Track estimated and actual costs and billables per task or sitewide using Uptick's profitability calculations.
Setup
Permissions
Can view pricing information is needed to see most of the task's profitability on each task, minus the cost breakdown section.
Can view task Profitability is needed to see the cost breakdown section of the task's profitability on each task.
Labour Rates and Multipliers
It's very important for Uptick to capture base pay rates for your field staff in order to capture true labour costs. Uptick also provides you with the option of creating rate multipliers with can be applied to certain tasks and sessions by the office in order to multiply your base rates where needed.
Contact your manager if you don't have the permissions.
Navigation: People > Users > Labour Rates.
Read more about Labour Rates here.
Adding Labour Estimates to Tasks
This is optional for you to do as a business.
Estimating labour costs can be tricky, but also quite important when understanding technician efficiency, how much labour you should be quoting for, or whether a certain site is just consistently not meeting what you've estimated and hence should be reviewed. It will also allow you to forecast estimated labour costs for the current, and future months to help you understand cash flow.
Uptick provides customers with the ability to add estimated duration to each contract added to an individual property which, in turn, will automatically apply itself to all routine maintenance tasks, and also to all products in your product catalogue which, in turn, applies itself to quotes when those products are used. Estimated Duration can also be manually added to individual tasks.
Adding estimated time to your products: Billing > Product Catalogue > Edit each product and apply the appropriate time estimate for that product. Update time estimates on your products in bulk using the Product importer.
Adding estimated time to your routines or services:
For Customers on Routines: Customer Data > Properties > View a property > Manage Routine Services > Edit each level and apply the appropriate time estimate for that level. You also can bulk import your routine estimates using your Routine Service Level importer.
For Customers on Services: Customer Data > Service Contracts > update each service for each property and apply the appropriate time estimate. You also can bulk import your estimates using your Service Contract importer.
Task Profitability Breakdown
Note: This is a simple overview of task profitability. For a detailed breakdown of the task profitability window, see our article here.
Estimates
Estimated cost, sell and profit come from quotes that the task may have come from, so only repair tasks that come from an Uptick quote will have estimations. These estimates are broken down by the types of products that have been estimated - labour, subcontracted labour, materials, equipment or general expenses.
Expected
Expected values come from recorded timesheets, submitted Purchase Orders, any service tasks (performed or not) and any per-visit fees for routine maintenance
Actuals
Actual cost comes from what you actually did on the task - purchase order costs, technician labour sessions and work tab costs that haven't been covered by sessions or purchase orders.
More specifically, your actual cost will come from:
All Purchase Order Bill costs
All recorded Session costs - base wage x time
All material, equipment and expense Work tab items, that have been performed and haven't been added to a purchase order. *Labour Work tab item costs get overridden by session costs.
Actual sell comes from what you've actually invoiced on that task.
Labour time
Estimated labour time comes from your task's estimated duration. As explained above, this estimated duration is automatically populated from your quotes or your property's routine maintenance OR be manually inputted or changed on that individual task.
Actual labour time comes from your task's sessions which, in turn, comes from your field staff recording their time onsite, as well as travel time. Onsite time is started and finished automatically for your field staff via our apps if they forget to turn them on before starting to touch the task. We try to automate travel time by prompting them to start recording when they try and open Google and Apple map directions via the apps.
What your office staff should be looking for:
Quoted Works: Variations between the estimated cost and actual cost - this will help them understand quote variations at a glance. The calculations will turn red if something is under quoted.
All tasks: Differences between estimated and actual labour time - this will help them understand short and long term, field staff efficiency or whether the routine maintenance for a certain site just hasn't been estimated correctly and should be escalated to a supervisor.
All tasks: Once an invoice is created, what the profit and margin will be - are you making enough money?
System-wide Profitability Reports
Our site-wide profitability reports should be used by supervisors and business owners for various, high level, profitability insights. Many of our profitability reports can be grouped by client, property, technician, service group, cost centre, branch etc so you can understand exactly who is costing you money and what areas of your business are most profitable.
Accessing the profitability dashboard
Click on Insights and Reports > Finance > Profitability
Terminology:
Estimated Cost or Quoted Cost: What the estimated cost was for the task. Only applicable if this task has come from a quote.
Quoted Sell: What the quoted sell was for the task. Only applicable if this task has come from a quote.
Estimated Hours: What your task's total estimated duration is (see 'Adding Labour Estimates to Tasks' above.
Projected Sell: What your predicted sell will be at all times, even while your field staff are performing that task. This will come from all items on your Task's Work tab i.e all your servicetasks and subtasks.
Committed Cost: Costs committed from your raised purchase orders which are in an Approved, Submitted, Invoice Received or Paid status.
Incurred Hours: Total hours from your current, recorded sessions.
Incurred Cost: All costs that you've incurred on this task - purchase order costs, technician labour sessions and work tab costs that haven't been covered by sessions or purchase orders.
Invoiced: Total sell on all raised invoices (except ones that have been deleted), regardless of if that invoice has been sent or not.
Viewing and filtering
The profitability dashboard includes searching and filtering tools so you can search, filter and favourite the information you're looking for. Large data sets have a display limit of 1000 records, so make good use of filters to avoid errors. Data isn't filtered in real time, so to see the updated results:
Click Apply filters > Refresh data
Cost Breakdown
You can tick/untick the Show Cost Breakdown checkbox to toggle the visibility of material and labour costs.
Fitting columns and toggling estimated profitability
You can check/uncheck the Show estimated box to toggle the visibility of estimated profitability and Fit columns button allows you to clean up the look of the tables with a click of a button.
Arranging and sorting data - basic
Non-expandable columns (without the + symbol) can be clicked on to sort that column by ascending or descending order. The position of these columns is dynamic so you can click and drag them in the order you like.
Arranging and sorting - advanced
You can drag non-expandable columns into the topmost header of the profitability table in an order of your choosing to create row groups. These groups follow a group-by, then-by type of arrangement. For example if you drag the Client header to the top, then drag the Property header next to it, your profitability data will be grouped by client, then each client can be clicked to see their properties. You can keep adding subgroups to organise your profitability data and make it easier see the information you're looking for.
