Calculating Multiple Overhead Costs

 As opposed to applying only a single overhead to project time reporting cost details, it is now possible to distribute multiple overheads to project time reporting costs.

The direct costs in a company are made up of labor hours, material costs etc. The indirect costs are apportioned to the direct cost using a single overhead. E.g. project labor hours (job hours) are usually reported by allocating the single overhead rate given as a percentage value in the IFS application. However there are companies that require multiple overheads to be added according their different corporate functions such as, Information Technology, Human Resources, Building and Facilities. This can be defined by a user with an administrative role, for example a Financial Controller.

Multiple overheads can now be allocated to project time reporting entries as fixed cost (cost per hour) or as a percentage value. The type and number of overheads should be decided according to the company practices. Once overheads are defined, you should decide the basis for applying the overheads to labor costs. Some examples for this criteria are Employee ID, Employee’s organization code, Employee Category. There is also an evaluation order which defines the order in which the criteria is evaluated.

Overhead rules can be defined using the criteria that you have previously specified. A rule can be made of up more than one overhead rule and it is used to define which overheads will be applied to the rule and used to calculate the cost.

Once you have defined the overheads, specified the criteria and the overhead rules multiple overheads can be allocated to employee labor hours with the relevant rule being used to determine and calculate the overhead cost. Note: the posting control types should be set up correctly for the company for this functionality to be possible.