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Set Up Labour Types

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Set Up Labour Types

Labour Type Codes are used for automatically pricing timesheets based on pre-sets specified on this module. There may not be a need in your business for this feature, however to keep consistency with the TSM model, TSM Lite will not allow you to create a timesheet without a Labour Type. The first workflow therefore details setting up a default labour type that will not affect any other settings on your timesheets.

Setting up a Default Labour type

  1. Go to the Utilities Menu → Codes Setup.<
  2. Select “Labour Type” from the list on the left.<
  3. Select one of the labour types – we recommend “S” as that is usually the default in a new copy of TSM.<
  4. Put zero into every numerical field on the screen, except “Employee Cost Multiplier” which should be set to 1.<
  5. Untick all the available tick boxes.<
  6. Press Save.<
  7. Go to The Utilities Menu → Setup
  8. Go to the Job Cards tab.
  9. On Page 1 select the Default labour type to be the labour type you have just amended.<
  10. Press “Save”.<

The steps above will ensure that every timesheet created will have the “S” (or whichever preset you selected) labour type on it automatically. The user will have to specify the labour rate and enter the billable hours.

Labour type is set, but does not always populate correctly - what is wrong?

If a new timesheet populates with something other than the default labour type, this means that the labour type has been brought over from another record that contains a default labour type. To fix this you need to check some settings detailed below.

First there is the default Labour Type setting on the Job Logging tab. If this is different to the default labour type it will over-ride the default in Job Cards Setup. Its presence here means that it is pre-defined somewhere else, which can be one of 2 locations:

  1. On the Billing Customer record - Contact Maintenance → General Info - Default labour type.<
  2. On the Primary Employee record - Employee Maintenance - Default labour type.<

Setting up Labour types

The following workflow allows for a simple multiple Labour Type set up. It will calculate timesheet sell prices automatically and employ a simple timesheet costing. The more complex options are discussed later on in the article.

  1. Go to the Utilities Menu → Codes Setup.<
  2. Select “Labour Type” from the list on the left.<
  3. You will most likely see a list of Labour types set up. You need to configure these according to your needs and delete unnecessary codes from this list.<
  4. By default, the Labour code IDs are set to things like “S” for standard, “O” for overtime, etc. Select a labour type or Press “Update” and enter a new Code ID if you wish to rename them or press “New” to create a new one.

Note: Updating a Code ID in Code Setup does not update every other instance of this code elsewhere in TSM. Timesheets and Default Labour types will retain the old setting but any new records will not be able to be set to the old code. Also you will not be able to run reports for the old code, which means that it may be better to create a new Labour Code and set the old one to “Inactive” rather than update the ID of an existing one.<

  1. Enter the Description for the Labour Type.<
  2. Enter the Labour Type’s Rate – this will be the hourly rate this labour type is priced out to the customer.<
  3. Enter the Employee Cost Multiplier. This value will be multiplied by the Employee Hourly Cost value specified on the Employee Maintenance module and by the actual as opposed to the billable hours on the timesheet to calculate the timesheet’s cost. This value can be useful in job cost and profitability reporting.<
  4. Press “Save”.<

This minimum of information is necessary for a functional Labour Type code record. Repeat the above steps for additional Labour Type.

Note: The Employee hourly cost needs to be set on the Employee record for the timesheet’s cost to be calculated. Otherwise it will be set to zero. Timesheet costs will not be updated retrospectively is the Employee hourly cost was to be set after some timesheets have been entered for that customer.

Advanced Features

Whilst the main purpose of the Labour Type is to automate timesheet costing and pricing, it can be used for several other tasks, such as incorporating cost overheads. There are several fields for specifying timesheet duration limits which are useful where your business uses time increments (such as 6 minute = 1/10 of an hour) or minimum or maximum timesheet lengths.

Managing timesheet time-limits using Labour Type presets

There are 4 fields that can be used to specify various time limits for this labour type.

Note: The Job Card 1 setting for “Automatically Calculate Timesheet Duration…” needs to be on.[|Labour Type setup and related screens displaying how the settings affect the cost and sales values for a job containing one timesheet of this type. **Note**: Unrealisitc figures are used to ease comprehension.]

Field Purpose
Usual Hours This setting is used to set the billable hours by multiplying its value by the difference between stop and start time.
Minimum # of Hours The minimum number of billable hours to assign to the the timesheet if the actual hours are less than this value. This option is useful where timesheets are charged at a minimum duration even if the actual work may take less time.
Billable Hours A variation on the above setting – this figure will limit billable hours on the time sheet irrespective of the actual hours figure.
Increment (Minutes) The number of minutes to increment Actual Hours time-spans. This feature can be used to round up actual hours to arrive at the billable hours figure.

Additionally, there are 2 option that allow accumulation of actual hours.

Field Purpose
Accumulate Minimum Hours This feature is used in conjunction with the minimum hours field. Multiple timesheets will result in a billable hour amount as per the billable hour setting, while the sum of their actual time is smaller.
Accumulate Increment Similar to the above setting – the incremented amount will remain the same until the actual hours total becomes larger than the increment amount; for instance if the increment is set to 15 minutes and 2 timesheets are entered, each at 7 minutes, the total billable hours on the job will still be 15 minutes. But this value will become 30 minutes with the addition of 3 more 7 minute timesheets totalling 35 minutes in actual time (see screenshot example below).

Other Options

There are some other options found on this screen. The “Inactive” tickbox – used for deactivating the labour type; it will remain in the database & useful for reporting purposes but will not be selectable form a list of labour types. “The Force zero billable Hours” box will ensure that this labour type always has zero billable hours (i.e. it is not charged to the customer). Setting the “Do not Print on Invoice” setting will preclude a timesheet with this labour type form printing on the invoice. This setting van be over-ridden on the timesheet entry itself.