Labor Utilization Analytics: Key Concepts
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The Labor Utilization Analytics track how efficiently employees are being used. Keeping tabs on your labor force's performance will help you identify both over and under-performing individuals. The labor information is imported from the Costpoint database, and the statistics are based on configuration options and calculation settings that are established by your Costpoint Analytics Administrator. This flexibility ensures that the labor information you are viewing is the most accurate for your application.
There are several different ways to track labor utilization. For example, you can compare the direct labor utilization to a budgeted or targeted utilization percent to identify inefficiently performing employees. Typically, this is a percentage of direct labor hours/ costs to total labor hours/ cost. However, you can also view available labor utilization in which employee leave is subtracted from total labor. You can view labor utilization by the standard attributes, such as organization, reorganization, and manager, and you can also drill-down to the labor category and employee level to view more specific details.
For government contractors, utilization is often the utilization percentage of direct or productive labor because employees with a high direct labor utilization contribute more to corporate revenue and contribute less on non-billable tasks.
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In this topic
Data Loaded from Costpoint
Effective Dates
Direct Labor and Leave
Budget and Target
Configuration
Analysis by Home Organization, GLC, or Detail Job Title
Employee Access
Alerts
Direct or Available
Utilization % Options
User Options and Labor Utilization
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Timesheet records — Timesheets must be posted in Costpoint to be considered in the labor utilization calculations. Timesheet data is pulled from the timesheet history tables.
Employee records — Employees, subcontractors, vendors, and vendor employees must be set up as an employee in Costpoint to be considered in calculations. Employee organization and attributes (for example, GLC, home organization, and detail job description), are stored in the Costpoint employee tables.
When an employee attribute (for example, the GLC or organization) changes, it is linked to an effective date in the EMPL_LAB_INFO table in Costpoint. If the effective date falls within the middle of a period, Costpoint Analytics uses that period as the period that the attribute changed. Costpoint Analytics uses effective dates to determine the employee attribute for labor utilization analysis, depending on the respective historic employee configuration setting. The employee is always assigned to the current manager.
Your system administrator determines if the direct labor and leave variables are defined by either account or by project. This impacts data that displays on all charts and tables. If defined by account, then the Account ID and Account Name attributes display for analysis. If defined by project, then the Project Type and Project Classification attributes display for analysis.
Your system administrator determines if Budget and/or Targets for labor utilization are used on the Labor Utilization Analytic charts and tables. Your system administrator can choose to use one, both, or neither.
When calculating labor utilization, you can:
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Define the labor hours and costs to include as part of direct labor.
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Define the labor hours and costs to include as part of leave.
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Select whether to associate labor data with home organizations, GLCs, and detail job titles based on employees’ current assignments or based on their home organizations, GLCs, and detail job titles in effect when individual historical labor transactions were generated.
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Include or exclude bonuses from labor utilization calculation.
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Include or exclude cost-only pay types (for example, car allowance, uniform allowance, and so on).
You can filter the Labor Utilization Analytics by home organization and general labor category (GLC), and you can analyze data in the tables by home organization, GLC, and detail job title. However, home organizations, GLCs, and detail job titles often change over time.
When your system administrator configured Costpoint Analytics, he or she specified whether labor data, when you analyze it on a period-by-period basis, is associated with organizations, GLCs, and detail job titles based on employees’ current assignments or based on their home organizations, GLCs, and detail job titles in effect when individual historical labor transactions were generated.
The option to use employees' historical assignments only affects the analytics if you select the Period option on the Labor Utilization tab. YTD data is always based on employees' current assignments.
Your system administrator configures security to ensure that your role can access data for the appropriate employees, based either on employee home organizations or security organization. The system administrator also may deny access to labor cost information.
Your system administrator determines the guidelines
that control how, and when, you are alerted of variances. These alerts
are either cautionary or urgent, depending on your configuration settings.
A negative variance engages the alerts.
Refer to the following scale to determine the type of alerts that display:
Cautionary
alert —
The Variance % cell displays
in yellow to indicate that performance is below the expected level
but is not yet a critical problem.
Urgent
alert —
The Variance % cell displays
in red to indicate that performance is far enough below budget that
it requires urgent attention.
You can click the Variance column heading to sort
a table by alert status. Urgent alerts will display first, and then cautionary
alerts, and then projects with an acceptable status.
There are two ways to view the type of labor used: Available
or Direct. These options
impact the Utilization % Analysis and the Utilization % Comparison charts.
Direct labor utilization is based on total labor, while available labor
utilization subtracts employee leave from the total labor. These options
ensure that you can track the efficiency of your labor force.
Labor type defaults to Direct
, but you can switch the type at any time.
To switch the type of labor...
Locate the labor type options.
Click Available or Direct. The selected option's button
turns green, and the pertinent information on the charts updates to
reflect your selection.
You can select different ways to view labor utilization: by Cost
or Hours, and by Period
or Year-to-Date (YTD).
Cost or Hours
Cost allows you to view
the total cost of labor utilization while hours only allows you to
view the number of hours charged. These options ensure that each employee
can only access the appropriate labor information.
Your security rights
determine access to select Cost
or Hours. Your system administrator
may configure your application to only allow Hours.
Contact your system administrator for further information.
Direct labor utilization
defaults to Hours when used
initially, but you can switch the chart type at any time.
Period or YTD
Period is data for the
current analysis period while YTD provides a cumulative, rolling perspective
within a given year. For example, February = January + February, March
= January + February + March, and so on.
Labor Utilization defaults
to YTD when used initially,
but you can switch the chart type at any time.
To switch the labor utilization view...
Locate the Utilization % Based
On options.
Click Cost or Hours. The selected option's button
turns green, and the pertinent information on the charts and tables
updates to reflect your selection.
Click Period or YTD. The selected option's button
turns green, and the pertinent information on the charts and tables
updates to reflect your selection.
Your selections on the User Options tab affect the Labor Utilization Analytic in the following ways.
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User Option
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Effect on the Analytics
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Budget Type
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If you select Baseline Budget, the baseline budget data is used to calculate labor utilization for comparison to budget. If you select Forecast, the forecast data is used for those calculations.
For more information on this user option, see Budget Type.
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Org or Reorg
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If you select Org, you can filter and analyze labor utilization by organization. If you select Reorg, you can do so based on the selected reorganization.
The name and contents of the filter list and cycle options change to reflect your current selection. For more information on this user option, see Organization or Reorganization.
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