Table of Contents
🧠 Purpose
🧠 Purpose
Aspire provides a feature that allows a work ticket for subcontracted services to automatically generate expense items to appear in the Purchasing Assistant.
This feature is useful for snow services and equipment wherein the company’s subcontractor bills per event, per hour or per unit (ton, bag, etc.) of material (i.e., salt) – especially in situations where it is not known in advance which of several subcontractors will perform the service, or what items will be required to perform an instance of the service.
Auto-expenses can only be set up on opportunity services whose invoice type is Fixed Payment, T&M, Per Service or Fixed Price on Completion; or opportunity services for which the associated service is marked as Multi-Visit.
💡 Tip: While this feature is designed for snow services, it can be used for non-snow services as well. This includes clean!
📌Note: A subcontractor must be set up as a contact and associated to a company for this process to work.
How Auto-Expenses are Created
When the user completes a work ticket whose opportunity service was set up with auto expenses and having time allocated to one of the contacts whose company matches the auto expense, the per hour or flat fee expense items are automatically created by Aspire, and these items appear in the Purchasing Assistant.
Material items identified as auto expense may be allocated in the following ways:
Allocated by the subcontractor from the Subcontractor Portal
Allocated by the subcontractor from Crew Mobile
Allocated by office staff on the Aspire Time Entry screen
Items allocated will appear in the Purchasing Assistant when the work ticket is completed. This automatic generation of entries in the Purchasing Assistant allows the company to know what their subcontractor should be paid and to easily create associated purchase receipts.
Where are Subcontractor Auto Expenses Established?
Subcontractor auto expenses can be established from the following locations in Aspire:
Estimate Screen – From the Add Subcontractor Auto Expense option on the Service Detail screen accessed by drilling into an opportunity service on an estimate.
Report Screen – From the Auto Expenses Report available from the Reports screen allowing users to summarize or edit existing auto-expenses or to mass-add new auto-expenses to existing opportunity services.
Company Screen – The Company screen in the Properties module provides the Auto Expense section where the user can view all auto expenses established for the subcontractor represented by the company. From this section, the user can also access an Auto Expense Wizard that allows them to mass-create auto expenses for the subcontractor. (Search for “Auto Expense Wizard” in the Aspire User Guide)
Let's take a look at each of these locations!
Service Details Screen
Automatic subcontractor expenses are set up from the Service Details screen while creating an estimate by choosing the Add Subcontractor Expenses option from the three-dot-menu.
Note that if the service may alternatively be provided by internal crews vs. subcontractors, item(s) underneath the service should reflect the company’s internal cost. If this is the case, the user should verify that the price specified for the service in the estimate is adequate for either case.
Subcontractor Expenses Screen
When filling in a line-item on the Subcontractor Expenses screen, consider the following process:
Select Company – Select the vendor company from the list. Note that the selection list is based on the companies whose associated contacts in Aspire are flagged with a contact type of “Sub”; not on the vendor list in Admin. It is the association between the selected company and its contacts that allows the automatic expense to be generated based on the time entries for the subcontractor.
Select Fee Type – Select the Fee Type which determines how the specified dollar amount will be applied when Aspire generates the expense. The Fee Type can have one of three values:
Flat Fee – Set $ amount per ticket (i.e. $100 per plow)
Hourly – Fee based on the calculation: Hourly Rate X Hours Reported
Catalog Item – Fee based on cost of item per unit applied (i.e. $200 per ton of salt)
Select Catalog Item – If the fee type of Catalog Item is chosen, then the user must specify the catalog item to which the dollar amount applies. They should provide one line-item for each catalog item a vendor may apply to complete the service. The selected items should be set up in the item catalog with zero cost and should only be used as vendor-supplied items. Aspire will not allow the user to select a catalog item if the fee type is not set to “Catalog Item.” Aspire ensures that only items of type Material, Equipment, Sub and Other are available for selection. Items of type Labor or Kit are not available.
Amount - Enter the dollar amount.
Save
💡 Tip: If the service may be performed by any one of several subcontractors, the user can add the agreed expense amounts for each subcontractor on separate lines.
It is worth noting, however, that it is not valid to establish two different hourly rates for a single vendor. Aspire prevents this. Automatic expenses can be set up any time, even after the opportunity is won.
Subcontractor Expense Report
Aspire provides the Auto Expense Report available from the Reports screen allowing users to summarize or edit existing auto-expenses or to mass-add new auto-expenses to existing opportunity services.
The Auto Expense report is located in the Reporting module under Standard Reports ▶️ Sales ▶️ Auto Expense.
Report Usage
The following image shows the default system view for this search list…
📌 Note: The system default view (Default Search [System]) groups opportunity services by opportunity.
This search list includes all opportunity services for contract opportunities for which the invoice type is Per Service or T&M, or the associated service is multi-visit.
