Export labor costs to accounting software

[michael21]

At present, ST does not export labor charges to the accounting software. When I questioned support on this, their ultimate answer is that you should post labor costs from payroll and consider that your job cost. Unfortunately, that is very bad advice as it violates both generally accepted accounting principles and IRS regulations. Both authorities say that job costs must be fully absorbed costs. For labor, that means payroll costs and all other costs associated with labor cost. For example, unemployment insurance, workmen’s compensation insurance, benefits, and all other costs associated with maintaining the labor force must be included. It also means that job cost in the accounting software is very different than it is in Titan, something I would not want to explain during and IRS audit. Curiously, ST carries a labor burden rate for each employee, but they only use that in determining labor costs within Service Titan. It isn’t exported. How are other people handling this? By the way, I did put this in the ideas section as COMMUNITY-I-928, so if you want to see how I think this should be handled look there, (and vote for it if you like it). For now, though, anybody have a work-around that doesn't involve hours and hours of work determining hours charged by job and recalculating job cost in accounting from there?

[michael21]

Thanks for your response msmith1_.  We also use a burden rate in Service Titan, but when you say that it is pretty accurate, how do you really know that.  Since the burden doesn't export, unless I get the burden charge for each job and then post it to QB manually, I don't have a way to compare the charged burden with the full range of expenses that make up the burden.  We use ADP for our payroll, and we get good payroll information from that, but again, that is only payroll cost, it does not include all of the other costs that go into burden.

[msmith1_]

When I say fairly accurate, I mean we know about how much the burden is for each employee because we have all of the bills we have paid for burden related items.  Their burden rates don't really change throughout the year (insurance amounts are good for a year, whether it is health or workers comp, etc.)  So, they are updated as needed per employee but it isn't something that has to be updated for us very often.   

As far as audits, QB is where any of that information would come from if requested. We have never been asked to show exact burden details per job.  They want info by month/year and if they want it broken down by field or office, it already is based on our GL when we put in the bills/invoices for all of the burden paid and added our labor cost from our payroll system, etc.

Maybe I am confused by what you need because as I said entering the bills for all burden related payments into QB, they are coded properly at that time since they don't come over from ST (including payroll not coming over for us).  Once revenue, materials and job related purchases are pushed over... you have everything you need for COG on your P&L.

[msmith1_]

We use a burden rate that is fairly accurate based on what our cost is and we know it will be off a bit but all of our payroll costs come from our payroll system that gets put in QB.