Question

Items for Excavator

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
February 16, 2019
1 reply
38 views

Hello All,

We are a growing company that does a wide variety of work and transforming into a GC. I'm a bit stuck on how to setup my items. I have a lot of heavy equipment, so if I setup an item for the different sub phase of excavating do I need to setup an item for each piece of equipment & corresponding labor for each phase that the equipment might possibly be used for? I think this could be overwhelming for my guys to get the codes right (using tsheets). I'm looking for the best approach to tracking the general labor, equipment & equipment labor for each phase that equipment may be used (Bobcat, Dozer, Haul Truck, Excavator, Backhoe...etc). I don't think I will be able to track material by the subphases (if we get loads of stone it would be impossible to separate it to the subphases). We use the equipment in other ways (bobcats for snow removal for example). Does anyone have any advice how how to setup my item lists?

Also, is there a way to get the Time by Job summary report to show in a hierarchy instead of it showing the header:subphase:subphase? It is difficult to read this way.

Thanks in advance for your valuable input. We are using QB Premier contractor edition - Desktop

QuickBooks Desktop

qbteachmt

Level 11

Let's take a bit at a time:

"I have a lot of heavy equipment, so if I setup an item for the different sub phase of excavating"

You would only do this if it Matters to you; if you charge different Rates for the different Services; if you need to use that level of detail on Estimates and Purchase and Sales. Otherwise, it might just be "Service item = Excavator, rate per hour." Then, you can put some short description, such as on an Estimate:

Excavator, 5 hours, Clearing

Excavator, 1 hour, Foundation Prep

Excavator, 1 hour, Driveway Prep

Or, you want:

Clearing, rate might or might not be different

Foundation, rate might or might not be different

Driveway/Paths, rate might or might not be different

That's up to you, for what you want to see and use in reporting and data management.

"& corresponding labor"

Again, that's up to you. Example: Labor. Or, Landscape Labor vs Roofing Labor.

"for each phase that the equipment might possibly be used for? I think this could be overwhelming for my guys to get the codes right (using tsheets)."

You also get to use them differently. Example:

On the Estimate, you listed the Excavator. On the Timesheets, the People list their Tasks, which might be Operator, or General Cleanup. These people are Not the Excavator. They use the excavator.

"I'm looking for the best approach to tracking the general labor, equipment & equipment labor for each phase that equipment may be used (Bobcat, Dozer, Haul Truck, Excavator, Backhoe...etc)."

Again, it's up to you. for what matters to you. I have an attached example of "Appliance" that is generic as Item, used specifically for quotes, purchase and sales entries.

"I don't think I will be able to track material by the subphases (if we get loads of stone it would be impossible to separate it to the subphases)."

Well, stone is stone, unless you Need to see it, quote it, buy it and track it as "noninventory item types" for Pit Run, 3/4", Stone Dust, etc. Again, only you know what matters in your operation. It is all provided for. Here's what I teach: You cannot report what you did not track. If you find yourself doing lots of freeform text, then you should have made more items, and not Notation and memos and freeform text.

"We use the equipment in other ways (bobcats for snow removal for example). Does anyone have any advice how how to setup my item lists?"

Snow Removal is what you Charge me. Bobcats are what you Used to do that work. Someone Drove that Bobcat around. You won't track the Bobcat using the Employee's timesheet. You track the Employee's tasks, spent working at my location, doing that Snow Removal service. If you want to see "Snow Removal Driver" and "Snow Removal Labor" to track, report and manage your Staff, that means you need those two, separate, service items. You might be charging me "Monthly Maintenance Contract Fee" which is the same summer and winter, because you blow, mow, and generally maintain my property under a monthly contract fee.

See how what you manage is up to you, what you call it, how many different things you need, whether you job track it or not, and if that is billable or not?

"Also, is there a way to get the Time by Job summary report to show in a hierarchy instead of it showing the header:subphase:subphase? It is difficult to read this way."

That's the designation that a hierarchy exists. Run the different reports: Time by Item by Job by Name. Time by Name by Item by Job. Time by Name by Item. Time by Item by Job.

O

overtaxed72Author

Thank you so much for taking the time to reply to my post. I appreciate your response. I am trying to accomplish multiple layers of things. Using the items to create our estimates and also be able to present job progress reports to our foreman to better manage the job in the field and of course analysis from a financial perspective. Yes stone is stone but what the foreman has told me they would like to see is how each phase is going as compared to what was estimated (Needed 20T of stone, is at 23T now and job not done) but when I haul stone it it will be for the job as whole not specifically for a specific phase so I will not be trying to separate the material. We of course expect this to help us better estimate and better manage the projects. All of our team are multi faceted, meaning I don't have just an operator, the operator may perform many tasks while on the jobsite. While they would select a labor code of course I need to know what piece of equipment they were using not just that they were an operator. This is also for multiple reasons - the equipment is billed at different rates, the equipment has different operation costs, I want to know how much each piece of equipment is utilized, and if we are working a prevailing wage job then the labor rates can be different depending on which piece of equipment the are using. This is essentially what is driving the equipment question, when my team is using the bobcat, I need to know that is the piece of equipment they were on so I can't just have an operator code in the phase. But I didn't want to have Equipment, subphase bobcat equip and subphase bobcat operator (effectively two codes for each piece of equipment) under every single phase.

