Managing Trades for the Homebuilding Industry

Objective

Trades in the homebuilding (HB) industry have real difficulty in coordinating teams moving between various sites. This includes dispatching of teams, validating work is complete, communicating work is complete and billing clients the appropriate amounts according to the contracts or agreements in place. Agreements are typically organized by HB projects and phases.

Maestro* contains multiple functionalities aimed at helping them do exactly this. Some very specific configurations are required in order to do so.

This document will use the “flatwork” trade doing concrete placement for new homes as an example. There are some differences in how other trades such as electricians and plumbers are handled.

For flatwork we normally see 4 different types of placement for each home: Garage, Basement, Stairs, and Walkway. There may be others but these are most common.

With other trades we typically see 3 consecutive work types: rough-in, installation and finishing.

Prerequisites

The Work Order module must be installed
The Inventory Order module must be installed

Summary

Quoting Approach
Setting Products and Price
Setting Work Order Template
Receiving a PO From the Home Building Industry
Material Required
Work Order Dispatch (Optional)
Linking PO to Dispatch
Generating a Schedule for Teams and Suppliers
Managing Payroll to Subs
Comparing Internal and External Team
Internal Profitability Tracking Job
Setting up Projects
Invoicing These WOs
Other Functionalities

Steps

Quoting Approach

Flatwork is mainly quoted by M2 with a different price for each type of work.

For example the thickness of concrete for a garage will be different than a walkway. Preparation and concrete type will also be different. Thus the trade will provide a price per work type and by M2. Sometimes the specific lot may have influences such as grading that change the pricing and/or quantities. For simplicity we will keep this example to M2 pricing.

For other trades the pricing is often dictated by the home model. They will typically give a fixed price by model.

Setting Products and Price

Considering the 4 placement types the best approach is to have 4 products; one for each type with default unit prices. Pricing for each HB project and phase will be explained when setting up the billing contract.

If the product is different between various clients (HB’s) it may be required to have product for them specifically.

The best approach is to create a product by model. It is assumed that the same model will come on various HB projects and phases but will have a different price if done in various regions and times.

Setting Work Order Template

To ease up the creation of new work order the best approach is to create work order (WO) templates that will be selected creating WO’s for a specific project/phase/lot. Templates are like preconfigured WO’s. The simplest approach for flatwork would be to have 4 templates. One for each work type.

In the example above the quantity is not important. I can just be set to ‘1’ in the template as the correct M2 will be entered when a WO is created for a specific lot after receiving a purchase order (PO) from the Homebuilding.

For other trades templates should be created for each home model. Since the installation is in 3 phases it is also expected to have 3 Work Orders templates for each model and each phase.

Receiving a PO From the Home Building Industry

When the PO arrives it should contain the work address (specific lot), the home model and a quantity. For flatwork it can be expected to receive a different PO for each work type and the appropriate quantity. A Work Orders should be immediately open with an expected date to be accomplished.

When clicking on creating a new Work Order a selection screen will appear as follows:

It is important to note that for the template selection to appear it is necessary to activate the function Models Management available under the Configuration icon. This configuration is by user.

Following this selection user should populate the work address and the appropriate quantity specified on the WO.

You also need to set a project to capture cost and revenues which will be covered in the section Setting up projects. The best approach would be to have a project by Home building project and phase.

This way it will be possible to determine profitability by project. This will also allow using the project number as the source to set billing price by product.

Material Required

Now we are getting into the interesting part, ordering the material for the job. The main material for flatwork is concrete. For each placement type we need to define the bill of materials (BOM).

For this we need to access to the Define Bill of Materials option.

This option is used to define product assemblies. In this example we are suggesting that for each 1 M2 flatwork we require 0.5 M3 of concrete. If other materials such as fibre mesh or rebar are required they can also be added here. These materials will automatically be copied to each Work Order where this BOM is referenced.

The following is the item definition for the catalogue item related to the BOM.

