Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA)

The Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) feature lets you build an annual pricing factor into your Managed Services contracts. When enabled, the COLA rate is applied at the service level so that services you designate as COLA-adjusted reflect the expected pricing change when the project is priced.

This feature is controlled by the release.recurring-service.cola feature flag. Contact your ScopeStack administrator if you don’t see the fields described below.

How COLA Works

COLA involves two separate configuration points:

1. A COLA rate on the project — a percentage that represents the annual adjustment you expect to apply to this engagement
2. A “COLA Adjusted” flag on individual services — marks which services should have that rate applied when the project is priced

When a service is marked COLA Adjusted, ScopeStack applies the project’s COLA rate to that service’s revenue and cost figures during pricing calculations.

Setting a Default COLA Rate on Service Categories

You can pre-configure a COLA rate on any Line of Business (LOB) or Service Category so that new projects inherit a sensible default automatically.

Go to Settings > Content > Lines of Business (or Service Categories) and open the item you want to configure.

On this screen: The edit form for a Line of Business or Service Category shows standard fields including Name and Target Margin. A “Cost of Living Adjustment (%)” number field appears in the same area, accepting a decimal percentage value such as 3 for a 3% annual adjustment.

The Cost of Living Adjustment (%) field accepts a decimal percentage. For example, enter 3 for a 3% annual adjustment.

When the first managed service is added to a project, ScopeStack looks at the LOB and Service Category attached to that service and sets the project’s COLA to the higher of the two values — but only if the project’s COLA is still at zero. Once a project has a non-zero COLA, adding additional services does not overwrite it.

Configuring COLA on a Managed Service

Each managed service and subservice in your catalog has a COLA Adjusted? checkbox.

Go to Settings > Content > Managed Services and open a service.

On this screen: The managed service edit form shows a “COLA Adjusted?” checkbox near the bottom of the service configuration fields. Helper text beneath the checkbox reads “Check if Cost of Living Adjustment should be applied when amortized.” When this box is checked, the service will have the project’s COLA rate applied to its pricing during calculations.

Check COLA Adjusted? on any service (or individual subservice) that should have the project’s COLA rate factored into its pricing. Services without this checkbox checked are priced at their base rates regardless of the project COLA.

The same checkbox is available on Professional Services under Settings > Content > Professional Services, for any PS services that are set to amortize over a managed services contract.

Viewing and Editing COLA on a Project

The project’s COLA rate is set and displayed in the Managed Services pricing view, inside the Payment Terms panel.

Navigate to Pricing > Managed Services on your project and click the Payment Terms button.

On this screen: The Managed Services pricing view shows a card titled “Managed Services Summary.” In the top-right corner of the card header, a “Payment Terms” button (styled as a white/gray outline button) sits beside the card title and subtitle. The subtitle displays the current contract terms: number of months, billing frequency, start date, and PS revenue inclusion setting.

The Payment Terms slideout includes a Cost of Living Adjustment (%) field.

On this screen: A slide-out panel titled “Managed Services Term” opens from the right side of the screen. It contains a two-column layout with “Length of contract (months)” and “Billing Frequency” (Monthly, Quarterly, or Yearly) in the first row. The second row shows “Start Date” and “Include PS Revenue in Recurring Payments?” (with options: Do Not Include PS Revenue, Add To First Month, Amortize Over All Months). When the COLA feature flag is enabled, a third row appears with a “Cost of Living Adjustment (%)” number field. A Save button at the bottom of the panel commits the changes.

Enter the annual adjustment percentage here. The value you enter is applied to all COLA-adjusted services on this project.

Click Save to apply the change. The Managed Services Summary table updates to reflect the adjusted pricing.

Which Services Are Affected

Only services with the COLA Adjusted? flag enabled are affected. Services without this flag are priced at their standard rates.

To review which services are COLA-adjusted on a project, check the individual service rows under Managed Services > Services. The COLA adjustment is a property of the service definition, not something you toggle per-project.

Notes and Limitations

• The COLA rate auto-populates on a new project only when the first managed service is added and the project COLA is still zero. After that, you set it manually in the Payment Terms panel.
• The auto-populated value is the higher of the LOB’s annual_cola and the Service Category’s annual_cola.
• COLA applies to both service revenue and service cost, keeping margin calculations consistent.
• The feature flag release.recurring-service.cola must be enabled for the COLA fields to appear on service configuration forms, service category forms, and the Payment Terms panel.