Tag Archives: project rates

rates

Show me the money!

When we think about a timesheet, we’re more likely to think in terms of hours and minutes rather than dollars (or Euros or Sterling) and cents.  But, in the end, time resolves to money.  For some organizations, they try not to think in terms of rates because the conversation can be so complex or so contentious.

TimeControl was designed from its inception to tackle that challenge.  The first thing to think about is what a rate on a timesheet means and the problem can be that it might mean different things to different people.  Everyone might easily agree that a person worked on a particular task for an hour yesterday.  But to Payroll, that means one thing, to Billing that means something very different and to a project management team that might mean something different again.

That same hour that Payroll says “Well, that actual cost of that hour was $55.00.” might mean to billing “That invoice-able rate of that hour was actually $110.00” or “The invoice-able rate of that hour was $0.”  For project management perhaps they work on an average basis and don’t worry about things like overtime, double overtime, unbillable time or banked time.”  But other parts of the organization do worry about those very things.

The rate structure of TimeControl just like the rest of the product is phenomenally flexible and, unlikely virtually any other timesheet product we’ve encountered, it is designed to be flexible in multiple directions at the same time.

We’ve put together materials that can make this easier to understand for new clients who are just getting their rate structure started or long time existing clients who want to extend their TimeControl to tackle other aspects of costing in the timesheet.  You can find webcasts, screen shots, slide shows and a white paper called “How to create your TimeControl Rate Structure” on the TimeControl website at: https://www.timecontrol.com/features/rates.

 

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Timesheets costs can be a complex conversation that TimeControl is ready for

One area of functionality that has made TimeControl so popular is the level of flexibility in the Rate structure. It’s a necessary element for TimeControl because of the multi-functional nature of the product and how costs might be thought of one way for one part of the company, (for example Billing) and very differently by another part of the company (for example, Payroll).  The options for how rates are selected and then calculated are extensive and designed to fulfill as many business scenarios as possible.  Let’s look at just a few of these options:

Rate Code Types

TimeControl Rate codes are created as either Global, Resource, Individual or Non-Labor types.  For labor resources a Global-type could appear for any employee’s timesheet, a Resource-type would appear only when that employee is part of the resource referenced in the Resource code and an Individual-type could appear only for the employee specified.  Already that’s a lot of options!

Rate Codes per line item

TimeControl allows an unlimited number of rates per employee and per timesheet.  You are even allowed to have the same charge code entered more than once with each line having a different rate code.  So this can easily accommodate an employee who might fulfill one function in the morning on a task and a different function to be billed at a different rate in the afternoon.

Project Rates

Some organizations want a default project rate for each employee.  While the rate code might look like the same selection to the employee when filling in their timesheet, it could still be an individualized rate code definition because you can have more than one rate code with the same name in the Rate Table so long as it is unique by being associated to a unique employee or resource code.  Default Project Rates can be defined in the Project Table and can be constrained in the Employee Record in the Filter section.

But we don’t want to see all those rates

In each employee record, filters can be used to define which rates should appear and for which conditions.  This can define showing only certain rates at certain times.  The technique can be used to easily define rates that change at a certain time of the year or to define different rates being available for different projects or charges or other data conditions.

Calculating Rate Values

So far we’ve only talked about how you can define many rates and how to select them but what about how rate values are calculated.  For labor rates, each rate code can have multiple values.  Up to 9 values per rate are available by default.  This allows different values for different purposes to be used.  Let’s say that we define Value 1 for Internal Actual Cost.  Then we expect to pay that person that amount per hour completed.  Then we can use Value 2 for External Billing Cost.  That would allow us to calculate an invoice amount for that same value very differently.  We can use this technique to also handle things like “unbillable time” where the Billing Cost is zero but the Internal Cost is still paid for.  We can use the same techniques for Banked Overtime where the internal cost is zero but the billing cost is still invoiced.

That’s just 2 of 9 values.  Perhaps you might want to define a 3rd value as an Average Project Cost to match the cost capabilities of your project system so that costs sent by TimeControl to the project system match the values that were used for planning.

Accruals and more…

We haven’t even talked about how the Accruals Module can take timesheet data it encounters and assesses values to each employee for that time.  In this way, overall overtime or banked time or earned vacation time can be calculated and stored.  There are also options in TimeControl Industrial to cost materials consumed, equipment used and production accomplished.  TimeControl Industrial’s rate selections also supports extended rates which look through combinations of timesheet line fields to select the right rate for you.

There are so many options on how to create your own Rate definitions that we’ve made a white paper on the subject called: Creating your Rate structure in TimeControl. The same information is available in the Appendices of the TimeControl Reference Guide. You’ll find other resources on designing your TimeControl environment to suit your needs in the Resources area of the TimeControl website.