For either time based or fixed price projects, TekStack captures labor costs that are attached to a resource, or a resource’s role. Using information including Budgeted Gross Margin, Actual Gross Margin, and Estimated Gross Margin, you can track which projects are hitting a gross margin threshold, and which are not.
 
These various gross margins are calculated using 3 values:
  1. The Cost associated to the project roles - The cost, or average cost, of each project role within your organization. 
  2. The Cost of the project roles within the price book - What your customer is billed per hour via T&M time entries on TekStack projects for each project role.
  3. The Cost associated to each individual resource reflective of their salary. 

Note that internal project role costs and individual resource costs are not shared with customers. Only the costing reflected in the price book is used for customer invoicing. 

 
Create Unit Records
At least one time-based unit must be created in TekStack Configure prior to creating a cost record. For example, an hour. At least one currency must be set up as well. 
 
 
 
Create Cost Records
Adding a cost (ex: $100 USD) creates a cost record in TekStack. The cost record can be linked to two other record types; Project Resources (used for budgeting) and Project Roles (used for time entry invoicing). 
 
Follow These Steps to Create a Cost Record
  1. Select "Configure" in the area picker in TekStack.
  2. In the site map under Project Setup select Role/Resource Costs.
  3. Click the + button on the grid to add a new record. Fill in the required data and save. 

Link a Cost to a Role

Once a cost record has been saved it can be linked to a role record. For example, the role "consultant" has a cost of $50 per hour. This is what the role costs your organization internally. This cost is not shared with customers.

Add a Role Cost to a Price List

Role costs are used for project time entry invoicing. Therefore, role costs must be linked to a price list just like a product ( for example, a subscription or piece of hardware). In the highlighted example, a customer would be invoiced $100 per hour for time entries logged by a consultant.

Link a Cost Record to a Project Resource

A project resource record establishes a link between a licensed system user and a TekStack project. Resources can have various costs linked to them - each role assigned to a resource has an associated cost and the resource (system user) can have a resource cost as well. Resource costs are only used for project budgeting and are not shared with customers.

Example:

  1. John is set up as a project resource in TekStack. 
  2. John's project resource record is linked to a role called Consultant. The price book role cost for Consultant is $100 per hour. The customer will be billed $100 for every hour of time and material work that John logs on a project under the Consultant role.
  3. The internal cost for the Consultant role is $50 per hour. 
  4. John's individual resource cost is $75 per hour. This is reflective of John's salary.

Resource's linked roles - each has an associated role cost for budgeting and a price book cost for time entry invoicing.

Resource's cost - the resource's salary by the hour:

Keywords: project, project resources, costs, roles