so for simple example:

Phase - Strip Top Soil

General Labor

Equipment

Bobcat

Bobcat Operator

Excavator

Excavator Operator

Phase - Subgrade

General Labor

Equipment

Bobcat

Bobcat Operator

Excavator

Excavator Operator

Phase -Snow Removal\Salting

General Labor (salting sidewalks)

Equipment

Bobcat

Bobcat Operator

Salt Truck

Snow Plow

Material

Spreader Salt

Bag Salt

And so on. I would then have this for every Phase and Every Main category of work (Septic, Snow Removal, Excavation, etc). I think I must just be looking at it wrong, at least I hope that I am as I don't like the way I am approaching it. I'm trying to gather enough information to provide the foreman running the job, to input the estimate in a meaningful way to analyze where we are doing well and where we need to work on but not make it ridiculous or crazy to collect the data in this way.

Setting up multi tiered phases\subphases is also what makes the Time by Job Summary difficult to read as it it strings it all together Strip Top Soil:Equipment:Bobcat Operator

qbteachmt

Level 11

Thank you all for your valuable input and taking the time to walk me through this. I appreciate everyones perspective. I wanted to use all service items as that dictates in what order they show up on the job reports (if I understand correctly) If I may, I would like to try to clarify a bit further.

For the Prevailing wage, I agree with all of what you shared. I have a different payroll item for the PW. In order for me to know which PW rate they should be paid, I have to know which piece of equipment they were on, if they were using the roller they would be paid operator - group 2. If they were on the excavator they would be paid operator - group 1. So if I am following your post correctly then essentially I need a service items like the following (as I believe you suggested):

Bobcat operator

Excavator operator

Roller operator

and so on. While I can't use the same service item (bobcat operator) under multiple subphases, I can create a separate service item called bobcat operator under each subphase, which I believe is what I would want to do in order to keep the costs separated. Yes I agree, I do want this breakout for w/c reasons as well.

I also believe that I do want to include the equipment when creating the estimate as that is part of the estimation process and something I want to track (est vs actual) - I don't want to show that to the customer of course and having been working with groups to accomplish this. I created a "Proposal" group and put the "General Conditions" items in it as those should apply to all jobs that are being bid.

The thing with the groups though is that the items are either displayed or they are summarized by checking the check box in the group setup. I want them to roll up for the proposal sent to the customer but I would also like to print the detail out to give to my foreman at the start of the job so he has what was estimated and has the benchmarks he needs to hit as he performs the work. I looked at how to accomplish both of these - I could print the proposal (which would be summarized but include the scope\descriptions) and the time by job summary for the quantities and the job est vs act for $ (for materials, subs, etc). But then my foreman has all this extra paperwork. So my current route is:

Start an estimate

1st line type the scope details

next line insert the proposal group and enter the appropriate info, deleting any lines that don't apply and inserting additional items I want to roll up into this fixed number.

Add additional scope lines or alternates that I want to show separately

I can then print the proposal for the customer and go to the send/ship tap and create the detail estimate letter that will give all the details (qty, rate, amounts by phase) including the scope typed

all on one page for my foreman. Its fairly limited in formatting ability because it pulls the whole "estimate" block and I had hoped not to have to manually format it (numbers need right justified, Tax column removed, rates removed) but this might be workable. This allows me to use the "group" to provide the summary to the customer and the detail letter to give to my foreman with the group being set to not show the line items.

However, if I do this when I print the Time by Job Summary it will show a negative one for the phase headers since there isn't an estimate on this line. I want to include the phase headers for my foreman. So I created a memorized report where I went through and selected all the items except the phase & subphase headers. This could be problimatic if addtional items are added later and the memorized report is not modified as it would change the quantities. Alternatively I have played around a bit with using Access and qodbc to generate the reports how I want to see them. Its a bit of work to do so and I really hope to get this all setup not doing things outside QB just for ease of use long term. Pros and cons both ways.

I believe I followed your illustration on using timesheets to allocate the equipment hours to the job in concept but I still need to know from the field guys what piece of equipment they used and for how long to do so. I guess I wouldn't need to setup an item for each piece of equipment (I was going to do so because they have different operating costs but I can have a cheat sheet for this) and then I would need to do a zero check to convert the equipment timesheet hours to costs to job, correct?

Can you elaborate on how I would progress bill mutlitple estimates (if the phases were setup as sub jobs) on one invoice? We discussed separating the phase in this manner but I don't know how to do one progress bill for multiple estimates in sub jobs.

I attached some screen shots of my current approach if that is helpful. I didn't format the letter, I left it like it prints to illustrate the additional work that would need to be done before I could give it to my foreman (disclaimer - none of the information in it is real numbers, just numbers I was throwing in to test how this would work). I don't like how there is an "other" for all of the phase headers and don't know how to suppress that.

Again thank you all so much for assisting me

Your attachment for Est vs Actuals shows only Costs. Make sure All of your items are Two Sided.

Please see my attachment.

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