Because of these dependencies, labor categories should be validated early in the pricing process before finalizing indirect rates or building CLINs.