Custom Manufacturing and Quoting

AroFlo Q&A
#1

Aroflo has made our quoting process a lot easier and more accurate, but I think there is a lot more that can be done to streamline the process and take full advantage of the data already captured. I am curious if other people have similar challenges, and how they sort them out.

We make signs - engineered signs - so there is a lot of variation in our work as “standard” is a dirty word to our creative customers. Everything is quoted as a piece price or job cost. We never break down parts and labour to our customers. We use take-off lists to itemise and give options to our Clients, as we often have to quote the same job in a couple of different ways.

Aroflo’s Assembly Lists have made life a lot easer. Our assembly lists contain common materials, and a set of parts that exist only to carry labour. There is some repetitive work that I’d love to get rid of.

Every time we create a quote, we need to:

  • Change the labour type (expand the labour line)
  • Add the labour type to each labour line item.

Our labour types don’t change - Our electrical components are fitted under the electrical rate, mechanical work is done at the fabrication rate, painting is charged at the paint Shop rate.

Occasionally, the wrong rate gets added, or worse, there is no rate added. I’d really like to be able to set the breakdown as a standard in settings, and add the labour rate in inventory settings or as part of the assembly item.

Does anyone else have similar issues? How do you handle it?

#2

Hi Warwick,

Wouldn’t it be great if we could:

  • Set the work type in addition to the labour markup at assembly level

  • Option to default detailed quotes in the expanded format.

I have been meaning to put a feature request in for this and suggest you do the same as it has been asked for in the past way back to 2017 but for the time being here is a solution that can be adapted when these features become available that may suit your requirements.

  • Treat everything in the quote as material
  • Setup tracking categories for each labour type, "electrical labour’ and ‘mechanical labour’ ect.
  • Make the tracking category available for material and optionally labour by ticking the checkbox
  • Optional step - set the default tracking centre for each employee labour entries, either ‘electrical labour’ or ‘mechanical labour’ ect. as applicable.
  • For your inventory labour types set the tracking category to "electrical labour’ or ‘mechanical labour’
  • Enter your hourly cost as material cost, remove the labour hours.
  • Build your quote without expanding the labour lines

The above method will no longer give you the benefit of the duration breakdown and also time based allowances however you can generate a custom report that will tell you exactly the hours required for each tracking centre and also by stage which is great for scheduling. At least there isn’t the risk of forgetting to markup labour tho!!

When aroflo ends up supporting the features it pretty straightforward to change the the inventory material cost back to zero and start using the hours again.

Any questions let me know.

Thanks,

Alex

4 Likes
#3

Thanks Alex,

I’ve put it in as a suggestion before, but I’ll give it another run,

Thanks for your solution. I’ll have a look through it and see how it works in our workflow.

Warwick

3 Likes
#4

We have the same thing,
Thank goodness our default if you don’t expand is set to calculate at the highest rate of the 3 labour types.
I too agree and have submitted a request to set the default to open the labour types instead of having them condensed.

Our work around is to create a quote as a template with the labour rates for each and then use the rejected template job number to inport each time instead of using the assemblies. This keeps the labour types assigned to each line item. We too have lines that are done by a field tech and others by an electrician. Unfortunately you still need to expand the labour section of the quote. Most of our assemblues are lusted as optional so you start at the top and tick what you want as you go down the list.

#5

I’ve been using mainly assemblies, as I could set up assemblies for common task types and they’d bring in the latest material prices. I could probably replicate them in a quote template, and then take advantage of the new update BOM feature. I’d have to recreate the entire assembly, as the prices won’t update if items were added from assemblies - that’s nearly my entire quote library :frowning_face:

Our default is set to our most common labour price, which underquotes a couple of areas unless we expand. Usually it’s not a problem, but I know I’ve given away a few bargains.