[Rick Carver]

Mac

You already got it! ;-)

It's not that you bill more minutes then an hour has, you just have to understand YOUR COMPANIES TIME VALUE, in your estimate. You got it!

In fact,,,,,, I guess you could say because you are estimating 80% and are realizing that(80%) in operations, then you are actually at 100% of what your estimating,,,, right?
I would think then that your other 20% is being paid for under overhead?
It's this other 20% that would have me bugged........ again,,,, " IF ",,, you are paying this other 20% in overhead, your company is partly paying for your customer's work to be completed. It is like having material for a job cost $100.00 and you only charge the customer $80.00,,,

To be more specific to your question,,,,
I have one guy,,,, schedule all his work to be completed in a 40hr wk. I calculate his drive time,,, loading and unloading,,,(minutes here),,, give him his work on a rout,,,, tell him to consider this work as his 40hr JOB,,,, also tell him that if he gets done anytime under the budgeted time I will still pay him his FULL 40. AND,, if he wants more work,,, and I have it I will pay him again for the additional hours above his usual 40hr wk"Job" budget,,,,, as long as he doesn't go past his 40 clock hours I have no OT. He makes more money in less time.............>>>> SO DO I <<<<

And because I set up a seasonal budget based on a 40 hr wk per employee,,, and 40hr weeks to be recovered over 7 days, not 5,,, for weather conditions etc,,,, my companies recovery against it's estimates is normally around 100% efficient.

I just am a freak when it comes to recovery, time valueing, estimates and most of all having the company become and then remain solid by using the one thing that makes us or breaks us,,,and we can't lose a dime till we lose time <<< FIRST>>>

HTH
Rick