On Cloud, "Labor Type" is the fundamental unit of labor. A labor type is a definition for the nature of work involved and the per-hour cost and price associated with it.
By default, Cloud will have a labor type called "Installation" under "Settings > Catalog > Labor Types." You can add as many other labor types as you need.
The following is a screenshot with multiple labor types added to Cloud.
Check out this article for more details.
Product-associated labor
On Cloud, the labor associated with a product is shown in the product's side panel in the "Labor" section when the product is added to a quote.
The following is a screenshot that shows a labor time of 30 minutes for installing the ENS Security camera.
In the quote, the "Labor" column will show the total labor hours of the product based on its quantity.
The following is a screenshot that shows 4 hours of labor for installing 8 ENS Security cameras.
If you are unable to see the Labor column, click the 3-dot menu above the items table, click "Show/Hide columns," and select the "Labor" column.
Auto-added, product-associated labor
Cloud has a "Category Rules" functionality that allows you to associate labor with products in the catalog. This labor can come from our curated labor estimates, or you can add your own labor.
When a product with associated labor is added to a quote, it will come with the associated labor, and this labor will count towards the project total.
To use this auto-added, product-associated labor, you will need to set the category rules to ON or Suggest.
Check out this article for more details.
With this approach, you only need to add products to the quote. You don't need to worry about adding labor separately to the quote.
Manually updated or added, product-associated labor
Because Cloud only has the Installation labor by default, for advanced products that need some tuning and programming, the product-associated labor may not be sufficient.
In such cases, you can update the product-associated labor in the quote in the following ways:
Add additional labor types and hours to the product.
Update the installation labor hours.
Add labor from scratch.
Additional product-associated labor
To add additional labor to a product, click the product, click "Add labor" in the side panel, and add the labor.
Example
Here, we are adding an hour of programming labor to a Samsung TV that came with an hour of installation labor.
Update product-associated labor
To update the associated labor of a product, click the product, click "Edit" next to the labor, and change the labor hours.
Example
Here, we are adding 30 minutes of additional installation labor to a Samsung TV that came with an hour of installation labor.
Add labor from scratch
This use case is applicable if you have set the category rules to OFF. With this, there will be no labor associated with the product, and the product's side panel will not show any labor.
The products will display a Red exclamation mark stating that labor is unspecified. You can click the product and associate the required labor hours with the product.
Don't want to use product-associated labor?
If you don't want to use product-associated labor in a quote, you have the option to turn off product-associated labor and add labor as multiple line items or as one item via a labor package.
Check out this article for more details.