Custom Data

The fifth menu option within the Settings area (Figure 1) is called Custom Data. The Custom Data section (Figure 2) of the Settings area provides Workspace Admins the ability to manage various metadata throughout Ruddr. Note that all custom data that you create/manage can be exported. See the Export Custom Data section of this article for more information.

Figure 1 - Custom Data in the Settings Area

Figure 2 - Snapshot of Custom Data Area

Within the Custom Data screen, entities will be organized into 5 categories:

Billing
Clients and Projects
General
Members
Pipeline

You can collapse and expand each of these categories as you work through various items in each category.

Managing Custom Data

There are four types of custom data types that can be managed here:

Lookup Data

Lookup data refers to data that is used to assign a "Type" or "Assignment" to an entity in Ruddr. For instance, a time entry may be assigned a "Time Entry Type". Ruddr allows you to configure the values you would like to associate with a time entry. Before we get into how to manage this lookup data, here are the Custom Lookup Data fields that you can manage:

Disciplines - Disciplines in Ruddr are used to group employees and project roles. For example, the employees in various project management roles can be assigned to a single Project Management discipline. Disciplines can be used to filter reports and analyze business performance
Expense Categories - Expense categories are used for the individual line items on expense reports. Each expense line item must be assigned a category. For more information of managing expense categories, see the separate expense category article.
- Industries - Industries are applied to clients as a way to associate clients with a specific vertical. Reports can be filtered by industry.
Invoice Items - Every line item on a Ruddr invoice must have an invoice item. The invoice item is the category of the charge to the customer, such as Service or Expense.
Job Titles - Each workspace member can be assigned a job title. You can also filter reports by job title.
Locations - Location can be assigned to clients and members in the workspace. The client filters and the member filters in reports include Location.
Member Skills - Member skills can be assigned to each member in Ruddr. You can then filter reports by Member Skills.
Payment Methods - Every payment in Ruddr can be assigned a Payment Method.
Practices - Larger professional services companies often organize services offering and personnel into practices. You can assign a Practice to each member, client, and project in Ruddr. Reports can then be filtered by Practice.
Project Types - Every project in Ruddr can optionally be assigned a project type. Assigning a project type helps you analyze the performance of specific segments of your project portfolio.
Time Off Types - When a workspace member creates a time off entry, the member must select a Time Off Type. A standard set of time off types are created when the workspace is provisioned but you can tailor these to your organization's preferences.
- NOTE: There is one system-used Time Off Type of "Holiday". You can edit this Time Off Type. It can also be Deactivated. However, Ruddr will use this Time Off Type when automatically creating holiday time off entries when the workspace setting Automatically create holiday time off entries is enabled.

When a new workspace is created, the creator must select a Professional Services Type (Figure 3). The lookup tables for Project Type and Discipline will have initial values that are based on the chosen professional services type.

Figure 3 - The Professional Service Type Dictates Default Lookup Data upon Creation of a new Workspace

Pipeline Values

When the Pipeline feature is enabled, you will have a variety of lookup values to manage:

Company Spend Tiers - Used to categorize companies based on the annual spend.
Company Types - Used to categorize companies within the pipeline.
Opportunity Lead Sources - Track how you found out about an opportunity.
Opportunity Stages - Track the progress of opportunities.
Opportunity Types - Categorize opportunities in the pipeline.
Pipeline Activity Types - Used to track the various types of activities during the sales process.

Edit Lookup Values

To edit a lookup value, simply click the edit (pencil) icon on the row (Figure 4) that you wish to edit. This will open the edit drawer (Figure 5) for that custom data entity.

Figure 4 - Click on the Edit Icon to Edit a Custom Data Value

Figure 5 - Editing Lookup Data

Add Lookup Values

Above each lookup table is an New... button (Figure 6) that allows you to add a new item to the table. For example, to add a new Discipline to the Discipline lookup, simply click the button shown below.

Figure 6 - Add Button for Lookup Data

Delete or Deactivate Lookup Values

You can delete a lookup item if it is not currently in use within Ruddr. If the item is in use, then the Delete option will be disabled and you can only Deactivate the item (Figure 7). When a lookup item is deactivated, it can no longer be selected for new data entries in Ruddr but past entries will remain unchanged.

Figure 7 - Managing a Lookup Data Item

Organizational Data

Organizational Data refers to data that is unique to your organization, but does not necessarily factor in to the data or structure of Ruddr's primary entities (projects, clients, members). The various types of Organizational Data that can be managed in the Custom Data section are:

Business Units
Workspace Roles and Rates
Resource Placeholders
Holidays
Holiday Schedules
Tax Rates
Exchange Rate Periods

Business Units

The Business Units feature in Ruddr enables this element in Custom Data. You can define various entities within your organization and link those business units to clients and projects. Additionally, you can specify varying invoice details and settings for each business unit, allowing you to send invoices from different entities.

Workspace Roles and Rates

Leveraging Workspace Roles and Rates in Ruddr allows you to define, at a workspace level, a standard rate card for your organization. You can link clients within your workspace to these roles and rates, and then add those roles and rates to projects where clients leverage them. The workspace administrator can establish this rate card in the Custom Data section (Figure 8) of Workspace Settings.

Note that any changes to existing Workspace Roles and Rates in Custom Data will be reflected in all clients that link to these roles / rates.

Figure 8 - Set up a Standard "Rate Card" for your Workspace

Multicurrency

Workspaces that leverage Ruddr's multicurrency feature will have the ability to specify workspace roles and rates for each currency being used by the workspace.

