The Micronet Job Costing system (MJC) is a comprehensive job costing and billing system specifically designed to suit the contractor, service organisation, small manufacturer or engineering workshop.
Micronet Job Costing maintains Work In Progress for each job automatically as costs are posted to it and invoices are printed, giving concise job cost and profit management.
The job entry screen has been simplified to enable quick efficient entry of the incoming job details; you can either log a call so that it can be allocated to a service technician later or produce a service call sheet (or job sheet).
The job numbering facility enables you to establish different job departments and job types that can each have their own job number sequences and prefixes.
Additional user defined questions can be established to capture call information pertinent to your business such as model number, taken by, serial number, chassis number, make, warranty details, etc.
Labour and materials can be entered either from timesheets, via the service call sheet, or direct from supplier invoices. MJC can automatically price service jobs for you based on your own markups and labour rates.
Materials can be drawn directly from your Micronet Distribution System's inventory file or purchase orders can be raised against jobs with committed costs tracked until the items are received from your suppliers. Once supplier invoices have been reconciled, they are posted to the Micronet Creditors Ledger for payment processing. Jobs can be quickly recalled as required.
Micronet Job Costing is equipped with a powerful inquiry program that can display jobs in either job order, customer order or service area / van order. Job invoices and progress claims (detailing job status and variations) can be produced at any time.
Job Departments
MJC can group jobs in departments. Jobs within a department are either Normal, Manufactured or Internal jobs. You can also create a department for quotes, and a department for estimates if you have the optional Micronet Estimating System (MES) activated on your system. A department can only contain one of these types of job. Each department can have its own automatic or manually entered sequence of job numbers and can be interfaced to the Micronet General Ledger (MGL) independently of any other job department.
Service Jobs
Service (or do-and-charge) jobs can be quickly logged, allocated and processed from the one central point within MJC, making the processing and management of your service job costing system easy and efficient. Quotations can be calculated and stored against each service job.
A service parameter table can be created within the file maintenance system to tell MJC what the default charge structure should be, what status a new job should be set to, and which area the job needs to be assigned to on creation.
Service jobs can then be viewed by customer, job number, start/due date, technician, area, etc., as required.
When a service job is ready for invoicing, the user can select to optionally list the materials and labour being billed, or show the job value as a lump sum. Once the invoice has been created, MJC can optionally set the job status to Completed for history inquiries or job/sales analysis.
Manufactured Jobs
Jobs can be created for the manufacture of items. Effectively, a manufactured job draws off labour and materials from suppliers and/or your raw material stock file, then returns the finished product back to your MDS stock file as a finished item. Item/job costs can be tracked through the entire process.
Internal Jobs
Internal jobs can be created for such things as overhead work (research and development, warranty, estimating, tender preparation, cleaning, internal maintenance, training, etc.), or for warranty work that needs to be tracked and provided to customers through a warranty or project retention period.
Operations
Operations can either be allowances or tasks that employees can perform – like Service, Cleaning, Drilling, Training, Supervision, etc. Each operation can be assigned as either chargeable or non-chargeable, and can be assigned to have sales tax or GST applicable. The actual charge-out rates and overheads to recover are contained within the operation. Each operation can have a series of overheads/charges assigned to them that can be assigned to particular customers, where different rates are applied for the same type of work (or task) to different customers.
The total hourly cost of an operation is determined by adding the employee cost to the operation overhead (employee rate + operation overhead). The margin is then the operation charge out minus the combined employee cost plus overhead as shown in this example:
Example Total Hourly Cost
In this example, when Stuart Duncan performs Normal Service Work on Job S100011 to fix the Football Field Lights, then the cost to have him work on the job is $30/hour (the $10/hr employee rate + the $20/hr overhead recovery rate) during normal working hours and the charge is $35/hour resulting in an hourly job margin of $5/hr.
The overhead rate you set ($20/hr in the example) is up to you. If you are unsure of this figure for your company, consult with your company accountant.
Quotes
A department type can be established for quotes. Using quotes, you can post labour and materials and store all the normal job header information against your job quote while not actually posting any Work in Progress. The material assigned to a quote remains in stock until the quote is recalled and converted to a proper active job. When the quote is converted to a job, MJC automatically transfers any materials assigned to the quote and activates any labour postings that have been assigned to the quote so far. Once a quote is converted to an estimate, it cannot be reversed back to a quote.
Micronet Estimating System
MJC also has an optional Micronet Estimating System (MES) that can be purchased as an additional licence. MES has been developed to integrate with the Micronet Distribution System (MDS) and MJC.
MES is a multi-user system. Its features and functionality include:
Field Service Module
The Micronet Mobile Field Service module is an optional module which is used to manage a fleet of mobile technicians or installers who travel to customer sites and perform machinery servicing or other work. It allows staff at the base station to create jobs in Micronet Job Costing (MJC) and assign them to particular field employees. They can enter all the information needed – such as instructions, required safety checks, customer information, material and labour charges and other fees. Field staff use their PDAs to view their jobs on a calendar and edit this information as needed. They can reschedule jobs, add additional charges, advise the customer of the labour cost and capture the customer’s signature at the end of the job. They can also enter detailed job notes and capture photographs of equipment. Any information that field staff enter on their PDAs is transferred back to the base station and the original job in MJC.