Billing Cost Example

Owned by Christy Kolle
Last updated: Dec 15, 2020 by Joel Smolarek
Table of Contents

Billing Costs Example

MetaField Billing Costs are available for you to capture time and materials related to both the discrete areas of MetaField (Concrete / Grout / Mortar and Density Testing) as well as the configurable areas (Activity, DIY sampling and LIMS Tests),. 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 / Billing 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 / Billing 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 / Billing 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)*

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 Work Item Costs for Configurable Forms

on top of the cost configurations you make at a work item level for the discrete areas of MetaField (Concrete / Grout / Mortar and Density Testing), you may also want to configure work item costs for configurable forms designed in our DIY engine (Activity, LIMS Sampling). Costs defined here will be added to the associated configurable form when opened through a Field Dispatch.

Adding the costs is the same process as above. There is two additional steps detailed below:

  • Associate the work item with the configurable form you've designed in DIY Activity or Sampling

  • Configure the DIY Form to Capture Costs in Form Designer

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.

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. 

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”.

Adding Costs To Forms.

Similar to configuring costs at a work item level, you can also configure forms that you have designed in Activity, DIY Sampling, and DIY Tests to capture costs at the form level vs. the work item level. Configuring your DIY forms this way allows you to capture costs whether the form was opened through a dispatch or not. 

  • Configure the DIY Form to Capture Costs in Form Designer
  • Rather than adding the Cost Types/Units configuration on the Work Item as we did above, costs are added directly to the form settings.

If you would like your Billing Cost Qty to be populated from a custom field added to the form, configure the "DefaultQuantity" field. An example of this as shown above is the Special Inspection form that we are configuring to capture cost already has custom fields where the technician is entering in Mileage and Time data so mapping those fields as DefaultQuantity makes sense so the tech does not have to enter this data in twice. This also makes sense if you are calculating a Billing Cost Qty based on multiple variables, which is often the case when calculating time, the DefaultQuantity configuration allows you to map to the calculated field so your tech do not need to calculate themselves.

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.