Create a Charge Template and Set as Default

Learn how to create your own charge templates for travel and labour hours, tasks done on site and materials used, and apply them to jobs

Updated over a week ago

Charge templates are a quick way to apply the latest rates of your business uniformly across jobs with the advantage of having the choice to bill each customer for all or only certain chargeable components such as labour hours ( labour hours include on-site time and travel time + callout charges) and tasks in the job.
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Loc8 provides you with a set of four standard charge templates which you can directly apply to jobs. They are shown below:

The standard charge templates cannot be edited (tagged as SYSTEM), but you have the flexibility to create your own charge templates to suit the business terms and relationships you have with your customers and to match up the costs of a region.

Components of a Charge Template

In a Charge Template, you can set the labour charges that include rates of your team's work during the business hours, after hour, and holidays.
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It also considers the task rates and inventory costs, however, you cannot enter the rates for tasks or inventory directly on to the charge template.

They are handled slightly differently -- the rates for tasks are drawn from the charges specified under the Task Templates in Settings -> Admin settings -> Task library.

Here is an example of task templates and their charges:

But, through the Charge Template you can customise those rates by supplying a multiplier that will adjust the actual charge of the task when you choose the Charge Template for a job having that task. This comes handy when you have to apply different charges for the same task to different customers or different scenarios.
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Similarly, the rates for the items used in a job are drawn from the Inventory in Settings -> Admin settings -> Inventory library, and within the Charge Template you can specify a suitable multiplier by which the base rate will be adjusted for the items used.

Here is an example of inventory items and their charges:

Once you have created a set of Charge Templates, you can select the most appropriate charge template when actioning a job. When you do so, the rates will be automatically calculated when your team logs in their work hours, tasks and inventories from the field.

STEP 1 Navigate to the Charge templates from Settings -> Admin settings -> Charge templates and prepare a new charge template that is specific to your customer, industry, specialised task and so on.

The charges shown here are already pre-filled as a hint so you don't have to go back and forth to check what the default rates are in Settings -> Default Rates. To set up the Default Rates or to change them, please see Define Base Rates for Work Hours.

Associate Charge Template with Jobs (or any other Loc8 Entity involving Finances)

Let's see how to associate the custom charge template with a new job. In the Job inspector, you will find the custom charge template is available in the dropdown list. Select to associate the costs and charges defined in the charge template with the new job.

IMPORTANT: Please ensure that you have selected the right charge template before you click the CREATE button on new job because in order to maintain reliability of financial numbers, you will not be able to change the charge template later irrespective of the job status.

Set as Default Charge Template

If your company uses a particular charge template quite often, then you can set that charge template as a Default Charge Template.

Once the charge template is set as default, you will see the rates and charges defined in that charge template automatically apply to every job that is created.

Next, see how to create a job and apply the charges applicable to the customer for the works done in the job, as explained in the article Create a Job.

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