Numbers, tables and totals / Schedule of rates
A schedule of rates with units that stay attached to their prices
A price list keyed by activity and unit of measure, referred to from elsewhere in the document rather than totalled at the bottom.
Why this block is harder than it looks
A schedule of rates is a reference table, not a calculation, which changes what it has to do. Nothing is totalled, so the arithmetic disciplines do not apply, but every row has to be findable by somebody holding a different document that quotes a code. That makes the code column the important one, and it is usually the narrowest. The rate is also meaningless without its unit, so the two must be visually bound, and a rate that varies by band needs several values on one row without the row becoming a table of its own.
The decisions that make it work
Reasons rather than a description of the code. Each of these is a choice that has a wrong answer, and the wrong answer is usually the default.
- Put the code first, in the monospace face, and make it wide enough that no code wraps. It is the column people search.
- Bind the rate to its unit by putting them in adjacent cells with no border between, and set the unit smaller. A rate with the unit two columns away gets quoted without it.
- Sort by code and say so, so a reader can find a row by scanning rather than reading.
- Where a rate has bands, put the bands in a nested set of small rows inside the cell rather than as separate top-level rows, so the code appears once.
- Give the table a header that repeats, because a schedule of rates is usually several pages and every page needs the column meanings.
- State the effective date at the head of the table, not in the document footer. A rate without a date is not quotable.
The fragment
Markup and the CSS it needs, and nothing else. It expects a document that already has a page rule and a base stylesheet, so paste it into one rather than opening it on its own.
<table class="rates">
<caption>Rates effective 1 April 2026</caption>
<thead>
<tr><th class="c">Code</th><th>Activity</th>
<th class="n">Rate</th><th class="u">Unit</th></tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr><td class="c">SV-104</td><td>Site survey, standard</td>
<td class="n">96.00</td><td class="u">per hour</td></tr>
<tr><td class="c">SV-118</td><td>Site survey, out of hours</td>
<td class="n">144.00</td><td class="u">per hour</td></tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<style>
.rates { width: 100%; border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 9pt; table-layout: fixed; }
.rates caption {
caption-side: top;
text-align: left;
padding-bottom: 4pt;
font-size: 8.5pt;
color: #555;
}
.rates thead { display: table-header-group; }
.rates tr { break-inside: avoid; }
.rates th, .rates td { padding: 3pt 4pt; }
.rates .c {
width: 16%;
font-family: "IBM Plex Mono", ui-monospace, monospace;
white-space: nowrap;
}
.rates .n {
width: 14%;
text-align: right;
padding-right: 3pt; /* rate and unit read as one value */
font-variant-numeric: tabular-nums;
}
.rates .u { width: 18%; font-size: 8pt; color: #555; padding-left: 0; }
</style>What breaks when it is built the obvious way
Letting the code column wrap because it was sized from the shortest code. A wrapped code is not searchable by eye and is retyped wrongly when quoted, which on a schedule of rates means the wrong price is charged.
How to prove it survived pagination
Render three pages of rates and confirm the header repeats and the effective date is visible from the first page. Then take a code from page three and find it by scanning: if you have to read the activity column to find it, the code column is not doing its job.
Where it sits in a finished document
This page is one block. The document it belongs to has a page rule, a base stylesheet, a header and everything else around it, and repeating all of that here would make thirty pages that say the same thing. The trade price list template is a complete file with this block already in it, so take that and change the fragment rather than assembling one from parts. The property doing most of the work here is covered on its own page, with the support caveats that belong there rather than here.
Frequently asked
Will this fragment work on its own?
Not as a whole document. It has no page rule, no margins and no base type, because those belong to the document rather than to the block, and duplicating them in every fragment would mean thirty copies to keep in step. Paste it into a template that already has them.
Why does it look right in a browser and wrong in the PDF?
Because a browser window is one continuous surface and a document is a stack of fixed rectangles. Nothing in a scrolling view exercises a page boundary, so every break rule in the fragment is inert until the content is paginated. Render the real thing with enough content to cross two or three boundaries, then look.
Do I need a special option on the render request for this?
No. Everything on this page is CSS and markup, which is your side of the boundary. What the render has to give you is a real page size with real margins, and after that the layout is decided by the stylesheet.
Other parts of a document
The blocks that sit next to this one, and one from the next group along so you are not sealed inside a single kind of problem.
A row of headline figures that survives a narrow page
Three to five headline numbers across the top of a report, each with a label, giving the summary before the detail.
A quantity price break table where the bands cannot be misread
Prices that change with quantity, printed as bands, where the boundary between one band and the next is the thing that gets read wrong.
A reconciliation that visibly starts somewhere and ends at zero
Opening figure, the movements against it, and the closing figure, laid out so the arithmetic can be followed line by line to its end.
Bill-to and ship-to blocks side by side that stay level
Two address blocks presented as a pair, where one is who pays and the other is where it goes, and the pair has to stay legible when the two are the same and when they are wildly different lengths.
Trade price list, as a complete file
The whole document with this block already in place, ready to copy and change.
thead in paged output
The property carrying the weight here, with its real support status.
Every part of a document
The full list, grouped by the kind of problem the block poses.
Paste the fragment into the playground inside a page rule and see what it does at a real page size. That is the only way any of this gets confirmed.