Please note the “status” that is defined as “Kit”. This is important for the next step which will automatically insert the required material into the work order. When entering a quantity in the Item to Bill tab for these items the BOM is automatically inserted in the Material Used tab as shown here:

You will recall that the quantity in M2 was 149 which convert to 74.5 M3 from what was define in our BOM.

If you change the item to bill quantity the BOM quantities in the material tab will also be automatically updated.

From here we would like to transfer this material into a purchase order. A configuration is required to set the desired procurement method. For this you need to go into General Settings and set the Material Transfer Method as 3-Stock Order From Catalogue.

After saving the work order it is now time to transfer material item(s) into a PO by clicking on the transfer icon and selecting only Material Transfer.

Maestro* create the following Purchase Order.

As you can see the status of the PO is at Reserved. This is to ensure someone will review the PO before confirming it. Doing it this way also ensures that all PO validations are done prior to confirming it.

A default supplier is also selected. The supplier is the default one defined in the item type which in turn is configurable in each catalogue item. The supplier can be changed at this point if required.

A purchase order will be created by default supplier. So if a Bill of Material (BOM) contains multiple products they will be a PO created for each default supplier. You will still be able to change it before committing the PO. At this point it is just to tell the system how to consolidate items.

If you wish to ensure that a proper supplier is selected you can use an Internal supplier. This is set in the Supplier Management option by checking the Internal check box.

When a default supplier is selected in a PO, it is impossible to confirm the PO. You get the following message:

Obviously you can have more than one internal supplier so one for each type of supplier.

Work Order Dispatch (Optional)

If the Work Orders Dispatch module is not installed, please go the step Invoicing these WOs.

For now there will be no explicit description on how the dispatch works. We will only concentrate on specific requirement in relation to this current documentation. If you want more details about the Work Order Dispatch, please see the F1.

Trades normally work in team. At this time only team leader should be defined as employee in maestro* and shown in the dispatch. If teams are subcontractors they should still be defined as employees. The only difference as that we will set their supplier code in the employee file.

Access to Employee Management, create the employee and specify the supplier code.

Doing this will ensure that these “employees” won’t be treated as employees during payroll. See the section Managing payroll to subs to have the different way to process about subcontractor PO.

In dispatch it is possible to select which employees should be shown. This will avoid showing employees that should not be assigned WO’s.

The approach would be to create an “occupation type” for team leaders in the Define Occupation Types option and show only them in the dispatch.

From there you dispatch WO’s to team leaders. This would give the following screen.

Warning: the current challenge it is difficult to set the required time in the WO so that the time required is automatically set in the dispatch. It is up to the dispatcher to make adjustment after assigning the WO to a team leader.

Linking PO to Dispatch

POs were created link to Work Orders. When a Work Order is dispatched we would like also to dispatch the POs. To do so we need to tell the system which PO’s are linked to which dispatches. To do so you will right click on the dispatch and select the option Edit Dispatch.

You will have the following window.

Multiple POs may be shown. You will need to select the appropriate POs for this specific dispatch. From there the date and time will be linked. Now, moving the dispatch in the calendar will also change the PO delivery date and time. This will be very useful for informing the supplier, as it will be shown in the step of Generating a schedule for teams and suppliers.

If you want to see POs in the dispatch screen you need to set it in your dispatch window, you must follow the following setps:

Access to the Dispatch Grid tab, click the Configuration icon. The Option window is displayed.
Click Display Options tab. The window is divided in five tabs. Click the Display Options tab.
Under the section Concerning Service Calls and Work Orders, click the Display Purchase Orders field.

Generating a Schedule for Teams and Suppliers

There is a couple a ways to create schedules for teams but supplier’s schedules are available only from the menu. For team you can send directly from the dispatch.

Select the employee in the left section and then right click on the name of this employee. You will see the following menu.
Select Print Dispatch List.
Select the date.

