The rates you bid are only as good as the records behind them
A bid and a contract both multiply by fringe, overhead and general and administrative rates. Those rates come from somewhere: who works here and what they cost, the hours they put on each contract, what payroll paid, and every cost that is on no contract at all. Four screens under Finance in the app menu keep those records and work the rates out from them.
each pool sits on the total under it, which is why the order is not a style choice
Four screens, one set of records
Each one is a row under Finance in the app menu. They are on every paid plan.
Timesheets
Hours by person and by day, on a contract and its line or on the kind of indirect work it was. Entered daily, certified by the person, approved by somebody else, and every change logged.
People and pay
Who works here, what an hour of each of them costs, and what payroll paid. Pay runs are typed in or imported from a payroll report.
Cost ledger
Every cost in one place with the pool it belongs to. Cost on no contract is entered here. Cost on a contract is entered on the contract and shown here.
Indirect rates
Fringe, overhead and general and administrative for a fiscal year, each shown with the pool and the base it comes from, and kept as a rate set.
Timesheets
A week for each person. Each row is a contract and one of its lines, or a kind of indirect time: leave, overhead, general and administrative, bid and proposal, or unallowable. Type the hours by day. Time is entered by the end of the day it is worked, or by the end of the next working day where the account's rule says so. An entry made after that is never refused. It is marked late, with the moment it was entered, and counted.
Somebody with a sign-in of their own enters their own time and nobody else can. Somebody without one can have it entered for them, and the log says who did. Submitting your own week asks you to certify it, in the account's own words. Until the account writes its own, the plain words say the hours are complete and accurate, recorded on the days they were worked, and each charged to what it was worked on. The certification is kept with your name and the time. For somebody with no sign-in, the person submitting can certify for them, and the record says that is what happened.
Somebody else on the account approves the week. Nobody approves their own hours where somebody else can, and nobody approves hours they submitted. Where a supervisor is set on the person in People and pay, the supervisor approves, and nobody else does. Where none is set, the account's rule decides: anybody else on the account, or only the owner or a manager. The only person on an account approves their own week, and the record says so. Each week says who certified it and when, who approved it and when, and who approves this person's hours. Certify your timesheet is on the calendar of each person who signs in, every week.
Every change to a line is logged: what it was, what it became, who changed it and when. Once a line has been submitted, a change also needs a reason. Nothing in that log is ever edited or removed. A week that is reopened needs its certification and its approval again, and the week shows how many changes were made after it was certified.
Approved hours on a contract become labor cost on that contract, at what an hour of that person cost. Reopening a week takes them back out and leaves a line in the log saying why. Under the timesheet is a labor distribution for any period: hours and dollars by person, by contract and by kind of indirect time.
What an auditor asks of these records, counted over thirteen weeks, with a floor check of any day, is on Audit readiness.
People and pay
A staff list, with an hourly rate or a yearly salary for each person and the standard hours a salary is spread over. A person can be linked to their own sign-in, which is what lets them enter their own time.
A pay rate is dated. A changed rate starts on the date you give it, what the person was paid before is kept, and hours worked before that date keep their cost. The rate history is shown under each person.
A pay run is a record of what your payroll provider already paid: one row per person per pay period, with gross pay, hours, employer taxes, benefits and leave. Type one in, or import a payroll report as a CSV file. The import shows what it read before anything is written, matches names to the people on your list, and refuses a pay run that is already on record, so the same report cannot go in twice.
Until there is payroll for a period, an hour costs the pay rate. Once there is, an hour costs what payroll says it cost.
When payroll or a new rate arrives after labor has been invoiced, the invoice is not changed. The screen shows the difference for each contract, and one button adds it to the contract as a single true-up line, not yet invoiced, so the next invoice carries it.
The account owner always sees pay. Anybody else on the account sees pay rates, pay runs and what each person's hours cost only when the owner has ticked Can see pay for their seat. Without it they still fill in timesheets and see totals. Seats and roles are on Your team.
The owner or a manager also says, on each person, who approves their hours: Their hours are approved by, with the account's rule for anybody who has nobody set. Nobody can be set to approve their own hours.
