When building a quote with a lot of products, adding labor for installation and programming product-by-product can be very cumbersome. Some projects may require labor not tied to products, such as debris cleaning and site supervision. On the whole, labor can often be quoted incorrectly and even left out altogether for some project tasks.
Cloud comes with the "Labor" functionality, which is designed for:
Ease - labor can be associated with the product in the catalog, and this labor comes into the quote when the product is added.
Flexibility - multiple ways to add labor to the quote, so you can choose how you want to add and display labor in the proposal
Transparency - labor items (labor added directly to the quote) and products with labor associated with them can be assigned to locations, systems, phases, and categories in the quote, and this gives you great visibility to schedule resources and execute projects.
Here are a couple of articles you may want to read before you jump into configuring labor for the entire project.
The overall labor for a project is the total of product-associated labor hours that come with the products when they are added to the quote, and any other labor you add as line items to the quote.
#1 Use product-associated labor
Cloud allows you to associate labor with the products in the catalog itself. This way, you don't need to add labor to products one by one when you add them to a quote.
You can also update product-associated labor by updating or adding more labor hours to the products one by one. All product-associated labor is shown in the "Labor" column in the quote.
Check out this article for more details.
Here is a screenshot that shows product-associated labor in the quote.
In the proposal, you can show the product-associated labor along with the product. You will also have some other options to customize how labor should be displayed.
Don't want to use product-associated labor?
Always
If you don't want to use product-associated labor at all, you will need to set the category rules to OFF. The side panel of the products will not show any labor.
Check out this article for more details.
You can add labor via labor items, such as labor types and labor packages.
Intermittently
If you want to use product-associated labor for some but not all quotes, you will need to set the category rules to ON or Suggest.
In the quote, where you don't want to use product-associated labor, you can turn it OFF and add labor via labor items such as labor types and labor packages.
Check out this article for more details.
#2 Add labor as line items
If the approach to associating labor with products does not work for you, you can add labor as line items directly to the quote. The labor line items will be displayed in the items table with their name and labor hours, like how the products are displayed.
You can use the approach to adding labor as line items to the quote, irrespective of whether you are also using product-associated labor.
Labor type
Here, you will search for the labor type you added under "Settings > Catalog > Labor Types" in the Item Search bar and add it to the quote.
When adding the labor type, you will see the rate per hour and can set the number of hours required. Click "Quick add" to add the labor type.
In the following screenshot, we set the labor to 2 hours and 30 minutes.
If you want to increase or decrease the hours, click the "Quantity" column of the labor line item, and make the changes.
In the following screenshot, we increased the labor time for installation and programming from 1 hour to 2 hours to factor in 2 Samsung TVs.
Labor package
Here, you will search for the labor package you added under "Catalog > Packages" in the Item Search bar and add it to the quote.
If you want to add or remove labor types in the package, or update their labor hours, click the package, and make changes in the "Labor" section in the side panel.
Click "Add labor" to add more labor types.
Click "Edit" next to a labor type and change the hours.
Click "Edit" next to a labor type and click the 3-dot menu in the modal to delete the labor type.
The updates you make to the labor package stay in the quote. They do not affect the original package in the catalog.
In the proposal, you will see the labor items and labor packages. You will also have some other options to customize how they should be displayed.
View labor summary
All labor, product-associated, labor types, and labor in the packages will be summed up and shown in the "Labor Summary" section of the quote.
You can view this for the entire project, or by location, system, phase, and category.
Change labor rates for the project
If you want to change the labor rates of the labor used in the quote, go to the 3-dot menu at the top of the quote, and click "Settings > Labor Types."
In the modal, click the 3-dot menu of a labor type, click "Edit," and change the price.
Here, we increase the per-hour price of installation labor and programming labor, and you will see the increase in the labor total in the labor summary section.
Updating the prices within a quote will apply to product-associated labor, labor types added as line items, and the labor types in the packages added to the quote.
Also, the updates you make here will stay in the quote. They do not affect the original labor types in the catalog.
Review labor
Go to the "Review" tab in the left navigation menu of the Quote Details view to see the product vs labor breakup and the labor distribution by labor type, location, system, phase, and category.
The following is a screenshot of labor distribution by phase.
