Office Time - ORCA Docs

Site clock covers the engineers. Office Time covers everyone else. Each person fills in a weekly grid: a job or a cost code on each row, hours under each day. Time against a job goes into that job's costs as management time. Time against a cost code (drawing, admin, site visits) is overhead. And you can see, for each person and for the office as a whole, what share of the week was chargeable.

It is a module. The ORCA team switches it on for your account. Once it is on, Office time appears in the sidebar for everyone.

Filling in your week

Open Office time. You land on this week, headed Your week, with the dates beside the arrows. Use the arrows to move to another week, and This week to come back.

Each row has:

Job: pick one of your open jobs, or leave it on No job (pick a cost code).
Cost code: pick one, or leave it on None.
Hours for each day, Monday to Sunday. Type them as numbers, like 1.5.

A row needs a job, a cost code, or both. Row and day totals add up as you type, and under the grid ORCA says how much of the week is on jobs, such as "62% on jobs this week (23 of 37 hours)".

Click + Add a row for another row, and the cross at the end of a row to remove it. When you are done, click Save the week. Nothing is stored until you do.

A few rules:

A day can hold up to 24 hours in a cell, and a week can have up to 40 rows.
If a row has hours but no job and no cost code, ORCA refuses the save and names the row, so the hours aren't thrown away. What you typed is kept.
The same job and code on two rows for one day are added together when you save.
Empty cells aren't entries. If you clear a cell or remove a row and save, those hours are deleted.
A closed job's office time is part of its final figures, so it can't be changed. ORCA tells you which job is closed.

A worked example. On Monday you spend three hours on J-1042 and two on admin, and Tuesday is all J-1042. That is two rows: J-1042 with 3 on Monday and 7 on Tuesday, and Admin with 2 on Monday. The J-1042 hours go to the job. The admin hours count as overhead.

Someone else's week

Anyone with Settings access sees a dropdown beside the dates. Pick a person to open their week. It looks exactly the same, headed with their name, and Save the week saves it for them. Everyone else can only fill in their own.

People who clock on site are in the list too, under On the site clock, after the office. That lets you give a site operative an office rate for the hours they put into Office time.

The office this week

People with Settings access also see a table under the grid, The office this week. For each person it shows hours On jobs, hours of Overhead, the Total, and the Chargeable percentage, with a row for Everyone at the bottom. Click a name to open their week. A link to Totals gives the same figures by month and by cost code.

Rates and setup

Click Rates and setup (Settings access only).

First time. If your account hasn't got an Office Time section yet, the page says Set up office time. Under Jobs are in, pick the section your jobs live in and click Set it up. ORCA makes an Office Time Log section, linked to your jobs. Everyone who hasn't got Settings access sees a short note until that's done.

Cost rates. Type what an hour of each person's time costs the business. This is a cost to you, not a charge to a customer.

Blank means not costed. Their hours are still counted, but no cost is worked out.
A person's first rate costs all their entries so far.
After that, set the date in Changes apply from and click Save rates. Entries from that date on are costed again at the new rate. Earlier ones keep the rate they had. ORCA tells you how many entries were costed again.
Entries on closed jobs keep the cost they had.
People who also clock on site are listed under On the site clock. A rate for one of them costs only the hours they put into Office time. Their site hours are costed by the site clock's own rates.

The Office Time Log

Every row you fill in becomes an ordinary record in the Office Time Log section, one per person, per day, per job or cost code. Each has a Date, Person, Job, Cost Code, Kind (Job or Overhead, worked out from whether there is a job), Hours and Cost.

Because they are ordinary records, you can list them, filter them and report on them. The cost codes are the section's Cost Code picklist, so you edit them like any other picklist (see Picklists). A new log starts with Drawing, Site visits, Admin, Quoting, Sales and Training.

Totals

The log works with Totals. Group by person and Kind for chargeable against overhead per person, by month for the trend, or by Cost Code to see where the office's time goes. The ORCA team can set these three up as saved reports for you.

On the job

How office time shows on a job depends on how your account has been set up. A typical setup looks like this, and the ORCA team can do the same for yours.

Office Time Log lines. The job's page lists its office time as lines, using line items. They are locked once the job reaches Closed.
Management Hours and Management Actual. On the job's Costing tab, these add up the hours and the cost of its Office Time Log lines. They are roll-ups, so they update when anyone saves a week.
Management estimate. On the estimate lines, Management is a line type. The estimate lines of that type add up into Management Budget, so you can price in drawing and management time up front and then see what it really took.
Budget cost, budgeted profit, actual cost and profit / (loss) all include the management figures.

A job's Management Actual only has a value for hours that have been costed. If someone has no rate, their hours show in Management Hours but add nothing to Management Actual.

Site Clock - the engineers' side: hours from the phone
Totals - adding the log up by person, month or cost code
Line Items and Roll-ups - how office time shows as lines on the job
Picklists - editing the cost codes