Adding or Modifying Category Records

Overview

Cost categories let you organize contract and project costs according to your company’s particular needs. For example, you can create categories that distinguish costs by department (such as design), or by activity (such as painting or wiring), and you can create as many categories as you require.

Once you add category records to your Project and Job Costing system, you can assign these cost categories to individual projects, and use them to estimate and track costs for projects within a contract. You can create generic categories to use in many projects, or you can set up specific categories for particular projects.

Categories specify the following settings for cost transactions that use a given category code:

  • Cost Type
  • A/R Item Number (for item invoices)
  • Unit Cost
  • Unit Of Measure
  • Billing Rate
  • Overhead Type and Overhead Rate or Overhead Percentage
  • Labor Type and Labor Rate or Labor Percentage (for labor costs)

For more information about categories, see Planning a Cost Classification System.

Before you start

To add, edit, or delete a category record:

  1. Open Project and Job Costing > PJC Setup > Categories.
  2. If you are adding a new category record:
    1. In the Category field, enter a unique category code using up to 16 alphanumeric characters.
    2. In the Description field, enter a description for the cost category.

    If you are editing a category:

    1. Use the Finder or the navigation buttons beside the Category field to display the category record.

    If you are deleting a category:

    1. Use the Finder or the navigation buttons beside the Category field to display the category record.
    2. Click the Delete button.
    3. Click Yes to confirm that you want to delete the record when prompted.
    4. Skip the remaining steps, unless you want to work with another category record.
  3. On the Category tab, specify the settings you want to use for transactions and in projects that use this category.
  4. On the Default Settings for Basic Projects tab, specify the:
    • A/R item number, unit of measure, and cost per unit of measure to use for this category when processing cost transactions for, or estimating, basic projects.
    • Default billing rate to be used in transactions and estimates for basic projects that use an item invoice typeClosed (that is, time and materials projects and fixed price projects for which you specify the item invoice type)  .
    • In a multicurrency ledger, the billing rate for each of the currencies used by your customers.
  5. To override General Ledger account segments in cost transactions that use this category, click the Integration tab, and then:
    1. Select the option Override G/L Account Segments.
    2. On the table that appears, specify the G/L segment code you want to use for each overridden General Ledger segment.
  6. If you use optional fields, click the Optional Fields tab to edit or check the optional fields assigned to the category.

    You can edit or delete any automatically inserted optional fields, and you can add different optional fields that you have defined for categories. The assigned optional fields appear as defaults when you assign the category to a new contract.

  7. Click Add if you are adding a new category.

    Or

    Click Save to save your changes to the record.

  8. To work with another record, use the buttons beside the Category field to start a new record (Image of New button.) or select an existing one (Image of Finder button.).
  9. When you have finished, click Close to close the screen.

After adding or modifying category records