Job Costing: Time And Expenses

The Time and Expenses section on the stacked toolbar delivers a feature to better control one of the biggest costs in any job - time. It is divided into four tabbed areas - Labour entries, Weekly time sheets, Monthly time sheets and Expenses. It allows the entry of blocks of time against jobs (Labour Entries) and the collection information from timesheets and expense claims.

Within each section, new entries are made using the standard “New” button on the main toolbar. When these new entries are saved they appear as a line on the main record screen for the appropriate area. At this point the transaction need not be posted and each entry can be examined and checked before final acceptance.

The administrator can ensure that the entries are all approved, that there are no mistakes and that appropriate rates, etc., are all in order before final posting.

A benefit of this labour booking system is that, when combined with appropriate access rights, it can allow the direct entry of time and expenses by individual staff members without the need to provide full access to the rest of the system.

The program can be set up on every staff member’s computer desktop to allow him or her to personally log time and expenses against each job. A personal ID allows access to only the user’s time sheet, which can be added to and adjusted at any time until final submission - at say the end of a week or month. Once submitted, the time sheet moves to the Administrator’s area for final checking and cannot be further altered by the user. The Administrator has access rights that allow review of the time sheets from all staff members. Here they are checked for any errors and approved before final posting.

The main benefit of this feature is that it puts the control of time and expense logging into the hands of each staff member as the work is done - resulting in more accurate time recording and the elimination of paper time sheets.

If there is no requirement for individual staff members to book their own time and expenses the whole process can be easily handled by the Administrator working from employee timesheets.