Cost ledger
Indirect cost is entered here, in the pool it belongs to: fringe, overhead, general and administrative, bid and proposal, or unallowable. Each cost has a date, who it was paid to, what it was and an amount. Costs can be imported from a CSV file, as an accounting package or a bank exports them.
Direct cost is entered on the contract it belongs to and shown here beside the rest, so the ledger is every cost in one list. Filter it by pool and by date. Removing a recorded cost takes a reason and leaves a line in the change log.
An entry on no contract that reads like an unallowable cost is suggested, never flagged by itself. Flag it under the cost principle of FAR 31.205 it falls under and it leaves every pool, with the principle kept as the reason. Taking a flag off asks for a reason too.
Indirect rates: how each one is worked out
The screen prints the pool, the base and the division for each rate, so anybody with the screen and a calculator gets the same figure.
- 1
Fringe
Employer taxes, benefits, paid leave and allowable fringe expenses, over total labor dollars.
- 2
Overhead
Overhead labor, its fringe and allowable overhead expenses, over direct labor plus its fringe. You can choose direct labor alone as the base instead.
- 3
General and administrative
General and administrative labor, bid and proposal labor, their fringe and allowable expenses, over total cost input. You can choose the value-added base instead, which leaves out materials and subcontracts.
- 4
Unallowable cost
In no pool. It is kept apart so it can be seen, and so nothing unallowable is spread over a contract.
Computed, provisional and actual, for each fiscal year
Choose the month your fiscal year starts in. The screen works the three rates out for the year and says when a base is thin, which is fewer than three months of entries. It also checks that the labor in the cost ledger agrees with what payroll paid, and says so when it does not.
Keep the result and it becomes the computed rate set for that year. Copy it to the provisional set, which is the rates you bill at, and to the actual set once the year is closed. A set can be typed in by hand, with a handling rate on materials and subcontracts, and a set can be locked.
The bid worksheet offers your rate sets when you price a bid. The contract ledger burdens cost with them and sets the provisional rates beside the actual ones. That is why what you bid and what the work cost can be compared: they are the same rates through the same arithmetic.
Through the year, Audit readiness holds the provisional set against what the records say so far, and warns when a rate drifts past the threshold you set.
- A rate set per fiscal year and kind: computed, provisional, actual or bid
- The pool, the base and the division printed for every rate
- A warning when a base rests on fewer than three months
- Payroll checked against the labor in the ledger
- Read by the bid worksheet and the contract ledger
the less certain the work, the more they pay for uncertainty and the more of your books they expect to see
Into your own books
Your general ledger stays in your accounting product. Each month that has ended, the approved labor and the costs recorded go to it as balanced journal entries: as a file in the import layout of QuickBooks Online or Xero, or, once the account owner or a manager has connected your company, sent straight to it. A change after a month was sent goes as a reversing entry and the month as corrected, and nothing there is edited or deleted from here. How it works is on Audit readiness, under To the books.
What leaves as a file
A timesheet, the staff list, the cost ledger and a rate set each download as an Excel workbook or a CSV file and print. Pay runs and the labor distribution download as Excel or CSV.
What it does not do
It does not run payroll, pay anybody, move money or file anything. A pay run here is a record of what your payroll provider paid. The rates are arithmetic on your own entries. They are not a rate submission to the government, and nothing here is accounting advice. Keeping these records here does not by itself make an accounting system adequate for a cost-type award: that is a determination a government auditor makes. Your figures stay on your account and are never counted into any figure this product publishes.
Where it is in the app
People and pay, under Finance in the menu. Timesheets, under Finance in the menu. Indirect rates, under Finance in the menu. Cost ledger, under Finance in the menu. Finance is the part of LastAwarded that tracks the money, one of the eight parts, and it opens on the Finance overview.
Related
- Bid worksheetWhere the rate sets are used to price a bid.
- Contract administration NewWhere approved hours become cost on a contract.
- Audit readiness NewCertified weeks, a floor check, rates against the records, unallowable cost and journal files.
- Module 11: Pricing and costThe indirect pools, in order, and the wrap rate.
- Module 16: Audits and complianceWhat an auditor looks at in timekeeping.
- Security NewWhat is stored and who can read it.
See who was last awarded in your NAICS
Every code, every buying office, every vendor and every recompete, organized from the federal record and read nightly. Open it with a plan.