Costing Labor to Projects

Labor is both the greatest single expense incurred during the course of a project and the expense that is most within the control of your project managers.

By carefully monitoring project reports, your project managers can make sure that labor hours and dollars are being used effectively. One of the keys to producing useful project reports is to choose an appropriate method for costing labor to projects.

When you set up employee records in the Employee Info Center, you must enter the following information for each employee:

• Job Cost Rate — The employee's job cost rate is the monetary amount at which the employee’s regular labor hours are charged to projects. This amount can be a fixed amount per hour that Vision applies directly to the number of hours charged. Or it can be a variable amount based on the employee's salary divided by the number of regular hours worked in a payroll period (Hourly Rate = Salary / Number of Regular Hours Worked).
• Overtime Percentage — The employee's overtime percentage is applied to the employee's job cost rate to calculate the rate at which the employee’s overtime hours are charged to projects. This percentage can be entered as 0% if no overtime is paid, 100% if overtime is paid at the same rate as regular time, 150% if overtime is paid at time-and-a-half, or another percentage if overtime is paid at a different rate.
• Hours Per Day — The hours per day represent the amount of time you expect the employee to work each day. This number is used to calculate overtime hours for hourly employees.

Vision uses all of this information to distribute an employee’s labor costs to the projects on which the employee works.