In Abtrac you can add roles for an employee or for job people.
You can set default roles for employees, and also for your client contacts. Employee roles can also be linked to default rates and used when adding and updating employee details.
This helps to differentiate employees according to the organizational structure of your business.
Client and Job people roles can be used to group and search your contacts by role categories.
Setting Default Roles
The Default Roles page is available here: Administration > Employees > Employee Role and Rates
These roles apply to all people in Abtrac, not just employees.
Internal Roles vs External Roles
Internal roles are those roles that exist within your company structure, and are available from the Employee details screen.
External roles are those that exist outside of the company. External roles may include roles in your clients’ or contacts’ organizations like the role of an invoice recipient or that of a subcontractor. These roles are available to client contacts and job people.
Options for Default Roles
Role Description
Typical role descriptions include Admin, PA, Director, Principal Planner, Senior Planner, Town Planner, Student Planner etc
External roles for people associated with a job might be Project Manager, Builder, Accountant etc
Role Type
Role Type can be internal, external or both.
Role based Rates
Internal roles can be linked to default rates and used when adding and updating employee details. For External roles the charge rate does not apply. Read more details on this below.
Role Based Charge Rates
Role Based Charge Rates can be used as a guide or reference when creating new employee records. These rates can be manually applied to individual employee record.
Role based rates can also be applied to selected Projects, through the Sub Tasks screen.
Role Specific Rates
Role Specific Rates link Activity rates to a role. These rates will automatically update employee specific activity rates when applied to an individual employee record.
Role Specific Activity Rates can also be applied to selected Projects, through the Sub Tasks screen.
Applying Default Roles to Employees
Go to Administration >> Employees >> Employee Details to view the Employee Details grid.
You can group and review employees based on their role.
You can enable the ‘Role’ column for Employee details from User Control Settings see here for instructions.
Click on the pencil edit button on the left to edit the employee details.
You can add or change the employee roles here by clicking on the drop down menu.
To review an internal guide for role rates, click on the pencil edit button underneath role.
This takes you to the Person Role screen where you can view or add roles and rates. These rates can then be manually applied to the employee details record.
Linking specific activity rates to a role
You can also apply activity specific rates, based on a persons role.
For example site visits, administration, invoicing all might incur different rates depending on the job title and experience level of the person completing the work.
In the below screenshot, the role specific rates for the selected role ‘Director’ are shown on the right.
When editing or assigning a role to an Employee record if any Role Specific Rates apply you’ll be prompted to synchronise these to the rates stored in Employees > Employee Specific Activity Rates.
Linking Role based rates to a project budget
Role based rates, and Role Specific Activity Rates can also be applied to selected Projects, through the Sub Tasks screen.
You can enter subtasks from Clients > Projects > Tasks then right click to add sub tasks.
You can build a project budget based on role rates as pictured below by choosing sub task type as Role.
Include an activity type to include any role specific activity rates in your estimates.
Using Roles for Client Contacts
From Clients, Contacts & Jobs >> Search Clients and Jobs >> click on a contact name to go into the Details for page >> click on the People tab and here you can add persons for this contact.
Note that in this screen you can either select a role from the dropdown list (based on the options set from the Person Role screen) or add in a new role which is not in the list.
The list available in the dropdown in this screen would be the role types entered as either the External Role or Both.
Searching client and job contacts based on role
Using default roles you can then search all people by role from : Clients Contacts & Jobs > Search People
User Control Settings: Add roles to employee details
You can enable the ‘Role’ column in the Employee Details grid from User Control Settings.
From Administration >> Settings >> User Control Settings >> select Employee Details from the dropdown >> click on the pencil edit button for ‘Role’ and add a value to the width to enable the ‘Role’ column.
Abtrac KB# 2006