Assigning Personnel to a Work Order

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To assign personnel to a work order, click Add Estimate or Add Actual in the Labor section of the work order. This opens a window that contains the following:

Show only trade: Select a trade if you want the "Personnel" drop-down list to show only those people who belong to the specified trade.
Personnel: Displays a list of personnel. If you have specified a trade in "Show only trade", the drop-down list only shows personnel belonging to the selected trade; otherwise, the drop-down list shows everyone in the Personnel table.
Selecting someone from the "Personnel" list assigns that person to the job covered by this work order.
Start Date: If you are preparing an estimate, this is the date and time when you expect the specified person to begin work on the job. If you are entering actual times after the job is finished, this is the date and time when the person actually started.
End Date: If you are preparing an estimate, this is the date and time when you expect the specified person to finish work on the job. If you are entering actual times after the job is finished, this is the date and time when the person actually finished.
The value specified for "End Date" affects the "Estimated Time" and "Actual Time" values as explained below.
Estimated Time: The total amount of work hours you expect the job to take. This field only appears when you are entering an estimate.
If you enter values in "Start Date" and "End Date", MainBoss automatically calculates the "Estimated Time" (by subtracting the starting date/time from the ending date/time). Similarly, if you enter a value in "Estimated Time", MainBoss automatically adjusts "End Date" to be the starting date/time plus the estimated time.
Actual Time: The total amount of work hours the job actually took. This field only appears when you are entering actual figures after the job is finished.
If you enter values in "Start Date" and "End Date", MainBoss automatically calculates the "Actual Time" (by subtracting the starting date/time from the ending date/time). Similarly, if you enter a value in "Actual Time", MainBoss automatically adjusts "End Date" to be the starting date/time plus the actual time.

Note: If a job is broken over more than one work period, you should make separate entries for each period. For example, suppose a particular worker spends three hours on a job Friday, then comes back to finish the job with four hours of work on the following Monday. You would record this with two entries: one entry for the work on Friday (stating the starting time and ending time for work on that day) and a second entry for the work on Monday (again with an appropriate starting time and ending time). This makes it possible for MainBoss to calculate the actual time appropriately.

You would use a similar approach if a worker takes a break in the middle of doing a job. For example, if the worker works on a particular job in the morning, takes a break for lunch, then goes back to the job in the afternoon, you would record the morning and the afternoon separately. This makes sure that the "Actual Time" calculated from starting time and ending time does not include the break.

On the other hand, if a worker starts a job at 10:00 p.m. Monday night and keeps going until 2:00 a.m. Tuesday morning, you can record this as a single stint of four hours. You only need to make separate entries when a worker takes a significant break in the middle of a job, rather than working straight through.

Rate: The hourly rate charged for the specified person's work.
Total Cost: Automatically calculated by multiplying "Rate" by "Estimated Time" (in a job estimate) or "Actual Time" (if you are entering actual numbers after the job is finished).
Save & New: Saves the current record and clears fields in the window so you can enter a new record.
Clone: Opens a new window and creates a new record using information from the current one. For example, if two people work together on this work order, you can fill out information for one of those people, then click Clone to enter information for the second person; the cloned record has the same values for fields like "Start Date" and "End Date" so that you don't have to fill in those fields again.
Delete: Deletes this record.
Save: Saves the current record, but leaves all data as is. You can then continue to edit the same record.
Cancel: Closes the window. MainBoss discards any information you may have entered since the last time you clicked Save.

If several people are assigned to a particular job, you typically fill in information for one person, click Clone, fill in information for the next person, click Clone again, and so on. When you have created records for all these people, click Save and then Cancel to close each record, until you return to the main work order window.

Important: Make sure you click Save for each person. If you Cancel without saving information about the last person, that last person will not appear in the work order's list of assigned personnel.

There is no need to fill in complete information for labor estimates. For example, if you can't make a good estimate for how long a particular worker will spend on a job, you can leave "Estimated Time" blank. (MainBoss will consider this an estimate of zero hours.) When the job is over, you then fill in the actual time spent.

Similarly, you may decide not to specify a particular person to do the work. You might only specify a trade (using "Show only trade"); for example, you might use this approach to specify that the work will be given to a mechanic (the trade) but you may choose not to assign a specific mechanic in advance. Again, you would fill in the appropriate information after the job was actually done.

For information about creating and editing work orders, see Creating and Editing Work Orders.

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