Cost Factors and Project Costs

Every staff member in the system has a default "cost factor." This number is the basic cost of one hour of a staff member's time. BigTime uses that unit to compute the dollar cost of time that is input against the projects in your system, providing an overall project cost, as well as the data for many of BigTime's project margin reports.

You can enter whatever number you'd like in the cost factor field (just make sure it's the dollar cost of an hour of that staff member's time). If you aren't sure what to put in that field, then fill in the staff member's salary and the system will auto-compute a cost factor for you (based on the salary, the number of hours in a year and a "load factor" meant to account for costs like insurance and tax costs that typically accrue above and beyond the staff member's salary). There are a couple of specific things to note about cost factors in the system:

• Cost factors are applied to individual time records at the moment a staff member submits their timesheet. Then, they're locked in. This means that you can increase that cost factor over time without affecting historical costs.
• BigTime supports custom cost rates for specific projects. So, you can attribute a different cost to specific projects as required. That feature may be useful, for example, if you have contractors who bill you at different hourly rates depending on the project.
• BigTime's cost factors can be customized by our professional services team for firms that need to account for things like overtime, specialized non-billable rules, cost plus accounting, etc. If you have a specialized need in this area, then contact your sales representative for help with it.