This feature is available only on the Enterprise plan.
If you work with companies or freelancers, you likely have standard rates per word for translation and review jobs. These rates often depend on language pairs and the translation memory leverage.
To streamline your workflow, you can use the vendor rate profiles feature. This allows you to set specific rates for different vendors, with flexibility for language pairs and translation memory leverage. Once set up, these rates can be applied when creating new tasks. After tasks are completed, you can easily calculate how much each contributor should be paid based on their work using the generated reports.
Creating vendor rate profiles
To set up vendor rate profiles, follow these steps:
Navigate to Team settings > Vendors.
Create a new vendor by clicking the appropriate link.
Enter a name for the vendor and click Create vendor.
You can adjust the vendor's name by clicking on it.
Optionally, set an avatar for the vendor by clicking the image. You can choose an existing image from the gallery or upload a new one.
Adding members
Click Add members and select one or more existing users. Note that a user can only be assigned to one vendor at a time.
Click Add to confirm.
The selected users will now appear on the vendor page. To remove a user, simply click Remove from vendor.
If a member is removed from the team, they will still remain in the vendor profile and need to be manually removed. This ensures that their work progress is preserved.
Rate cards and translation memory leverage
To set up a rate card, head to the Rate cards tab. Before creating one, let’s quickly review translation memory, as your rates will be based on its leverage.
What is translation memory?
Translation memory (TM) is where all translations typed in the editor, uploaded, or set via the API are saved for future use. For example, if you translate a sentence from English to French, Lokalise will save that translation in the TM. Later, when you translate a similar sentence, the TM will suggest the saved translation.
The percentage represents how similar the current sentence is to the one stored in the TM. A 100% match means the sentences are identical, so you can often reuse the saved translation with little or no modification. Lower percentages indicate some differences, meaning you’ll need to adjust the translation. TM entries won't be displayed if the similarity is below 50%.
Translation memory leverage and pay rates
The pay rates are based on the fuzzy match percentage from the TM. The relationship is reversed: the lower the match percentage, the higher the rate, as more translation effort is required.
Creating a rate card
Let's proceed to creating a rate card:
Click Add rate cards.
Enter a name for the card.
Provide a description.
Adjust the global rates, which apply to all language pairs. You’ll later have the option to set specific rates for certain language pairs. Rates are specified per word, and you can set them based on TM leverage.
Press Add when ready.
The first rate card you create will be marked as the default. You can rename or adjust the global rates using the Actions dropdown.
Create more rate cards as needed. Every non-default rate card can be deleted, archived, or marked as the default one by using the Actions dropdown
Adding rates for specific language pairs
If needed, click Add another pair to provide rates for specific language pairs. These rates will override the global ones.
Choose the source and target languages, then enter the rates.
You can modify the rates later by clicking the pen icon next to the language pair.
Editing and removing rate cards
If a rate card has been used in a task, it cannot be removed or modified. However, you can archive it. If you need to update the rates, archive the existing card and create a new one with the updated rates.
To edit or remove a rate card, use the Actions dropdown.
Note that the default rate card cannot be removed or archived. To do so, you'll need to set a different rate card as the default by selecting it from the Actions dropdown first.
Using vendor rate profiles
Adding a rate card to a task
Once your vendor rate profiles are set, you can apply them during task creation.
In the first step, provide the task's name, type, and other attributes.
Adjust the task’s advanced options if needed.
In the second step, choose the scope, languages, and assignee.
If the selected assignee is part of a vendor rate profile, you’ll see the corresponding vendor listed.
Choose one of the rate cards to apply to the task. If the rate card has specific rates for the selected language pair, those rates will be used. Otherwise, the global rates will be applied.
Viewing reports
Check the Translation reports and word count to learn how we calculate the word count and how to read detailed user reports.
To track vendor performance and payments, you can access detailed reports. Navigate to Team settings > Vendors > Reports.
Choose one of the report types:
By tasks
By translators
By rate cards
Adjust the date range if needed, then click Download .xls report to export the data.
Here's an example of a vendor report by tasks:
If an assignee was added to a task but didn’t make any contributions, they won’t appear in the report for that task.
Edge cases
There may be rare instances where the final task report differs slightly from the rate card report. For example:
Imagine you assign a translation task to a translator included in a rate card. The task requires translating a key with an initial word count of 7 in the base language.
The translator completes the translation, but the task remains open (assuming you’ve disabled the auto-close feature).
You later update the base text by adding 3 more words to the key, making it 10 words total.
The translator then revisits the task, updates the translation for the revised text, and marks the task as completed.
As a result, the final task report will display 10 base words. However, the rate card report will show 17 words because the translator initially worked on 7 words and then retranslated the updated base text containing 10 words.