Bill a dry hire

A dry hire is billed from the schedule, not from timesheets: nobody drives the machine, but it earns money every day it's on the client's site. Once a machine is on hire (see Put plant on hire), its clock runs until it goes off hire. You cut charges from that clock whenever you want to bill, and they go on an invoice like any other equipment line.

Your organization may use other words for hire, on hire and off hire. The screens use the names set under Terminology in Settings; this page uses the defaults.

Choose the activity each part of a hire carries

This is the one setup step, and it's done once per account. Do it before you put a machine on dry hire. Until On hire has an activity, a machine can't go on a dry hire line, and Assignar Pay tells you: "Set up hire billing activities in Settings, starting with On hire, before putting a machine on a dry hire line." In the same way, you can't add a mobilisation, a de-mobilisation or a stand-down with a particular reason to a dry hire until that row has an activity. Lines that aren't dry hire don't need any of this. A dry hire line in an order also warns you while you build it if an activity it needs is missing, and the message on the board has a Set up activities button that opens this setting. Without permission to manage settings, both tell you to ask an admin instead.

Every hire charge is billed under the machine's own cost code (the one on its asset class). What sets a mobilisation apart from on-hire time, or a wet day apart from a breakdown, is the activity the charge carries. These are the activities your timesheets and forms already use, the same list as on your Activities page. Break activities aren't offered.

In the sidebar, select Settings, then General, and under Operations select Hire billing. You'll see seven rows: On hire, mobilisation, de-mobilisation and the four stand-down reasons. Against each one, pick an activity.

• If your account already has an activity that fits, the row suggests it: select Use to choose it. When more than one row has a suggestion, Use the suggested activities takes them all at once.
• If nothing fits, select Create to make one. Assignar Pay saves it as a cost code of the type Activity, adds it to your activities and chooses it for that row. Create appears only if you can create cost codes.

There's no "does not bill" option. Whether an activity is charged, and at what rate, is set in your Schedule of Rates, so it can differ from one client to the next.

The panel on the board shows what each window will be charged as, for example "Charged as Mobilisation once it starts". A stand-down you've added but not given a reason yet has no activity, so choose its reason in the panel.

A change applies to work added from now on. Windows and charges already on the board keep the activity they were given. When a change would affect work that's already there, Assignar Pay asks whether to apply it to that work too. Apply to these too gives those windows and charges the new activity, and the charges are priced again. Only new work leaves them as they are. Charges already on an invoice are never changed.

A window becomes a charge once its start has passed and it has an end. Its hours are measured up to its end, so an open stand-down or a de-mob with no return time isn't charged until you give it an end. A window with an end but a start in the future is charged once the start passes.

You need the Manage settings permission, and the Scheduling module must be turned on for your organization.

Price each activity in your Schedule of Rates

Open the schedule's charge rules (see Review and activate the charge rules) and find the machine's equipment item. Its base rate prices on-hire time, unless you give the item a rate for your On hire activity. To price an activity differently on that machine, add a rate to the item and select Price an activity on it:

1. Pick the activity, for example your mobilisation activity.
2. Choose how it's charged: Per day (or per hour, or per week, depending on the item) charges the rate for the time the window covers, and Once per charge charges it as a flat fee each time. Per day bills whole days, rounded up, with a minimum of one day: a four-hour stand-down is one day.
3. Set the amount. To charge nothing on purpose, tick No charge: the charge still appears on the invoice, marked no charge. A rate left at $0 without No charge is treated as not priced yet, and its charges are flagged for review.

Each machine can price the same activity differently. For example, one machine's rates might be:

and a smaller machine on the same schedule could charge $450 to mobilise and $40 a day for wet weather.

When a rate is missing:

• On-hire time bills at the rate for your On hire activity when the machine's item has one, and at the item's base rate when it doesn't. A rate for on-hire time has to be charged per day (or per hour or week), not once per charge, because a long hire is billed in several charges.
• A mobilisation, de-mobilisation or stand-down with no rate for its activity is left unpriced, and the Schedule of Rates Transactions tab flags it for review. It's never charged at $0 by accident, and never at the full hire rate. Add a rate for the activity (it can be marked No charge), or price the charge by hand.

Bill the clock

In the sidebar, select Revenue, then Schedule of Rates, and open the Schedule of Rates Transactions tab (see Price timesheets and dockets). An open hire shows up as a running clock: the machine, the order, on hire since a date and time, the hours accrued, and — if there have been stand-downs — the gross hours with the stood-down hours called out beside them.

A running clock can't be invoiced, because it hasn't stopped. To turn the time accrued so far into a charge, select Bill to date.

Choose a date and time. It starts at the current time on your organization's clock, not your computer's, so billing from another timezone doesn't cut the hire short. While the timezone is being confirmed, the cut isn't filled in and billing waits. Everything from the last charge up to that time becomes one charge, and the clock restarts from there — anything after it stays on the hire and keeps accruing. So a six-month hire might be billed monthly, as six charges, without ever being off-hired.

Off-hiring the machine does the same thing at the end: the final stretch is cut and the hire is closed.

Whole days, rounded up

A dry hire bills whole days, rounded up, with a minimum of one. Four hours is a day. Twenty-five hours is two days.

The unit comes from the rate card, not from the hire. Whole days apply when the rate your cost code matches is priced per day, which is the common case for plant. A rate priced per hour bills the hours themselves, with no rounding. A rate priced per week rounds up to whole weeks the same way: three days on a weekly rate is one week, unless the item's Part weeks setting bills them pro-rata or at a day rate (see Set up a schedule of rates). The rest of this section describes day rates.

