Job Costing (Invoice Costing)

[Former Member]

In the absence of job costing functionality within standard SBO I am forced to do a u2018work aroundu2019 to debit my mobile engineers costs to invoices. The hours spent on a job vary from 2 to 3 hours to weeks at a time.

I do this by adding each engineer as an item master c/w his estimated hourly cost and then add each hour he spends on a job (or in this case an invoice).

If the time is chargeable then I can set the selling price but if the job/invoice is a fixed price then I add the labour hrs/item hrs as a hidden line.

Has anyone got any better ideas? Either a simple 'add on' or a better u2018work aroundu2019

[former_member186095 · Accepted solution]

Martin,

you could try to create item master data as mobile engineer --> select editem type is labour.

or if you could also use item as item type but the inventory item is not ticked.

Create an item type invoice and assigned the item mobile engineer. Input the quantity column with labour hours and unit price as the price / hours

Rgds,

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks for your reply Jimmy.

You raise an interesting point. We currently have ALL our engineers set up as separate u2018itemsu2019 with the u2018item typeu2019 set as item (not labour) and the u2018sales itemu2019 check box ticked only. (this also means that in the journal the GL doesnu2019t get a debit posting)

I wonder what effect having the item types set as u2018labouru2019 would have. I canu2019t see any reporting options in sales A/R analysis?

On your other point in the actual invoice we have tried this and if you put say 10 hours as the quantity (of hours taken to do the job) whatever you put in the sales column will be multiplied by 10 as this is the quantity so we cannot set a fixed price in this manner.

[former_member186095 · Accepted solution]

Martin,

I think you could create a quantity UDF that reflecting quantity of work hours but in the actual quantity field, you should input 1, so there is no fixed price rising. You said that you want to mix non stock and inventory item in one document. so, this seems to be the only work around.

Rgds,

[former_member204969]

I would use a unit price (not inventory) item to manage the fix price jobs. Then you could enter into the quantity field the actual price.

[Former Member]

As a workaround you may use 'Service' option in the 'Item/Service Type' of the Invoice.

[Former Member]

Thanks for your reply but for the following reasons your suggestion wonu2019t work for us:

1. Our invoices are generally a combination of labour (attend site to fix fault etc) plus material lines (supply XYZ material) and a 'service' type invoice does not allow me to mix the two.

2. By just putting a description I've no link back to 'how many hours of labour' I've sold for that engineer and so I have no reconciliation back to his actual cost.

However I will look into the help files on 'service type' invoices as I don't know enough about them.

Once again I appreciate your reply.

[Former Member]

If so, you can use the solution provided by Jimmy.