Settings up bill rates the way you want or the way a contract defines is not a ‘nice to have’ capability — it is essential. And what may seem complex and a chore to ensure accurate job cost information can be simple in BillQuick. Minimum Rates or Day Rates is a recent BillQuick User Forum example.
I’m wondering if anyone can help me with something “complex”. At least it’s complex in my mind.
We have 10 projects to do this with. Multiple employees are working on the projects. When anyone performs a site visit and travel we are charging the client a minimum dollar amount for that visit. If our employee marks only 1 hour for the visit and only .75 hour for travel, how can I get the system to mark up ONLY that time automatically to the minimum? If time spent on those codes is over the minimum, we bill as is. Anything that is not travel or site visit is billed at regular rate in addition to the site/travel cost so I can’t just make the whole thing a minimum across the board.
Thoughts on how to easily implement this for the staff when they are logging their time?
– xtrawld
There are two ways of accomplishing this in BillQuick.
1. You can set minimum hours for specific activity code such as travel to whatever you want the minimum hours to be.
2. You can set the minimum hours for an activity in the Service Fee Schedule screen.
The ‘minimum hours’ applies to B-Hours (billable) only. The A-Hours (actual) remain as is.
– SQ
Can I do that for only a specific project?
If so, can you provide a bit of guidance as to how to do this? This would really help me resolve the issue of having to check for this manually and missing it when the bill goes out.
–xtrawld
Yes, you can do it for a specific project by setting up a fee schedule and assigning it only to that project.
Editor’s Comment:
Here’s a little more detail to help you out.
As SQ noted, you can set the minimum hours for an activity — one or more items — in the Activity Codes screen. This is a good option when only a few projects require minimum rates.
If you expect to need special minimum rates for multiple projects, you should use the Service Fee Schedule.
If the Minimum Hours columns is not displayed in the grid, use the Field Chooser (Edit menu) to turn it on.
When setting up the special minimum rates, you can choose the employee or the employee group to which the special rate applies. Like with other items on the fee schedule, you refine the special rate using Classification.
When your inspector records his time, BillQuick follows the business rule you want:
- If hours worked are less than the minimum, charge the minimum hours. BillQuick puts the minimum hours into the B-Hours and charges the special rate.
- If hours worked are more than the minimum, charge the actual hours. BillQuick puts the actual hours into the B-Hours and charges the special rate.
