True Costings

The ‘True Costings’ is a charging method used by the Labour Charge Calculator to calculate how much to charge a client for labour done. This tool attempts to calculate a final ‘Charging Fee Per Minute’ using all costs and parameters you provide. Using this data, the tool will ensure that you never under charge for labour done.

At the top of the above screen, there is a strip of buttons allowing you to ‘Save’, ‘Print Preview’, ‘Print’, ‘Delete’, and access the ‘Help’.

Below this there are three data grids, each listing the possible costs of your department. There are In-House related costs (Human Resource + Overheads) and Call/Visit related costs (Human Resource + Overheads + Transportation). By default, we provide some common costs that your company may have, but you are free to make alterations or deletions to these lists if you so wish.

You can alter these lists by adding costs, editing costs, or deleting costs. To add a cost, simply click the ‘Add Costing’  tab near the bottom of the screen. Enter the ‘Description, ‘Cost’ and ‘Cost Type’ and click ‘Add’. The new costing will appear in one of the three lists and the ‘Yearly Total’ will update as well. The video below demonstrates this.

In order to edit an existing cost, simply click the ‘Edit Costing’  tab near the bottom of the screen. Make the desired changes to either field and click ‘Save’. Your changes should immediately be visible in the relevant data grid.

To the far top right of the screen, there are a group of parameters as shown in the image above. ‘IH Technician Count’ is the number of in-house technicians you have in your technical department. ‘CV Technician Count’ is the number of technician who go on call visits. ‘Net Profit % Increase’ is the profit margin you would like to have for labour. ‘Charge Every (minutes)’ are the time frame intervals in which you charge clients by. For example, you may wish to charge a client €10 every 15 minutes, the ‘Charge Every’ being 15 minutes.

After having filled out all fields above, and entered all your costings with their relevant costs, the ‘In-House Technician Cost Breakdown’ and ‘Call/Visit Technician Cost Breakdown’ will be calculated as shown above. It displays you final ‘Charging Fee Per Minute’ which is calculated by multiplying your ‘Net Profit % Increase’ with your ‘Per Minute Cost’. This is done for both in-house technicians and call/visit technicians to give separate charging fees for the In-House Service Report and Call/Visit Service Report. Te below video shows this entire procedure.

You may view a more in-depth explanation of the calculations and formulas involved with the True Costings here.