Flat labor rate charged to Jobs

SUGGESTED

Hello,

I have a question regarding payroll and how it is charged to jobs. We do not have any hourly employees. Currently we use Sage 100 Contractor to process payroll every 2 weeks and a few employees are charged to overhead but majority are charged to jobs directly (total employees is 27). For example, a project manager's payroll record would have 10 lines, one for each day worked in that 2 weeks. Each day would be 8 hours. Each line in the payroll record would have a job selected and the project manager cost code. So you would look at the job cost journal for that job and see a cost for each day. This cost obviously would include taxes and other benefits. 

What we are wanting to do is change this so that employees cannot see differences in pay rates. We want to have a flat rate that is charged to the job. This would help with employees not seeing pay rate differences and also help in the preconstruction phase when estimating jobs.  For Example, we have Tier 1 PMs that have a rate of $3,000 per week, Tier 2 PMs that have a rate of $2,000 per week. These are the rates we want hitting the job cost journal. The only way i can think to do this is to charge all employees to overhead and have some huge Journal Entry that charges jobs and offsets overhead payroll. This cannot be the best way to do this since people fall on and off jobs and it would be a huge entry.

Please keep in mind we do not use T&M billing or any billing capabilities of Sage 100 Contractor. 

Does anyone have some suggestions or methods they could share for this?

  • 0
    SUGGESTED

    You can use the 3-10-5 T&M Wage Rates page to set specific rates (Reg, OT, and OT2) for each employee that you list.  And you can have different Wage Rate charts so you change the rates for each job.

    Then use 3-10-1 T&M Billing Setup and specify for each job which Wage Rate table (created above with 3-10-5) you want to use.

    Hope that helps!

  • 0 in reply to GreenwoodHomes

    Thank you for the response. This makes sense and I was able to look at this setup. However, can you elaborate a little more on how this posts to the job and GL? I am having a hard time understanding how to actually enter the payroll side? I assume the T&M charges will post along side payroll? I have setup a TM wage chart that has no employees but has a line for cost code. One line for PM and one for Superintendent. Basically no matter who the employee is, if they are charged on that job under that cost code, it will charge the specified rate. The income account I chose on 3-10-1 is an overhead allocation account since I assume this is the credit side of the T&M entry. 

    What I dont understand is how to post payroll? If I enter a payroll record I feel like I have to enter the Job and Cost code. So how does it not double up what hits the Job and direct labor GL account?

  • 0 in reply to Ralls Pennington

    I am not an expert on all of this.  I believe the 5-2-2 payroll records don't affect the job until you use 5-2-6 to post the payroll.  At that time, the payroll records are posted to the GL using any wage rates that have been specified for the jobs indicated in the payroll records.  

    You do enter the job and cost code when you are entering payroll but the job is not affected until you Post payroll with 5-2-6.  

    Hope that helps a little.

  • 0 in reply to GreenwoodHomes

    I guess the more I look at this, this is truly for billing a client for T&M which I dont want to do. In a perfect world, what I would like to do is have all payroll records hit OH Benefits. But have a flat labor rate for PMs and Superintendents (example - $2,000 per week for PMs and $1,000 a week for Superintendents... this could also be an flat hourly rate) that will hit the job cost. The job is debited for that rate and the credit is an Overhead account that will offset OH Benefits. And maybe this is not an option. I think posting the T&M invoice will actually create an invoice to bill on the job which is not my goal.

  • 0 in reply to Ralls Pennington

    So if you don't want payroll records to be linked directly to jobs or job invoices, then in the payroll record you leave Job, Locale, and Cost Code blank.  Separately, to bill a flat rate or some number determined in another way than being directly tied to payroll, you create a 6-3 Job Cost leaving cost amount blank, set billing status to open and specify Override Billing Amount which will allow you to enter your own amount in Billing Amount.

  • 0 in reply to GreenwoodHomes
    SUGGESTED

    Job cost records are created when you "final compute".   At that time you can then compute a T&M invoice at 3-10 to add the flat rates to the client.  The general ledger is affected when you post.

  • 0 in reply to Char DeLange

    Even though I don't actually want to bill the client the flat rates? Based on the above answer and from what I have gathered. I need to leave all payroll records open and not select a job just like I charge my overhead employees. 

    From there, when i post the T&M invoice, it will charge the flat rates to the job? Is the credit side of that entry for T&M the Income Account i specify in 3-10-1?

  • 0
    SUGGESTED

    The “cost” of payroll is gross plus burden. Why are you attempting to override the cost? 
    Are those employees salaried?  
    You could set up a flat rate employer cost per pay period in payroll calculations that you only assign the rate to those employees on their setup.   If their pay varies it’s not going to work.