Work Order Operation Basics

Work Order Operations

Operation Codes allow you to track all charges related to a specific job (parts, labor, sublet, freight, bill codes etc.) and enable you to report on the profitability of these operations for a given date range. For example, you may want to know if you should keep painting boat bottoms or sub-contract the work to an outside vendor. If you setup an operation code for bottom painting, you could report on how much revenue you are generating from painting bottoms and how profitable the service is.

Here's a short video overview of the module:

Creating Operation Codes

In DockMaster, you can have an unlimited amount of operation codes. Operation codes can be loaded from a vendor file or entered in manually. When creating your operation codes, it is important to keep your codes as short and descriptive as possible. Remember to only create codes that you want to track revenue and cost information on. If there is not a code created for a particular job, DockMaster allows a Miscellaneous Job code or "999" to be entered. Using a 999 misc. job code will allow you to add charges to a customer’s invoice, but will not give you good tracking information.

Naming Operation Codes

When creating your Operation Codes you should create a name or scheme that is meaningful to you. You may want to consider using words to explain the type of operation. For example: Tune8 for a Tune up on an 8-cylinder engine or Bpaint for a Bottom Paint. You may also want to use numeric codes. The numeric codes can represent a particular type of job. For example: Jobs using codes 1000-1999 might be Mechanical Jobs. Jobs beginning with 2000-2999 might be Carpentry Jobs and so on. The important thing to remember when creating your codes is to make sure they make sense and that the people working with the work orders, like the Service Writers, can understand the codes. Don’t get too hung up on the coding structure though because DockMaster allows the user to search for Operation Codes by part of the description entered in the code. For example: If you want to search for Bottom Painting codes, you could type in "bottom" or "painting" to get a list of Opcodes with those key words.

Operation Types

After creating your Operation Codes, the next step is to determine what type of job it will be. The Operation Type can be flat rated, time and material or capped. A flat rated job can charge one rate regardless of the number of labor hours or parts charged to the operation or it can flat rate the labor only or the parts only. The flat amount can either be a flat fee or per foot rate. An example of a flat rated job might be a Warranty type job, where the warranty vendor reimburses you a flat amount for the labor only and the parts are reimbursed based on the price for each part. That would be a labor only flat rated job. A time and material job might be replacing a customer’s ignition switch. All the labor and parts would be charged at retail rate. If the job is capped, that means the charges (parts, labor, and billing charges) will be billed out at retail rate, but there is a monetary cap on the operation.

Billing

The Operation Code on the work order drives the way the job gets billed out. It is important that you pay attention to the operation type, so the billing is done correctly. When it comes time to bill out an operation, our system allows you to progress bill. That means that even if the work is not completed in its entirety, you can bill for what has been completed. As the operations/jobs are completed on a work order, you can change the status from open to closed so a summary of what has been done can be given to a customer at any given time. If you bill out all operations at the same time, entering a completion date will close all the operations along with the Work Order. Once all the operations have been billed out, it is a good idea to mark them as closed and close the work order. This will enable you to get more accurate reports on work in process and profitability.

Identify Users

Operation Code Maintenance is going to be used by the Service Writers in the Service Department. Service Writers will be creating and maintaining the Operation Codes. Service Writers will also be adding the operations to the work orders so that charges can be added to the customer’s invoice.

Access

If you are adding an Operation to a new or existing Work Order from the menu select, Maintenance Functions, Work Orders. Once you are in the Work Order Maintenance window, you can press the Add Operations button from the Command Panel.