Create & Use Labor Resources

Labor Resources are used to track employee time across workdays and specific events, such as time spent on a Visit. Note: Any employee who needs time tracking must be set up as a Labor Resource, even if they are already set up as a User.

In this article:

Create New Labor Resources

Manually Log Labor Details on a Completed Visit

Loaded Labor Rates

     Using Loaded Labor Rates

     Formula Suggestions & Examples

Labor Resources Video

Labor Schedules Video

Create New Labor Resources

1. Navigate to: Setup > Labor > Labor Resource
2. Select New Labor Resource
3. Complete the fields below:
   

   Name	This should be the name of the Labor Resource
   User	This refers to the SingleOps User most commonly associated with the Labor Resource, including instances where the User is setting themselves up as the Labor Resource. In that case, they would select their own User. For example, a Labor Resource is typically associated with a particular Crew User. If Mike is a crew leader & a registered SingleOps User but his crew Bill & Jose are not SingleOps Users, you would set up Mike, Bill, & Jose as Labor Resources associated with the User, Mike. If your crews change constantly, you will want to associate the Labor Resource with the User they are with the most.
   Labor Type	This is typically the employee’s Job title or the type of labor they’re performing (i.e., Stump Grinder, Tree Climber, Overtime, etc.)
   Rate	These are hourly pay rates or loaded labor rates based on Labor Type
   Loaded Labor Rate Formula	See the section below for more details on Loaded Labor Rate Formulas
   Default?	Select the default checkbox next to the labor type you want the system to automatically assign when clocking in the Labor Resource. If the Labor Resource has only one labor type, it’s recommended to check this box to ensure the Labor Resource is automatically populated in the Employees field when creating a Clock In/Out event for that user.

4. Select Save & Close

Manually Log Labor Details on a Completed Visit

1. Navigate to: Completed Jobs
2. Find & open the Job/Visit show page
3. Click the Labor / Expense Details button
4. Expand Labor Details
5. Click the + Labor Line button
6. Select a Labor Resource/Rate & complete the details, as needed
7. Select Update or Complete*Note: Labor Details can also be recorded through the use of Timesheets. You can find more information on Timesheets here. 

Loaded Labor Rates

Loaded Labor Rates allow you to adjust the rate of a Labor Resource based on a specific condition.

Examples of this for a given Labor Resource are: one Operation's labor costs 1.5x as much as labor on other Operations, or labor cost changes based on the value of a Custom Input called Difficulty which you have added to your account as a Job-level Custom Input.

As with Labor Resources in general, these amounts relate to the Cost of Labor recorded on a Job and not the Price. Labor Resources and any applied Loaded Labor Rates affect the Cost for more accurate Job Costing and profitability on reports. Conversely, the Price of Labor is set on the Unit Price of an Item in category: Labor, which affects the Billable amount. 

Using Loaded Labor Rates

After you Create a New Labor Resource, Loaded Labor Rate Formulas can be applied to a Labor Resource. To do this:

1. Navigate to: Setup > Labor > Loaded Labor Rate Formulas
2. Edit a Labor Resource and set the Labor Rate to the Loaded Rate Formula you would like to use.
   
3. When finished, click Update Labor Resource

Suggestions & Examples of Formulas

Formula #1- A Sample Multiplier

For our first example we will create a formula that applies a simple multiplier. Let's say that after examining your numbers you have determined that you need to "load" your labor by 50% to account for other direct expenses such as payroll taxes, health insurance, workers comp, etc in order to have accurate job costing. The first step would be creating a new formula:

While building your formula we have provided a list of all available variables that can be used. The list in your system may be longer than in this example because your operation, client, and job custom inputs are all available as inputs to the formula. For this example all we need to do is take the labor resource rate and apply a 50% markup. Our final formula is:

labor_resource_rate * 1.5

Once the formula is created it can be attached to any labor resource rate. Once that is done the labor costs for that labor resource will be boosted by 50% in all of your job costing reports. 

Formula #2- Using Custom Inputs

Let's make things a little bit more interesting. Let's say in your business, after examining your numbers, you have determined that your load factor for your tree operation is 50%, Maintenance is 35%, and PHC is 75%. To facilitate that, you can add a custom input to your operation and then bring that custom input into your formula. This way instead of hard-coding a 50% increase, your labor costs will be updated dynamically based on the operation of the job your team logs time against. 

To create this formula you can utilize operation custom inputs like this:

To make this easy, all available variables are provided in the list, and you can click on any of them to have them added to the formula automatically. Now the formula can be associated with any labor rate, and as long as those values are filled in on the operation you're good to go!

Additional Formula Examples

*Please note: Formulas which call text are case sensitive (i.e. if Operation is entered in SingleOps as PHC, then a formula calling this Operation should read "PHC" and not "phc")