Creating and Managing Operations
What are Operations?
Operations serve as the connection between labor centers and tasks, designed for reporting and capacity planning. Customise operations to fit your organisation's needs. Within each operation, multiple tasks are assigned and completed by staff members. Tasks are organised under your Workflow. When staff members start tracking time against operations/tasks, your job cost reporting will display estimated versus actual time.
Example: you may have an operation called 'Machining' however this may have several tasks within the one operation, ie: cutting, drilling, edging.
You will want to set up your workflow in operational order so that each task is finished in a logical sequence.
Note: operation times set in workflows are overridden with times from an accepted quote.
Create Operations
Access your Operations from the Settings tab in your user menu panel and then click into 'Operations'.
To create a new Operation:
- Click 'Create'.
- Name your operation.
- Choose the 'Item' from the dropdown, ie: Job, Lead or Project.
- Customise your operation for how this displays on your Target Calendar.
- Assign your operation to a Labour Centre.
- Set your operation costs, overheads, wastage and profit margins if required.
- Finalise by clicking 'Create'.
Tip: update an operation at anytime by clicking in to your operation and clicking either update or delete.
Please Note: you cannot have 2 operations with the same name.
Operation Colours
An organisation has the ability to customise the way their Target Calendar displays by using different colour options. This will enhance the visibility of your Target Calendar, and make it easier to identify different operations.
- Click into your operation and click the 'Update' button.
- Either use the preset colours or click into the 'Colour' dropdown to customise further.
- Save Changes!
Tip: if you choose dark operation colours, you may want to apply white coloured text.
Labour Centres
When setting up a labour centre and attaching an operation, this will automatically link itself in the operations set up. You can add or update these at anytime by opening your operation and clicking 'Update'.
Leave Type
If the operation is classified as staff leave, then you can assigned the required leave type. Simply click on the drop-down menu tab to expand out and select the required leave type for this operation.
Operation Costs
Lastly, you can also apply a cost, overhead, wastage, and profit margin % to operations, which will be used as labour in quotes. If these are left blank, the cost will fall back to the default quote costs, or if you require the operation to have a specific cost, you can override it here.
