Importing Labor/Travel into Softbase

Key Concepts

1. Labor and travel hours are calculated per work order, per person, per day, per type, and per after-hours.
2. Labor and travel hours are loaded into Softbase's mobile staging tables.
3. Labor and travel hours are not directly added to a Softbase work order.
4. Labor and travel hours on a work order are not the same as a person's time card. When a time card is changed, the corresponding labor/travel hours must also be changed.
5. Labor and travel hours are loaded daily (usually in the morning) for open work orders in Tinancity and when a work order is completed in Tinnacity.

How are hours calculated?

Labor and travel hours are calculated per work order, per person, per day, per type, and per after-hours. What does this all mean?

• Per work order: hours are only applied to single work orders
• Per person: if two people apply hours to a work order, then labor hours should be applied to the work order for each person.
• Per day: if the technician works on a work order over multiple days, there will be at least one entry per day.
• Per type: if the technician travels and performs labor on a work order, there will be 2 separate entries.
• Per after-hours: this is rare, but if the technician had labor and then got called back to the same work order on that same day, there will be one entry for regular hours and one entry for after-hours.

When are hours loaded into Softbase?

For open (active) work orders in Tinnacity, hours are loaded once per day. This is typically in the morning. Reach out to Tinnacity if you want to know the specific time these are loaded for your company, as these times differ. Internal work orders (e.g. lost time, PTO, holiday, van restock, shop cleanup) are also loaded during this daily load.

For completed work orders in Tinnacity, hours are loaded once the technician completes the work order and the PDF is built. This can be at any point throughout the day and typically within 5 minutes of the technician completing the work order.

How does Tinnacity load hours into Softbase?

During the daily hours' load or when a work order is completed, we load hours into Softbase the exact same way. All hours will always be stored in Softbase's mobile staging table, called WOArrival. We do this because this is Softbase's preferred method to load hours to allow Softbase to apply the correct dollar amounts and other business logic to hours as they are imported to the work order.

When the integration agent attempts to load hours to the staging table, we first check to see if the hours have already been loaded. The following logic is followed:

• If the hours have not yet been loaded, load the hours.
• If the hours have been loaded and the hours have not yet been imported, adjust the hours to the new hours amount and date/time start and finish.
• If the hours have been loaded and the hours have been imported, we will notify you via email that the hours will need to be manually reconciled. Since the hours have already been imported, they can't be "unimported".

Do I need to import hours into Softbase?

Yes! If you do not import hours into Softbase, you will never bill labor hours. Tinnacity will load into the staging tables, but if not imported, hours are not billed.

How do I import hours into Softbase?

There are two ways to import hours onto a work order in Softbase.

1. On the individual work order in the Labor tab.
   1. The truck icon will display when hours are available to be imported. Once clicked, the hours will be loaded to that single work order.
   2. The truck icon will not be visible when there are no hours available to be imported.
   3. The truck icon should always be used prior to billing/invoicing the work order as a way to double-check that all labor has been imported.
2. Labor Ticket Entry
   1. See your Softbase documentation for how to use Labor Ticket Entry.
   2. This is a way to load all hours per technician per day. This is most useful to do after the daily hours have been loaded into Softbase.
   3. The most common pitfall here is that hours must be both imported and posted.
   4. When someone clicks "import", that is the only time that those hours will ever be allowed to be imported. If the hours are not posted, those hours are gone forever. For technical folks, Softbase sets the ImportFlag to -1. You can set the ImportFlag back to 0 to allow that entry to be imported again.

The imported hours will now be shown in the Labor tab on the work order in Softbase. One thing to note is that Softbase does not designate travel versus labor so this can cause confusion.