Job Costing Job CostingQUE Accounting can enhance its basic time and attendance system to handle any number of
job costing scenarios. For example, each employee may be assigned to a specific job class
which can be modified via a key pad or on a scheduled basis using the system's scheduling
functionality. Another scenario would be to use the location of readers to designate
departments or assembly line functions. And of course, there is the use of a
keypad or bar code reader which the employees uses to identify his Job Id, Work
Order or Cost Center
Labor oriented job costing systems can be as varied as there are individual needs. All however, are interested in tracking time and materials against some type of cost category. Whether that be a particular Job, Project number, an assembly line or department depends on the type of business. Common requirements include the ability to collect the proper information, manipulate the data according to defined rules, apply costs to the defined cost category and to provide for accurate and timely display and reporting functions. Actual expenses for items other than labor can be entered into the system or imported from external accounting packages. This includes the ability to create and import job estimations. The different Job Costing options provide by QUE Accounting software are described below.
Alternatives
After the Fact
The After the fact option is the simplest to operate and requires the
least amount of work for employees and the least amount of hardware. Labor
information is collected from electronic readers used to capture time punches.
Hours are calculated according to various pay regulations and applied against
cost categories using a automated work sheet that assures the proper number
hours are allocated. Additional entries can be made for other cost items such as
material and overhead. Both the
allocation of hours and entry of these costs is done by a system administrator.
The end results is information showing estimated and actual costs per cost
category, per employee, per job class and by department. The cost categories are
created in the Job Cost master.
Scheduled Time
The Scheduled Time job costing alternative allocates hours to specific
cost categories based on the scheduled activities for operations. The most
common example of this would be an assembly line company that performs the same
function but for different clients. For instance, time spent creating marketing
literature on a printer and packaging the material for shipment can be assigned
to a specific client based on the time scheduled. The scheduling of time by
client or project is done by the administrator and can be changed as desired.
Reports are produced dynamically using the current schedule to determine how
much employee time is assigned to a given client.
Location Oriented
The Location alternative tracks hours to cost categories by the location
of the punch reader. For instance,
reader 1 is outside the door to the shipping department. Anybody using this
reader would then be assigned to this department. If they then punch into reader
2 at Receiving their time would be appropriately tracked to the Receiving
department.
Data Entry at Time Punch
Data entry readers such as numeric key pads and bar code scanners can be used in conjunction with access control readers to enter job costing information. This information is tracked at the transaction level and hour determinations are done per unique code and individual. As in the other options, job cost categories, estimations and other pertinent information is maintained in the QUE database.
