Job Cost Quantities

Job Cost quantities are a measurement of work completed in the various phases of a project. Some examples are:

• Cubic yards of dirt

• Linear feet of framing

• Miles of asphalt poured

  Hours are generally never considered to be a quantity. Hours are related to tasks required to complete a quantity.

  The unit cost of the work incorporates all tasks necessary to complete the work. For example, if a client will be moving 500 cubic yards of dirt, when estimating the costs, they may know that historically it takes a total of $50 per cubic yard. This $50 per yard may be comprised of labor costs, equipment costs and miscellaneous materials. The breakdown might look something like:

Labor: 500 cubic yards @ $20 / yard = $10,000

Equipment: 500 cubic yards @ $24 / yard = $12,000

Material: 500 cubic yards @ $6 / yard = $3,000

Total: 500 cubic yards @ $50/yard = $25,000

Within the labor costs, hours may also be estimated. The hours estimate is separate from the quantity estimate. The client may estimate that it will take 200 labor hours to move the dirt, but the unit cost and quantities are still based on the cubic yards of dirt to be moved.

Actual quantities are a way of measuring progress of work completed on the job, while the actual unit cost is a measurement of cost management.

Quantity Cost Types

Within the Job Cost module, there are quantities other than those used to measure progress of work completed on jobs.

Quantities can find their way into job cost from inventory job requisitions, accounts payable invoices, either from purchase order or A/P Invoice Entry, and so forth. These quantities likely have no relationship to the quantities of work completed on a job.

For example, to move the 500 cubic yards of dirt several items may be purchased for the job:

• 50 boxes of nails

• 600 board feet of lumber

• 25 buckets

• 75 feet of wire, and so forth

  When measuring the work completed on a job, it is necessary to find a method for capturing only the quantities specific to the work that has been completed, and to exclude the miscellaneous quantities.

  Spectrum allows to two methods of calculating unit cost information based on quantities. The first is to select a single cost type for entering quantities, and the second is to use multiple cost types for entering quantities. The most common is to select a single cost.

  Using the example of moving 500 cubic yards of dirt, the per unit cost calculation would be:

• Actual Labor Costs / Units Completed = Labor Cost Per Unit

• Actual Equipment Costs / Units Completed = Equipment Cost Per Unit

• Actual Material Costs / Units Completed = Material Cost Per Unit

  If 25 cubic yards to date have been moved, the same units completed can be used to calculate the per-unit cost for labor, equipment and material. It isn't necessary to enter 25 cubic yards for all three cost types. What is necessary is to find a way to isolate the 25 cubic yards from the quantities of miscellaneous items purchased.

  Generally clients will use either the labor cost type, or a separate quantity cost type for purposes of entering actual completed quantities. The labor cost type is the most common, as labor generally only has hours posted to it, quantities are usually posted to the material or other cost types. Again, hours are not quantities, and are not stored as quantities in Spectrum. When discussing quantities, you may hear the labor cost type referred to as a "pure" cost type, because it does not have miscellaneous quantities posted to it.

  If your business needs dictate that you actually have separate estimated / projected and actual quantities for labor, material, equipment, and do forth, you can select to use a separate cost type for purposes of calculating the per-unit costs.