Labor Line Item - D-Tools Forum

04-18-2006, 09:19 PM

I have version 3.6 of D-tools, but we haven't had it up and running for long. We do not intend to use the calculated labor (at least not for a while) that D-tools calculates on each piece of equipment (because this number NEVER comes close to our expected labor on a job); therefore, we are trying to figure out how to "display" labor on our quotes. I apologize for having to bring up an issue that I am sure has been beaten to death in the old forums, but I can't find much on it in this forum.

As an example, lets say I want to quote $2,000 of labor on a job AND I want labor to show up in the "Install Labor:" line of the Project Summary (i.e. last page of the standard report) of the quote. From what I can tell, I have no easy way to make that happen. By letting D-tools calculate the labor based on the labor hours within the equipment times the billing rate per hour, I get $898 in labor, but I need $2,000 - how do I get there? The way I handled it was to increase the "Difficulty Factor" in the project options, to 2.22717 ($2,000/$898), which bumped my labor to $1,999.99, which is NOT exactly $2,000, but close.

I should add that I did try to set up labor as a line item in the master table, but that didn't work because the item is considered EQUIPMENT and therefore has sales tax calculated on it, and it shows up in the Equipment line of the Project Summary. I tried "Miscellaneous Costs" but I had the same problem in that the labor showed up in the "Misc Costs" line of the project summary.

Is there an easy way to get EXACTLY what I want? I want ONE LINE in the quote for $2,000 in labor, and I want that line to show up as the "Install Labor:" line in the Project Summary section of the quote (and therefore NO TAX would be calculated). Any help on this issue would be appreciated.

Reed Phillips · 04-29-2006, 03:39 PM

I can't test this for 3.6, but I think we did something like...
Set up your labor in the Phase tables so that you use NO factors. This will allow you to have an hourly rate of say $100. Then create a dummy Equipment item called Install Labor. Set the cost and list price to "0". Assign as many hours to this Item as you like. In your case say 20 to yield $2000. The only drawback is that this Item may show up in your equipment list. I modified our sales reports to not show Items with $0 costs, so it would only show up in the summary. Let me know if this makes sense.

Is Labor taxed in your state? If so, that may also contribute to not reaching the exact dollar amount.