Table of Contents
Purpose
A Labor item is a specific item that is used when performing a service and needs to be added to your customer’s estimates. Typically, they have a cost associated with them.
You could track labor items when it comes to:
Job Roles - Create items for roles like Foreman, Operator, or Laborer to easily apply standard billing rates.
Trade Labor - Set up items for skilled trades like Electricians, Plumbers, or Carpenters with trade-specific pricing.
Certified Labor - Build catalog items for certified roles like Safety Supervisors with premium rates.
Crew Configurations - Define catalog items for common crew makeups like 3-Person Landscape Crew to simplify estimates.
By creating dedicated labor items in your catalog, you are making sure job estimates accurately capture all labor requirements and costs. Having these items defined provides consistent pricing, efficient estimating and better labor cost tracking!
🧠Some Labor item examples include: Labor-Construction, Labor-Snow or Labor-Maintenance.
Requirements
✅In order to add Labor Items to the Item Catalog, you must have System Admin or Branch Admin permission.
✅If you have Branch Admin permission you’d also need Enhanced Branch Admin Security added to your user role.
Creating a Labor Item in the Item Catalog
Before labor items can be used on estimates, they must first be created in the item catalog. The item catalog is located in the Estimating tab of Administration, and is a record of current or past items that have been created for estimating services.
⚠️ In this article, we will go over important fields to use, and skip over the ones not needed for labor item set up.
To add an item to the catalog:
Click your Profile Icon in the blue side menu. Then, select Administration.
Navigate to the Estimating tab and then select the Item Catalog tab.
To create a new item for the item catalog, click the blue New icon and a dropdown menu will appear. Select the New Labor item type.
The New Labor Item screen will appear.
You can begin to add your Labor Item details to get closer to adding it to the Item Catalog!
Type in the labor’s Item Name.
This will be the name that is displayed on your customer’s proposal.
The Alternate Name can be the same as the item name, left blank, or updated.
You can edit the alternate name to be a specific name of a product, plant genus, species or other scientific names as needed.
Alternate Name appears in the Item Catalog Search List, when searching in the Purchasing Assistant, is available for use on Purchase Receipt layouts or on estimate sheet layouts.
Select the Category of Labor.
Most users of Aspire use the Labor category type, but you can create detailed categories if you require them.
Item categories can be set up in Lists in Administration.
You can navigate there by selecting your Profile Icon ▶️ Application ▶️ Lists ▶️ Catalog Item Category ▶️ Then, you’d select the New button to create a new category!
📑Learn more about the differences between Item Name vs. Item Alternate Name vs. Item Code by clicking here.
📑 In this next section, we discuss Purchase Units vs. Allocation Units. For a more detailed explanation of how to set these up, read this article!
Enter how much the labor unit cost should be in the Purchase Unit Cost field.
Select the purchase unit measurement. Normally, labor is calculated in hours.
Some use a Purchase Unit of Day instead of Hour due to paying a flat rate.
🧠It’s recommended that the labor item’s purchase unit cost should be the average wage rate of all hourly rates in your Division (or daily flat rates) that the item would be connected to.
Select the allocation unit’s measurement in how the labor item will be allocated to jobs.
If unit measure is different from the Purchase Unit you will need to fill out the conversion factor in the Allocation field.
⚠️Make sure the item catalog’s purchase unit is entered and converted correctly with the correct Allocation Unit. This is important when processing your vendor’s invoices. If the Allocation Unit is entered incorrectly in the purchase receipt, this could cause inaccuracies in your revenue.
See the chart below for examples:
Item Name | Purchase Unit | Conversion | Allocation Unit |
Labor-Flat Rate | Day | 8 | Hours |
Labor-Hourly | Hr | 1 | Hours |
📌 Note: The Allocation Item Cost will update once the item has been saved.
Assign the branch(es) for where the item will be available. This function is available only if the Enhanced Branch Admin Security permission is checked in Administration ➡️ Configuration ➡️ Application.
Select All Branches so your item is available to all branches or if you have a specific branch the labor should be available for, then you can select the specific branch.
The Takeoff Item drop down is used to allow Aspire to automatically calculate item quantities on estimates.
If desired, select the Takeoff Item from where the calculation on the estimate should happen.
This is mainly used for building kits or when building maintenance contracts and can be added to properties on an individual properties’ detail page.
The Description field provides a more complete description of the item
This note becomes available when the item is placed onto a service in the estimate.
Add a description here if you need item notes to appear on services in your opportunity estimate.
🧠You can also choose to include the item description in a proposal layout to give extra information to your customer.
The Available to bid checkbox is automatically checked on to make sure the item can be used when estimating a service that contains the item.
Checking the Inventory item checkbox will make the item available to be received in inventory.
The Price List is found at the bottom of the item details screen.
You can select New to create an Allocation item cost different from the original cost by entering the new price list purchase unit cost.
This new cost will be applied to the price list catalog you’ve selected.
🧠Reminder: Price List Catalogs are used for setting up pricing overrides at the branch level for specific items in the catalog. Catalog Price Lists are added to your organization’s Branches on the Branches screen.
When all of your edits to your Labor Item have been made, select Save to add it to the item catalog.
⚠️ If you want to edit the item name later, after it has been bid, we recommend not changing the name on the original item. Instead, make the item unavailable to bid and create a new item. Update kits and templates with that item, then deactivate the old item.