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The 'Payroll Time Sheet' has both billable and non-billable time broken down. Since we input into a payroll spread sheet (one new file for each payroll period - each person has their own worksheet in the file), we do a production summary for the payroll period that tells us total man hours by each category. We then export/link the data to a file we do call 'Dashboard' which gives us a progressive total on hours by category matched to revenue. So we are able to determine our realization rate by week, by service type. We track maintenance, enhancments, turf care and installation as our four revenue categories. We used to just do maintenance and installation, but I wanted to break out the turf care and enhancements so we could focus no developing the business and set specific sales goals for it. So we now track it separate.
One of the harder things for me to do when figuring out our realization rate or the value of work we've completed to date is the Work in Progress (WIP). For construction jobs that stretch several weeks or months, I generally wait until the end of the job to do my final numbers. This is frustrating since we don't have accurate numbers during that period of time, and then it seems as if we're regularly doing a job like this, so we never have all the up to date data.
I've tried to estimate values to plug them in, but since I don't believe them or have faith in them, I tend to ignore or not do it.
When I'm dong my final job cost I'll look at a job and take total man hours by the total amount invoiced (contract plus change orders) and come up with a value per man hour. I then go back over each day we worked and apply the value to each day's labor to get a value for that day's work.
I'm not sure that taking this realization rate and applying it to each day's work is the best method, but I've not come up with another one that makes sense. We could spend 20 hours on site one day and get a bunch of excavation or base preparation done. When the brick arrives and we lay brick, on which day do I apply the materials to the job? I could subtract materials out of the rate, but somewhere I have to add them back in for value on particular days. We do make money on materials, so I need to account for that value on the job in some way. So using man hours seems to be the best way, but maybe not.
How have you guys handled WIP and reporting?
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