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How to Calculate Time & Cost to a Work Order
How to Calculate Time & Cost to a Work Order

Learn to add hourly/labor rates to specific technicians and automatically calculate the cost!

Ben On avatar
Written by Ben On
Updated over a week ago

Available On: Starter, Professional and Business Plus


With UpKeep, you have the ability to add time and costs to a work order and track it. This article goes over adding an hourly rate to your technicians and how it can automatically be calculated in a work order!

Admin users can associate each user/vendor/customer with an hourly rate. Admins will see a column entitled “hourly rate” in their People & Teams section or Customers & Vendors section.

NOTE: The hourly rate will only be factored into new work orders from the point of adding the hourly rate, it will not affect previous or older work orders.


How to add an Hourly Rate to a User

NOTE: Hourly rates cannot be set upon a team basis within UpKeep, only individual users.

  1. Navigate to your People & Teams section

  2. Click into any one of your existing users

  3. Then, click on the pencil icon to edit that user's details

  4. Under Rate, add the hourly rate

  5. Finally, click Update User to save your changes!

NOTE: Admins can only add an hourly rate by editing an existing user account. The hourly rate cannot be added upon inviting a new user.


How to Add an Hourly Rate to Vendors/Customers

  1. Navigate to the Vendors & Customers section

  2. Click into any existing Vendor or Customer

  3. Then click Edit

  4. Under Rate, add your hourly rate

  5. Finally, click Save Changes once you're done!


How to Calculate the Hourly Rate Using the Recorded Time

This is automatically calculated for you!

However, you will need to toggle on the setting to do this. Only admins will be able to turn this ON or OFF.

  1. Navigate to the Settings page

  2. Under General Settings > Work Orders, make sure "Include Labor Costs in the Total Cost" is toggled ON (blue).

Check out the workflow below to automatically calculate within a work order:

  1. Your technician opens the work order

  2. Then, he or she starts working on the work order (starts the timer)

  3. Finally, the timer is stopped/the work order is marked complete.

In the labor section of the work order details, you'll see the cost already calculated. In the example below, the technician's hourly rate is set to $100 per hour.


Add Time Manually

In most cases, technicians will use the timer button to accurately record time to a work order easily and quickly. In other cases, the time can also be added manually.

NOTE: When admin users add time manually, they can override the default hourly rate that is assigned to a technician.

Admins will see the view below when they add time manually:

Technician users will see a similar view on the web app, without the hourly rate field.

For questions or concerns please reach out to Support at [email protected] or via chat in your Upkeep account under Contact US.

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