The important part is what happens when you bill the same hire more than once: each charge rounds up on its own. A charge covers the stretch since the last one, and a part day at the end of that stretch is a whole day.

That means when you bill matters. A machine goes out Monday 07:00 and comes off Friday 07:00 — 96 hours, four days.

Same machine, same time on site. The third row pays an extra day only because the charge was cut at lunchtime.

So bill to the same time of day the machine went out. If it went on hire at 07:00, bill to 07:00. Every charge is then whole days and nothing is rounded up twice. Billing at off-hire, or on a regular day at the on-hire time, keeps the total exactly what the machine was out for.

You cannot bill backwards. A moment at or before the last charge is refused with "Already billed to 26 Sep 07:00. Choose a later time." — that time already belongs to a charge.

Hours a stand-down removes

Stand-down hours are deducted before the day count is worked out, so the transaction reads "120 hrs gross · 8 hrs stood down", and the days are counted on the net figure. This happens whatever the stand-down is priced at. The stand-down is also its own charge, priced at the rate your schedule gives its activity on that machine, which may be $0.

Invoice the charges

Each charge is an ordinary equipment transaction with a type of Dry Hire. It shows on the Schedule of Rates Transactions tab next to the lines priced from timesheets, with no worker against it.

A few things make hires easier to find and read:

• The Equipment tile on the transactions summary shows a subset line — "of which Hire $12,480 · 8 charges" — so you can see at a glance how much of your equipment revenue is hire. Click it to filter the list to hire charges only.
• Any charge belonging to a hire carries "part of this hire", and a link — "see the whole hire" — that filters the list to that one hire and all its charges, across all dates.
• Every hire charge shows the activity it carries (for example On hire, Mobilisation or your wet-weather stand-down activity) and any note, so it's clear what each line is for.

From there it's the normal invoicing flow (see Create and send invoices): select the charges, add them to an invoice, and they become invoice lines. The line reads in days, not as a lump sum: 3 × $320.00, not 1 × $960.00.

A charge priced at $0, such as a free wet-weather stand-down, can be selected too. It becomes a line marked no charge, so the client can see the time was recorded. Once it's on an invoice it can't be added again.

Invoiced hire charges appear on the board with an Invoiced band, and on the hire card as "invoiced to 14 Oct".

What Assignar Pay blocks

Hire charges have usually been billed already, so some changes are blocked. Each message tells you what to do instead.

A charge that's on an invoice can't be changed. Not the hire dates under it, not the window that produced it, not the off-hire that closed it.

This includes a draft invoice. Changing the window under it would change the invoice's total without anyone editing the invoice. The message says what you can do, and when: "That charge is on an invoice. To remove it, take its line off the invoice while it is a draft, or cancel the invoice while it is a draft or pending. Otherwise it cannot be removed." On a draft, take the line off and you can change the charge again. Cancelling a draft or pending invoice releases every charge on it. An invoice in any other state (certified, overdue, paid or exported) keeps its charges.

A stand-down can't be added, moved or deleted inside time you've already billed. "Inside time already charged. It can change only once the charges from the one covering it onward are removed, newest first." Adding a stand-down afterwards would change hours that have already been charged. Charges come off newest first, so remove them back to the one covering the stand-down, then add the stand-down, then bill again.

You can't move a hire's start under an existing charge, or pull its end back past one. "To end this hire earlier, remove the charges past that point first." Charges come off newest first. If any of them are on an invoice, take those lines off it while it's a draft, or cancel it while it's a draft or pending, before you remove them.

Removing a machine from the line takes its uninvoiced charges with it. Use it for a hire entered by mistake. The confirmation says how many priced charges go with it. To end a hire that really happened, off-hire it instead.

A resource line that has had a machine on it can't be removed while the machine is still on hire. Off-hire it on the board first, or add a new line.

An order with a machine on hire can't be deleted. Deleting it would take the hire and its charges with it, so Assignar Pay stops you: "This order has been scheduled, so it can't be deleted: that would erase its shift history and the timesheets linked to it. Change its status instead." To remove the hire and its charges on purpose, remove the machine from its line. If any of its charges are on an invoice, those come off the invoice first. The order can then be deleted, unless it has other shifts, booked or removed.

Things worth knowing

Each off-hire gets a reference. When you confirm an off-hire, Assignar Pay creates a short reference you can give the client, for example over the phone.

The clock ignores working days. A hire runs through weekends and shutdowns, because the machine is on the client's site the whole time. If it shouldn't be billed for a stretch, that stretch is a stand-down, not a gap in the calendar.

Nothing here touches Field. Workers don't record time for hired plant, and there's no docket for it. A worker allocated to the same order sees the plant listed on their shift, for information.

An accruing hire is visible from an invoice. When you build an invoice for a period that has machines still on hire, the line-items step shows "2 machines are still accruing in this period", so you can decide whether to bill them to date first or leave them for next month.

Related

• Put plant on hire: the duration line, the machine on the board, and mobilisation, stand-down and off-hire
• Create and send invoices: putting hire charges on an invoice, and taking them off a draft
• Track job costs: where hire charges, and hire time not billed yet, show in an order's job costing
• Set up a schedule of rates: the rates hire charges are priced from
• Set up cost codes: the machine codes hire charges bill under, and the activities they carry