Job Budgets Single Dialogs Workspace

Use this workspace to enter and revise budgets for the jobs that you work with in the Job Cost module.

You define jobs in the Jobs and Job Information workspaces, where you can enter general and account information. In this workspace, you can create job budgets by entering a number of budget lines, specifying activity, task, employee (if applicable), and amount. Use the tab for general and account information and budget limits, which you can later use for comparing actual activities. Maconomy calculates budgeted gross margin and percentage gross margin. You enter the actual budget in the Job Budget Lines sub-tab.

You can work with several budgets for the same job. Create additional job budget types in the Popup Fields workspace. For each job, select a current budget from the types of job budgets. Maconomy regards the selected budget as the job's budget. As long as you have not created purchase orders or requisitions from the current budget, you can change the selection of budget. When you open this workspace, it displays the budget of the type you looked at last.

When you create a planning budget for a job, you can keep track of the progress of the work performed on the job in the Job Progress workspace.

When working with a planning budget, you can use the Resource Planning module to refine it.

Resource planning enables you to define which employee should perform tasks of the planning budget, for how long, and on which dates. In the Resource Planning module, enter employee skill information to the planning budget lines to require that the tasks be performed by employees with specific skills.

You can also plan a job process without having decided which employees should work on the job in question. You can do this by assigning an employee category to the job instead of assigning specific employees.

Revision Control

You might want to control that the budget is only edited in the quote stage. To do this, in the Popup Fields workspace in the Set-Up module, select the Change only for quotes field for a job budget type.

A job budget can exist in many different revisions. This enables you to preserve a complete audit trail to track the changes in a budget throughout the lifetime of a job. Just as for time sheets, job budgets support a process of submission and approval. Use this workspace to submit, approve, and reopen a job budget to a new revision.

If needed, perform these actions on multiple job budgets at the same time in the Approve Job Budgets workspace. You can view all of the revisions of the budgets for the jobs to which you have access in the Job Budget Revisions workspace.

When you make changes to a submitted job budget, a warning is displayed. If you continue, the budget status changes to Not Submitted.

You can copy a budget with assigned budget lines to another budget that belongs to the same job. This enables you to save your current budget and edit it later. The Job Budgets tab displays the budget sums of the current budget. If you have not created a budget for a job, you can also copy the current budget to another job.

However, you cannot copy the lines of a budget to a planning budget under these conditions:

• If two lines with the same combination of activity and task are created on the planning budget.
• If one or both of these parameters has a value of No for the job:

  • Duplicate lines (amount) on planning budget

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  • Duplicate lines (time) on planning budget

In addition, you cannot create two identical planning budget lines for amount or time activities in the same revision of the planning budget. You can only change the budget type of a planning budget if the selected type does not contain more than one line with the same combination of activity and task. If you change the budget type, Maconomy issues a warning and deletes all job progress entries and task progress entries.

For amount activities, you can enter a vendor, which you can use later to automatically create requisitions or purchase orders based on the information in the budget lines.

If you want to assign items to budget lines, in the Job Budget Item Lines workspace ensure that the line refers to an amount activity, and the value of Quantity is 1.

Select Print This from the File menu to print job budgets. Use the Print Quote action if the job has Quote status, and use the Print Order Confirmation action if the job has Order status.

Transfer job budget information to the Quote Editing workspace to edit the information before printing the quote or order confirmation.

Use the Job Budget Texts workspace to assign text lines to each job budget line. You can transfer these lines to purchase orders and quotes.

You can also enter text lines and summary lines to create a better-organized layout. Text lines have blank activity number and task fields, and summary lines show * in the activity number field. When you print the budget in the standard layout, a summary line shows an amount total for the budget lines above it, up to the next summary line.

You can only enter changes to a job budget if the Change Job Budgets field in the Actions workspace in the Set-Up module is enabled. If not, you can only change fields and use functions that pertain to purchase orders.

When you enter tasks and employees on the lines in your budget, Maconomy derives the prices on the lines in various ways. However, the Price control from budgets feature enables you to set up your jobs so that the person(s) in charge of budgeting can establish pricing.

This process allows the project manager to:

• Adjust the billing prices for employees.
• Adjust the markup percentage for amount activities in the budget.
• Ensure that prices do not change.

When you add a line to the budget, you base it on an employee category. Maconomy shows an initial billing price that it derives from the employee category, but you can change it. When you click Return, Maconomy adds a line in the Job Price Information workspace with the same combination of task, activity, and employee category. You cannot edit the price in the Job Price Information workspace; you can only change it by changing the billing price or markup percentage in the Job Budgets workspace.

To use price control from budgets, you must set up the job to use a Budgeting type job parameter, and set the Price Control from Budgets attribute to Yes. In addition, you must meet the following conditions to enable this feature:

• You cannot use the same combination of task and activity more than once in the budget.
• When budgeting on an amount activity, adjust the price by adjusting the markup percentage.

The budget prices are controlled from the job budget of the type Baseline. You select the baseline job budget type for the job in the Planning job parameter type in the Baseline, Budget Type attribute value.

You can arrange your job budget lines in a work breakdown structure using task groups, thus gaining a better overview of jobs. Lines are arranged in a hierarchical structure. The structural setup of the budget is reflected in all workspaces that display budget information, for instance, Job Budget Revisions and Job Progress.

You can indent budget lines to the number of levels allowed by the Max. Depth for Job Budget Hierarchy system parameter. However, printouts of budget information and reports only include up to seven levels, including the top level.

Note that you cannot set up a work breakdown structure if the budget contains any manual sum lines created by entering * in the Act. No. field. You must delete any such budget lines before you can set up a work breakdown structure. In addition, you can only assign lines of the Sum/Text line type as task group headers. Note that work breakdown structures that consist of task groups can have a maximum of six levels. This structure is referred to as Task Group 1-6 in the workspaces that display budget information. Task Group 1 is the top level of the hierarchy.

Maconomy does not fully transfer the work breakdown structure to quotes when you select the Transfer to Quote action. When you transfer to a quote, Maconomy only transfers the top-level group header lines. For more information, see the description of the Transfer to Quote action.

Note that the task group values can vary depending on the selected budget type. The planning budget controls task lists, while the current budget controls invoicing that pertains to the work breakdown structure. This is only relevant if you set up different work breakdown structures for these two budget types, causing different task groups to be assigned to the same task. In such cases, the task groups that the planning budget shows and the task groups that the actual invoice for the job shows might not be identical.

If you set up a work breakdown structure in which a task appears more than once on different task group paths, the task groups for this task do not appear in the Job Tasks workspace. Because every task in a job budget is unique, Maconomy has ambiguous data when multiple instances of a task exist in a work breakdown structure, causing all task groups for the particular task to be eliminated.

In this workspace unindenting a line causes it to become the group header to the lines below it in the group from which the line is unindented.

For more information about work breakdown structures and task groups, see the description for Job Tasks.