Resource Placeholders

Resource placeholders (Figure 9) should be used when you are not certain which team member should be assigned to a project but want to assign the hours of the project to a "placeholder" role. Creating a resource placeholder (Figure 10) allows for the assignment of a practice and a discipline to the record. Assigning these values to a placeholder provides you with the ability to track resource needs at a more granular level across your organization and workspace.

Figure 9 - Create Resource Placeholders to track Tentative Project Assignments

When editing a Resource Placeholder (Figure 10), you can also set the average bill rate and average cost per hour for the placeholder. The average cost per hour is used when calculating the future projected cost, gross profit, and gross margin for a project. The average bill rate is used for calculating the future projected revenue on projects that do not have the Use Roles option turned on. For projects that use roles, the bill rate used to calculate projected revenue is the rate of the role assigned to the resource allocation.

Multicurrency

Note that when Ruddr's multicurrency feature is enabled in the workspace, admins may configure the currency for either or both of the average bill rate and average cost per hour values. In regards to the Rate Currency, the placeholder can only be allocated to projects that use that same currency.

Figure 10 - Provide Average Cost per Hour and Average Bill Rate for a Resource Placeholder

Holidays

Ruddr has over 130 built-in, standard holidays, all of which can be managed within the Custom Data section (Figure 11). If your company observes a holiday that is not built-in, you can create a custom holiday (Figure 12). All holidays can be added to your holiday schedules. In the holidays list (Figure 11), you can filter the list of holidays by Holiday Schedule to see which holidays are associated with a particular schedule. Also, you can see the associated holiday schedule(s) for each holiday in the Holiday Schedule column of the list.

Figure 11 - Manage Holidays for Your Workspace

Figure 12 - Create a Custom Holiday to Accommodate a Data not Built into Rudd

Auto-creation of Holiday Time Entries

Note that you can configure Ruddr to automatically create holiday time off entries for your members. For more on that setting, please refer to this Time and Expense Settings section of the General Workspace Settings article in the Ruddr Help Center. For those workspaces that leverage Ruddr's BambooHR Integration, you may want to ensure that this setting is turned off if you handle holidays as PTO requests in BambooHR, as those would be synched via that integration and having this setting checked may result in duplicate holiday time entries.

Holiday Schedules

Ruddr offers a number of international holiday schedules for you to use or customize. To add one of these schedules, simply click the Add from Available Schedules action menu item (Figure 13) on the New Holiday Schedule button. A list (Figure 14) of Ruddr-provided holiday schedules will be presented from which you can add any number of schedules to your workspace.

Figure 13 - Add a Ruddr-managed Holiday Schedule to Your Workspace

Figure 14 - Select from a List of Ruddr-managed Holiday Schedules

If the Ruddr-managed holiday schedules do not meet your needs, you can create multiple holiday schedules (Figure 15) for your workspace. A holiday schedule can be assigned to each member. Manage your holidays in the Holidays custom data, then assign multiple holidays to a holiday schedule (Figure 16).

Figure 15 - Manage Your Workspace's Holiday Schedules

Figure 16 - Assign Holidays to a Holiday Schedule

Tax Rates

Tax Rates are used to associate a invoice item with a specific tax rate percentage. These tax rates can then be used to apply tax to line items on Ruddr invoices. Edit / add Custom Tax Rates inline on the Tax Rates screen (Figure 17).

Figure 17 - Manage Custom Tax Rates for Your Workspace

Exchange Rate Periods

Workspaces that have enabled the Multicurrency feature in Ruddr will have the ability to provide a set of custom exchanges rates for specific date ranges. Essentially, these exchange rate periods offer the ability to override the exchange rates used by Ruddr in converting financial data from one currency to another.

For more on how Ruddr approaches this conversion, please refer to the Help Center article Currency Conversion Overview.

When creating an exchange rate period (Figure 18), you provide the two currencies for which the exchange rate will be created and will then provide the rate of exchange for one currency to the other. Additionally, you will provide the Start and End Dates for the period during which this exchange rate will take effect.

Figure 18 - Provide Details for Custom Exchange Rate Period

In the above example (Figure 18), the exchange rate from USD to ARS will be effective for all of 2025 and any monetary conversions in Ruddr from USD to ARS or from ARS to USD will leverage the exchange rate provided.

Exporting Custom Data

All Custom Data can be exported to multiple formats: Microsoft Excel or Comma-Separated Values (CSV). To export any custom data values, navigate to the data screen by clicking on any of the boxes on the Custom Data Section (Figure 2). Then, click on the download icon (Figure 20) at the top-right of the screen. This will drop down a list of formats (Figure 21). Select the desired format for the data and then click the Download button (Figure 22) to download

Figure 20 - Download Your Custom Data

Figure 21 - Choose the Desired File Format

Figure 22 - Download the File Once it is Ready

Templates

Templates in Ruddr allow you to quickly create entities in Ruddr. You can create these templates with core data that defines the entity and apply the templates where appropriate.

Task Templates

Templates for project tasks (Figure 23) can be created and managed in the Custom Data section of Ruddr. Once created, these task templates can be added as tasks to projects in the workspace.

Figure 23 - Manage Task Templates for Project Tasks

When creating task templates (Figure 24), baseline information for tasks can be provided. For more on tasks and the various settings and properties that can be defined when added to projects, please refer to the Project Tasks article in the Ruddr Help Center.

Figure 24 - Provide Fundamental Task Information as Part of the Task Template