Finance Reports

Primarily a reporting module, the Finance Reports System allows us to collate and analyse information entered in several parts of the system,

This module is used to determine the costs recorded for a project. It uses the expense, time sheet, mail book, staff expense claims and print register data from Solution_Outlook to produce job costing reports.

The module also allows us to compare the costs attributed to a project and the fees recorded against it.

Settings

Staff Hourly Rates (Costs & Charges)

When time sheet entries are recorded by any staff member they do not have a cost or charge assigned until someone with Finance Reports access decides to apply that cost and charge, any entries without costs and charges will be updated to the current costs and charges (either the default or those appropriate to the project) when the 'Synchronise Timesheet Charges' option is ran. 

A useful way to look at this is to imagine that the time sheets have 2 additional values hidden from those using the timesheets system which are the hourly cost and hourly charge which are to be applied to each entry (staff member). 

These costs and charges are initially blank as the cost and charge may yet have to be decided.

Before the time sheet costs can be analysed we must enter the hourly charge and cost for staff. 

Selecting the Staff Hourly Rates menu option will open a list displaying all the active staff members in the Solution_Outlook staff list. It is possible for Staff members to have different charges and costs for different projects, for example, you may have a standard charge that you use for most projects (the default) but have an agreement with a client to use a different charge for another project. 

Each member of staff must have a default charge and cost which is applied to all projects and shown in the list as having a project number of ‘Default’,  unless you specify an additional item for the staff member where the project number together with charges and costs for that project are specified.

The costs and charges entered here will be applied to all time sheet entries from the date of entering them, should you need to retrospectively change the costs and/or charges for an individual use the 'Update charges' option at the top of the module.

Update Charges

If the costs and charges are incorrect or have not been entered, then the figures that have been entered in time sheets will be incorrect and will require to be updated.

The update charges option allows you to change the entries in the time sheet for any projects, staff and time period. Thus, it can be used to retrospectively change existing time sheet costs and charges. When the update is run, entries in the time sheet for selected projects, staff and time periods will be updated to values defined in the Update Charges & Staff Hourly Rates module.

Set By Poison

If the staff costs and charges are determined by each user’s position/job function, it can be convenient to enter the costs and charges using the Set By Position option. When opened a list of all the staff positions used in the 'Solution_Outlook' staff list will be displayed. Enter a charge and cost for each position.

Project

The entered charge and cost can be applied to the staff charges for the default values or for any other project. Select the project you wish these cost/charges to apply to.

Staff

The cost/charges can be applied to all staff or limited to the active staff, select which you want to use.

Apply costs

Select Apply Costs to enter the values here in the staff charges list. When you have used the 'Apply costs' button the costs here will be entered in the staff list depending on the staff positions. You can still then individually adjust the cost and charge for members of staff in the staff list.

Print Costs

Selecting the Print Costs menu option will open the list of Prints and costs. This is the same list that is displayed in the Archetype print register and changing it here will affect the list in Archetype and vice versa. This list can be changed by deleting, adding and editing entries. It should contain all print types and sizes including photocopies and any other related items you want to record e.g. computer plots. The cost of a print is taken from this list and recorded at the time that the print is recorded. Changing the costs in the list will only affect prints that are recorded after the change is made. You should therefore ensure that the list is appropriate for your needs before using the print register to record the prints.

Cost Data

Selecting the Cost Data menu option will display a form where the overtime factor can be entered.

The overtime factors are multipliers on the costs and charges for overtime work. For example, if you have an overtime charge factor of 1.5 and the normal charge for a job is £50.00 per hour then the overtime will be charged at 1.5 x £50.00 = £75.00 per hour. The cost factor may be set to 1.0 if there is no increase in cost for working overtime and maybe set to 0 if you do not pay overtime and no additional costs are incurred when working extra hours.

If you charge double for overtime but do not pay additional staff costs for it then you would enter 2 for the charge factor and zero for the cost factor.

Time Charge Billing

REPORTING – PROJECT STATUS

The projects in the drop-down list of projects can be set to only display projects with selected statuses. For example, to only display Live, Feasibility and Speculative projects in the list, Select them from the round (radio) selections below. This will then exclude projects with other statuses e.g. Completed, Cancelled, Archived, etc. 

REPORTING 

Project Number

Select the appropriate project number from the drop-down list. The list will display all projects in the Solution_Outlook projects module.

Start date

Click on the start date and select the date from the calendar that you want the report to start from. If you want to include all costs from the start of a project you could enter a date a number of months or years before the project start to ensure that all relevant data is included. Since the time sheet data is collected on a week-by-week basis, the week number will be displayed.

End date

Click on the end date and select the date from the calendar that you want the report to end at. If you want to include all costs to the end of a project you could enter a date a number of months or years after the project end to ensure that all relevant data is included. Since the time sheet data is collected on a week-by-week basis, the week number will be displayed.

REPORTING – PROJECT REPORTS

REPORTING – SUMMARY REPORTS