Enter Manhours

Activity required : manhours.entry, manhours.authorise
Plug-in required : Manhours Entry

You can run projects in Epic without entering manhours - however as well as being a major proportion of overall costs on a repair contract, labour costs are one of the core means of monitoriing and controlling contracts.

Manhours can either be recorded directly into Epic or can be imported from other electronic systems. This second approach is not discussed here as it is necessarily tied to your existing systems and requires a custom plug-in. Note though that this is a very straightforward process as Epic has been designed with this in mind.

For recording manhours directly into Epic you may or may not have employees recorded on Epic. Here we assume that you do have employee records stored on Epic. If not you will need to select the 'Manhour entry by employee code alone' option under 'Preferences / System Settings / Manhour Entry'. This will enable Epic to record manhours against employee codes even though it does not itself store the employee records. In this case the entry screen shown below will look a little different.

You must also set up whatever manhour rates are required by any other systems that use Epic's data.

Entering manhours involves three main stages:

enter manhour records : this records an individual employee's hours for an individual cost center (normally a task) for one specific date;
authorise manhour records : all entered records are then confirmed via an authorisation process - this requires a different activity to the entry process enhancing security
apply manhours : all records that have been authorised can then be summed and added to the recorded hours for each project.

These three distinct stages are specified in order to best fit with different yards' manhour recording process and to ensure that data, once entered, is never lost. Though this might sound like a laborious process, much work has been carried out on Epic's GUI to ensure this is actually a very fast process:

Switch to the Manhours Entry plug-in;
If you have a custom plug-in there may be an additional 'Import' button;
Click the 'Entry' button to open the entry window. This is a carefully designed window that allow fast entry of manhour records (the first of the above stages). You move from left to right, selecting in turn:
- the employee (Epic ensures only valid options are offered);
- the cost center / task (Epic ensures only valid options are offered);
- the number of hours (note the 15minute granularity) ;
- and finally the manhour rate (these are configured via your preferences);
- clicking one of the big 'add ...' buttons adds a record and resets the window for the next.

It does not matter if errors are made as these can be rectified at the next stage.
Once you have added all manhour records (or as many as you wish), click the 'Authorise' button.
This opens the next window which corresponds with the next stage of the process. This window lists all previously entered records. These have not yet been saved to the database. You can save these at any point via the 'save button' (if the save button is not enabled ensure one or more records are highlighted) but until they have been authorised they will not be applied to project manhour totals. Authorise using the right-click menu. You can also:

select all records (right-click menu)
delete incorrect records (right click menu)
retrieve previously saved but unauthorised record (the 'add previously unauthorised records' button'):

Once you save, the records are removed from the window (unauthorised records can always re-retrieved via 'add previously unauthorised records' ). The final stage can now be carried out.
Click the 'Recalc' button - this will apply the manhours for all new authorised records. No window is needed so a message appears instead whilst this is happening:

You can now close the windows. If you forgot to save all entered records you will be warned.