The Employee Schedule report is displayed.

From the menu you can print schedules for both employees and suppliers.

The interesting thing about these options is that they may cover more days, for example a full week. Also you can generate schedule for all of your employees.

Managing Payroll to Subs

Various approaches are available. For example you could pay subs through payroll if they are paid individually. Hourly salary can be set without any deduction in 3.02 version.

Another method would be to use our new Supplier Invoice Reconciliation (SIR) function. The option must be installed to used it.

By having multiple employees all having the same supplier the system will allow you to reconcile a supplier invoice with all individual cost entries. For more details, consult the document in F1 Reconciling Supplier Hours.

The last approach would be used if you want to manage subs through POs. This approach is also interesting as it allows you to manage internal and external teams the same way to evaluate internal team performance compared to external ones.

First an internal supplier needs to be defined they will be the default supplier for the installation product that will be created. Let’s create this.

Normally a price will have been provided for each work type and model to the HB. The approach would be to create a WO template for each combination of work type and model. Thus when creating a new WO only a template selection would be required.

We also assume in this case that prices are by M2. So to start we would create 4 products in M2 this way.

For now, create the item with the following information:

Field	Instructions
Type	Enter the type of the item.
Status	Enter the value KIT.
Unit for Inventory	Enter M2.
Selling Price	Enter a price tag of 200$/M2.

Three others items for GARAGEFLOOR, WALKWAY and STAIRS should be created with the same configuration. The only thing that should change is the Selling Price field.

Material is expected for each placement type so we will create a BOM for each placement type / product combination.

For example a walkway :

By transferring a Work Order with this material it will create two PO, one for the concrete and the second one for the installation by the subcontractor.

It has created 2 POs

For the subcontractor you will have this PO for 150 M2 at 25$/M2 for a total of 3750$.

This PO is attached to the Work Order. Thus by dispatching the Work Order you also dispatch this PO. When the work is completed by the subcontractor he will send his invoice that will be posted toward this PO. Meanwhile there will be a committed cost to the Work Order and the related job.

Comparing Internal and External Team

When a Work Order is assign to a team leader (either internal or external) the supplier of the PO while be changed to the subcontract attached to the external employee or the PO will be converted into a P2P type PO where the cost as establish in the PO will go to the job and a revenue posted to an internal profitability tracking job. When switching from a PO to a P2P the supplier is removed. It will come back when switch back again using the dispatch.

Internal Profitability Tracking Job

What is intended here is that cost to Work Order be the same using internal or external team. When internal, another internal job will get revenue. We will also post internal time from these teams to that internal job. Normally we would expect that using internal resource is more profitably than using external one. That is the objective of this approach.

Setting up Projects

Considering that works on lots are not that complex it is easier to create one project by HB phase.

Invoicing These WOs

What is really invoiced is the item to bill which correspond to the service provided by quantity. To invoice we need to create a Work Order billing contract. In this industry multiple lot/Work Orders are invoiced at the same time on the same invoice.

Extras may be invoiced from either item to bill or direct cost if configured correctly. Normally what would be done is have a section of activities that are billable while most of them are part of the base contract.

A Work Order billing contract will be link to it to define billing rules and all Work Order would be assign to this specific project. Profitability by Work Order can easily be reviewed and overall profitability of the phase be inquired. If for some reason it is preferably to create one project by lot this will required that when work is attributed for a new lot a project will need to be created. To simplify this task a master project should be create for the HB phase to which a WO billing contract will be created. This billing contract will be use to invoice every lots by stating to include sub project. The “charge income to sub-projects” should also be checked as revenues should go to each lot.

Other Functionalities

The Define Progression States option can be used to track various state of the Work Order. Often work are put on hold because of works that needs to be performed by other subcontractor. This information will be shown in the dispatch and could be adjust by clicking in the right click menu under the dispatch and select the option Modify Progression State. You can also modify the progression state field directly in the Work Order.