Part 2 — Set Up Your Company · Chapter 11

Services, Rates & Materials

This chapter sets up the money machinery that chapters 18 and 19 run: where a price comes from when someone adds a line item. In BigWave a price comes from a contract rate, from the materials database, from a technician’s labor rates, or from someone typing it in. Configure the first three well and the fourth becomes the exception it should be.

Contracts and rates

Each project’s Details screen carries its Contract, the billing arrangement for that line of work, including its rate schedule and default rate. Rates are the agreed prices for services, “Panel inspection, per panel” or “Service call, first hour”, so line entry becomes pick the rate and enter the quantity instead of remember the price.

Because rates live with the project, contract pricing follows the line of work on its own.

Commercial (Harbor Grill): the inspection project’s contract holds negotiated per-panel and per-site rates. Nobody keys a price during invoicing all year. The contract already knows.

Residential (the Okafors): Residential Service carries Beacon’s standard book rates: service call, hourly labor, common flat-rate jobs. Ad-hoc entry still happens for the oddball item, and the recurring 90% is a pick from a list.

Markup types

Prices derived from a cost, a material, a subcontractor invoice, an expense, carry a markup rule rather than a fixed number. BigWave supports the usual arrangements: no charge, passthrough at cost, cost plus a dollar amount, percentage markup, margin, a fixed price per unit, or a flat fixed price. Set the rule once on the rate or material. The math happens at line entry.

The materials database

Setup/Materials Database is your parts catalog: part number, description, unit cost, pricing. When a tech or office user adds a material line to a work order, they search this database and the line arrives with cost and price attached. That’s what makes material billing consistent and margins visible.

You can load the catalog from a spreadsheet through the Import / Export Center, and re-import to update costs when your supplier reprices. If you get supplier price files, plan on doing this quarterly rather than editing by hand.

Preferred Materials, set per project in Project Setup, narrow the catalog for a line of work. The inspection project prefers the forty parts inspections actually consume, so the picker on those work orders starts at forty instead of three thousand. The full database stays one search away.

Companies that stock inventory get a further layer, with on-hand quantities and the inventory search screen. Chapter 21 touches it alongside supplier purchase orders.

Labor: technician rates and time categories

Labor pricing meets three records:

  • Technician services. Each technician’s record lists the services they provide and their rates, chapter 6, used when pricing that person’s work.
  • Standard labor rates on the technician: standard, overtime, doubletime, shift and trip charge, so a timecard knows what an hour costs and what it bills at in each category.
  • Time categories classify entered time, which is how the same tech’s Saturday hour bills differently from his Tuesday hour without anyone doing arithmetic.

Chapter 17 covers time entry in the field. Chapter 19 shows the hours landing as invoice lines.

Accounting codes

Accounting codes map BigWave’s line items onto your chart of accounts, so exported invoice lines land in the right buckets in QuickBooks or whatever your accountant runs. Assign codes to services and materials as you set them up. Retrofitting codes after six months of invoicing is an afternoon nobody wants. Five minutes now buys clean books later, and chapter 19 covers the export itself.

Checklist

  1. Enter your standard price book as rates on each shared service project.
  2. Enter each negotiated contract’s rates on its dedicated project.
  3. Load the materials database from your supplier file rather than typing it.
  4. Set preferred materials on any project with predictable parts usage.
  5. Fill in every technician’s labor rates, overtime included, on day one.
  6. Assign accounting codes as you go, with your bookkeeper in the room.