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Field Costs Example
MetaField Field Costs is available for you to capture time and materials related to Concrete / Grout / Mortar and Density Testing field activities. Because each firm has different scenarios for how they charge for these various task, MetaField allows you to define these costs as you see fit. Below is an example of how you could configure MetaField to gather the following costs related to Cast Cylinders:
Time to field test concrete and cast samples
Time for trip to site
Cost per specimen (i.e., cylinder mold)
Defining Cost Types
First you will need to configure your Cost Types from Admin > Work Items / Field Costs > Cost Types. Cost Types are the items or groups of items that you bill your customer. Cost Types can be defined as granular as necessary depending on your business needs. For this example two types have been added and assigned an optional code:
Concrete Sampling/Testing
Trip Charge
Defining Cost Units
Next you will need to define any additional Cost Units from the Admin > Work Items / Field Costs > Cost Units screen. Some Cost units are defined for you already in Admin. If you use one of these pre-demined Cost Units, the system will automatically populate the number of units for your Field users. For this example, “Hours” was added as a unit.
Adding Costs to Work Items
Now that you have defined your Cost Types and Cost Units you will need to assign these values to the appropriate Work Items. This will be done from Administration > Work items / Field Costs > Work Items. From this screen, locate the Work Item to which you would like to assign Field Costs. For this example, we are going to choose the Concrete – Cast Cylinder Work Item. Once the Work Item is selected, a Cost grid will appear below. When you are adding a cost, you will need to select the Cost Type, Cost Unit and Cost Per Unit.
Three costs have been added to the Concrete – Cast Cylinder Work Item:
Concrete Sampling/Testing (Hours)*
Trip Change (Trips)
Concrete Sampling/Testing (Specimens)*
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Note: for this example, we reused the Cost Type “Concrete Sampling/Testing” to account for the time spent testing and sampling the concrete on site as well as the cost for each specimen mold. We could have define a separate Cost Type for the cylinder molds. |
Adding Costs from Field
Once you have assigned costs to your Work Items, your Field users will be prompted to complete the Field Costs when adding records. Based on the above configuration, a field user entering a Cast Cylinder will see the following under Field Costs. Notice how the system expects the user to enter the number of hours and trips, but the system know the number of specimens taken.
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| If the technician is onsite casting several sets of cylinders on the same day they can zero out costs that don’t need to be captured for each set. For example, they could set trip charge to 0 on all but one of the sets. |
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If you would prefer your Field staff to not see / override the dollar figure assigned to each field cost, you can hide these values by going to Admin > Work Items / Field Costs > Work Items and deselecting “Display Costs in Field Module”.
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Setting Project Specific Costs in Project Specifications
The costs entered in Admin should be your standard costs for each project. MetaField allows you to override the cost structure as well as rates in Project Specifications.
For the project show below, different costs have been configured for Cast Cylinders.
When a field user is adding samples for the above project, they will see the costs configured in Project Specifications rather than the global cost entered in Administration.
Optional Review of Project Specifications
MetaField allows for an optional review and approval of Field Costs. This is useful if you want your Project Managers to approve, edit or add costs before these values are extracted from MetaField. These actions take place from the Project Admiration > Field Costs screen.
Billing Field Costs
When you are ready to bill your Field Costs, you can generate a csv file from Utilities > Field Costs Billing Extract screen. Once you choose either the Extract Selected Records or the Extract All records button, the system will generate a csv file and mark all the corresponding Field Costs as billed. Previous billing can be regenerated by selecting an item from the extract and choosing Download Past Extract.