Any opportunity services that already have vendor auto-expense defined will show the vendor, item, fee type, amount and have a more, three-dot button at the end of the line item and Delete available with options to Edit Expense and Delete Expense as depicted below. If an opportunity service has multiple auto-expenses defined, that opportunity service will have one line for each auto-expense.
Company Screen – Auto Expense Section
Auto expenses for a given subcontractor can additionally be managed from the Auto Expense section on the Company screen. The Auto Expense section only applies to companies representing subcontractors. It allows users to view in a search list the subcontractor automatic expenses that have been established for the subcontractor’s company wherein the date specified at the top falls between the start and end date of the opportunity. The list of auto expenses can be further filtered, sorted or grouped using standard search list capabilities.
For opportunities, whose end date is in the past, the Amount field for the associated subcontractor auto expenses displays as read-only and the checkbox is disabled.
The checkboxes allow the user to multi-select auto expenses for bulk deletion by clicking the Bulk Delete Selected icon.
The New button at the top of the section displays the Auto Expense Wizard, allowing the user to bulk create/update subcontractor expenses.
Auto Expense Wizard
The Auto Expense Wizard shown below, allows users to bulk create or modify auto expenses on existing opportunities for the subcontractor identified by the selected company. Auto expenses can only be set up on opportunity services whose invoice type is Per Service. The Auto Expense Wizard is comprised of two screens:
Auto Expense Wizard Screen – Setup the auto expense creation
Auto Expense Wizard Opportunities Screen – Refine the auto expense creation setup and save.
Auto Expense Wizard Screen
The Auto Expense Wizard is initiated by selecting the New button at the top of the Auto Expense section of the Company screen.
The bottom of the Auto Expense Wizard screen displays a list of all available materials in the item catalog that are flagged Allocate from Mobile on the Catalog Item screens in Admin.
The criteria at the top of the screen do not filter the list of items, but rather filter the opportunities and opportunity services to which the items selected at the bottom will be matched when generating the list of auto expenses on the second screen of the Auto Expense Wizard (the Auto Expense Wizard Opportunities screen).
The following table describes the elements on the Auto Expense Wizard screen.
| Description |
Branch | Required. Only opportunities for the specified branch will be included on the second screen of the Wizard. Only one branch can be selected. |
Effective Date | Required. Only opportunities for which the effective date is between their start and end date will be included on the second screen of the Wizard. |
Division | Required. Only opportunity services for the specified division will be included on the second screen of the Wizard. Only one division can be selected. |
Properties | Required. Only opportunities for the specified properties will be included on the second screen of the Wizard. Multiple properties may be selected. |
Items Section | This section shows a list of all available materials in the item catalog that are flagged Allocate from Mobile on the Catalog Item screens in Admin. This list allows the user to select the items for which automatic subcontractor expenses will be generated or updated. |
Selection Checkbox | Allows the user to specify that auto expenses will be generated for the item. |
Item | Name of the item. |
Unit Type | Item allocation unit type defined in the item catalog. |
Amount | Defaults to zero ($0). If the item is checked for generation of auto expenses, then the user must provide a value that specifies the amount of the expense to be paid to the subcontractor per unit. |
Auto Expense Wizard Opportunities Screen
Once the user has populated the values at the top of the Auto Expense screen, and selected and provided prices for the items at the bottom of the Auto Expense screen, clicking the Next button will advance to the second screen of the Wizard – the Auto Expense Wizard Opportunities screen. This screen displays a list of opportunities having opportunity services whose invoice type is Per Service that fit the criteria defined on the first screen. The Auto Expense Wizard Opportunities screen allows the user to further refine the list of auto expenses that will be generated.
The screen displays information in a three-level hierarchy…
Opportunities
Opportunity Services
Auto Expenses
Note that the checkboxes at any level can have one of three states.
| Description |
Collapse/Expand Arrows | Clicking the arrows to the left of the rows in the hierarchy collapses or expands the hierarchy level to help view context while updating and selecting values. |
Expand All / Collapse All Hyperlinks | Clicking these hyperlinks expand or collapse all levels of the hierarchy, respectively. |
Check Boxes | Deselecting an item or level prevents Aspire from creating an auto expense for that item when the user saves the screen. When one or more items within a hierarchy level are deselected, the checkbox for the hierarchy level displays a box instead of a checkmark. This allows the user to see that some items within the level are deselected even when the level is collapsed. |
Labor Rate | Under each opportunity service, the user can specify an hourly rate for time spent by the subcontractor’s crew members. If the hourly labor rate has a checkmark in front of it, the user must specify a non-zero value for the service. |
Items from first screen | Under each opportunity service is a set of the items identified on the first Auto Expense Wizard screen. The rates shown per unit are those that were entered on the first screen. |