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We are in implementation and recently I learned that job costs in aspire are only considered labor, materials, rented equipment, and subs. But I’ve always considered owned equipment COGS as well. Usually this would be an hourly rate which would include depreciation, fuel, & maintenance for whatever machine is running.

We also bid jobs this way. The operator at one rate, and the equipment at it’s own rate. This keeps us competitive as it appropriately charges the equipment to only the clients who need said equipment.

One of my subject matter experts told me, though, that mowers are not COGS, they are overhead so they aren’t job-costed. What would be the way to work around this so that I can apply an hourly cost to those pieces of equipment for job costing purposes? 

Hi ​@BrendonTW - an overhead expense captured in labor markups is usually in the maintenance division. I’d recommend to check out this article regarding capturing company owned equipment from the knowledge base.

If you’re dead set on costing equipment, you can create equipment items and toggle on the equipment time reporting for the mowing crews, which will let them report equipment time. 

 

It is going to require a lot more input from the crews as far as what they are using, and will be a bit trickier in your estimating, I imagine you’d end up with way more kits.

If you’re dead set on costing equipment, you can create equipment items and toggle on the equipment time reporting for the mowing crews, which will let them report equipment time. 

 

It is going to require a lot more input from the crews as far as what they are using, and will be a bit trickier in your estimating, I imagine you’d end up with way more kits.

 

What if we just want to job-cost certain equipment? (Mowers are my primary concern.) I don’t want to create a huge burden on the crews. But for a job where we have bid 100 hours on a zero turn mower, I would really like insight into the actual use there.

I am willing to pivot away from this practice, but I really need to be told it’s way worse to do it the way I’m wanting to. (Costing mowers as well.) We will have to move our accounting system around as well.

Above is a picture of what the process looks like for the crew (albeit on the old app because I cant figure out how to access the new one on my browser). We use equipment time for snow, long story. I think if you had one person who spent hours and hours just on a mower it might be feasible, but I would worry about consistency, particularly as the crews are just learning the app. You’d have one or two people needing to select equipment at every job and then other people needing to not, and then maybe some people coming back to the tablet in the middle of a job to switch from a mower to not a mower. If your goal is accurate job costing, I’d be worried that this route would end up with a lot of room for human error in that.

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