Billing rate cards and estimated costs

Hello,

Is it possible to have the estimated cost for a generic resource reflect the values placed in the rate card assigned to the resource. For example, we have a generic engineer on a project task. I have assigned this resource a billing class and a rate card. When I input planned hours on the project task, the rate automatically pulled in by NS is the rate from the generic resource’s record — not the billing rate card. I see that I can create a time based rule for the resource, but this doesn’t reflect on the estimated cost in the project task.

We would like to use the Project page to create somewhat accurate estimates. We do not use NS’s time tracking feature to bill hours, so tying out to the accounts is not necessary. Would an alternative solution work better or is there a way for the estimated costs to reflect the rate card values?

Thank you.