Effective Dates for Cost and Pay Rates

Use effective dates to specify when a change will occur in the cost or pay rate associated with a labor rate, labor category, labor code, or labor override table.

The date on which a change will occur is the "effective date" of the change. You can use effective dates in the DPS Accounting, Payroll, and Billing applications. Effective dates are also known as date-based rates or a rate structure.

When you use effective dates, the detail dates on an employee's timesheet determine the rates that are applied to labor charges. You can schedule changes to occur on any date within a timesheet period. You can also specify changes in rates of different types to occur on different dates in the same timesheet period.

Accounting and Payroll

Use the effective dates feature with the Accounting or Payroll applications when you need to cost or pay one or more employees at a rate that differs from their usual rate, perhaps on very short notice. This may result from specific project contract stipulations or from scenarios that involve negotiated or overtime costing or pay terms.

For example, you may need to use the effective dates feature:

• When a project is located in a jurisdiction with different tax laws.
• When some components of a project's work breakdown structure involve hazardous work.
• When your enterprise takes over a difficult project on negotiated cost or pay terms.
• When an hourly employee, not compensated for travel, requests additional pay to cover commuting expenses to a distant project location.

Billing

Use effective dates with the Billing application when you need to schedule labor rate changes on an enterprise-wide basis or for specific groups of employees.

For example, you can schedule an increase in your enterprise's billing rate on all projects for work performed by all senior engineers as of July 1, 2017 (effective date).

Setting Up Effective Dates

Before you establish effective dates, you must first enable cost rate tables, pay rate tables, or both on the General tab in Settings > Advanced Accounting > System. To use the effective dates feature in the Billing application, you must also enable effective dates on the Miscellaneous tab of Settings > Billing > General.

Enter effective dates in the Effective Date column on the following rate tables:

• Accounting and payroll cost/pay rate tables in Accounting > Cost/Pay Rate Tables for:
  • Labor Rates
  • Labor Categories
  • Labor Codes
• Billing rate tables in Settings > Rate Tables for:
  • Labor Rates
  • Labor Categories
  • Labor Codes
  • Labor Overrides

Once you create rate tables with effective dates, you cannot disable effective dates for rate tables until you delete all effective dates from existing rate tables.