From bid to invoice

Assignar Pay carries a job through six steps, from the bid you win to the pay run and the invoice it produces. Each step builds on the one before, so the lines you priced in the bid are the lines your crew is scheduled to, the lines their hours are costed against, and the lines you bill.

You don't have to use every step

Each step works on its own, so you can start with whichever one you need:

• Start anywhere. Bids, billing from a schedule of rates, fixed-price billing, payroll, procurement and job costing can each be used without the others.
• Skip the steps before it. For example, you can bring in timesheets and run payroll without building bids in Assignar Pay, or bring in jobs that are already priced and use Assignar Pay only to cost and invoice them.
• Add more when you're ready. Many organizations start with one piece, most often timesheets or invoicing, and add the rest later.

Running the whole chain is what saves you keying the same job in twice, and keeps what a job has cost next to what you bid for it. It's a benefit of going end to end, not something you need before you start.

Some steps are modules your organization adds to its plan, such as Scheduling. If a part of Assignar Pay isn't in your sidebar, it may not be switched on for your organization, or your role may not include it. See Roles and permissions.

1. Create the bid

Every job starts with a priced bid. Build its lines in Assignar Pay, or import them from a bid document you already have, such as a PDF or spreadsheet.

• Each line has a cost, a sell price and a margin, so you can see the margin before the job is won.
• Fixed and unit-rate lines sit side by side. A fixed line is one amount billed by progress; a unit-rate line is billed on the quantity your crew reports.
• Lines nest and are numbered 1, 1.1, 1.1.1 and so on. That structure carries through to the orders and their job costing.
• Customer view shows the bid as your client will read it, without your resources or your team's notes.

See Create a bid and Send and track a bid.

2. Turn the approved bid into orders

Winning the work turns the bid into live jobs:

1. You send the bid, as a PDF or by email.
2. The client says yes, and you mark the bid Approved.
3. Under Manage orders, you create its orders. Each order is created under the bid's project, with the bid's lines and their cost codes.

Because the orders come from the bid rather than being built again, every hour and every unit recorded later lands on the line it was priced for. That is what makes the job costing in step 6 line up with the bid.

See Turn an approved bid into orders.

3. Schedule the work

On the scheduling board you put workers and plant on each order, day by day. From an approved bid, Open roles & shifts starts the order's schedule with the roles the bid priced. As you allocate someone, the board shows whether they're free and whether they hold the competencies the role requires, and it warns you about fatigue.

Because the shift exists before anyone arrives on site, your workers confirm or correct it in My Shifts rather than starting from a blank timesheet.

See Scheduling and Allocate workers and assets.

4. Collect timesheets, dockets and forms

Your crew records what happened on site, on the web or on their phone:

• Timesheets: hours by worker and role, filed against their shifts in My Shifts, or brought across from Assignar Operations or a CSV file.
• Dockets: the signed record of a crew's shift, with who worked, their tasks and their hours.
• Forms: inspections, prestarts, site diaries, safety and quality checks, and any other form you build.

This is the evidence that everything after it is built from: pay, billing and job costing.

See Review timesheets, Review dockets and Forms.

5. Review and price what came back

Before anything reaches payroll or an invoice, the office checks what came back from site. Owners, Admins and Managers review and approve timesheets. Then two things price them:

• Pay rates turn each timesheet into pay lines. Your pay rate documents hold the rules from your award or enterprise agreement, so overtime, penalties, loadings and allowances are worked out before the pay run, not found afterwards.
• Your schedule of rates prices the same timesheets and dockets at what you charge the client.

Timesheets you mark as reviewed keep their pay lines when pay rates are applied again.

See Apply pay rates and Set up a schedule of rates.

6. Pay your crew, track the cost and bill the client

The same approved, priced records now go three ways:

• Payroll. Export the period's pay lines, with overtime, penalties and allowances already worked out, for your pay run. See Apply pay rates.
• Job costing. Each order sets what you bid against what has been reported, what it has cost so far and your forecast, split into labour, equipment and materials, with the margin. Because every cost lands on the line it was priced for, you can see while the job is running where it's heading over. See Track job costs.
• Invoicing. Invoices are filled from the priced timesheets, materials and dockets, or claimed from the bid in stages. Your clients' people can see their issued invoices in the customer portal. See Create and send invoices, Invoice a bid and Customer role.

Materials and subcontracted work come in through procurement: raise purchase orders from an order's lines, and check your suppliers' invoices against them. See Raise purchase orders and Review supplier invoices.

Finally, invoices, supplier invoices and payroll go on to your accounting system, such as Xero, MYOB or your ERP, which stays your system of record for tax and audit. Assignar Pay doesn't replace your ledger. It keeps it fed with checked figures you can trace back to the site. Mark invoices Exported once they're in your accounting system, or automate the hand-off with Assignar Connect. See Send data to and from your payroll and ERP software.