Monitoring Employee Activity with an Automated Job Costing System

Definition of Job Costing

Job costing is the process of determining the labour and materials cost for each job in a systematic way, and then using this information to create a quote for the customer. Job costing or cost accounting can be used in virtually any industry to ensure that the product pricing covers actual costs, overhead and provides a profit. The purpose ofany business is to make money, and job costing is the most effective way to ensure that occurs.

Benefits of a Job Costing System

Job costing software enables you to track a number of factors and analyse the results to aid decision making. A Job costing reporthelps you ensure that all costs involved in a job have been properly invoiced to the customer. An Estimates vs. Actuals report comparesquoted costs to actual costs, and quoted revenues to actual revenues so that you can analyse any variances between your quote and the actual result. You can then use the results of your analysis to createmore accurate quotes when you bid on future jobs.

Using job costing will allow you to identify the most and least profitable areas of your business, so that you can focus on the profitable elements, and try to make the less profi table aspects of your business more efficient. 

It will help you to quote new jobs more accurately, and assist you in managing jobs in progress... 

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The Coalition Government ‘Spending Review’ is good news for Vizual

In their attempt to reduce the massive deficit which hangs over the UK economy, our new Coalition Government is actually helping Vizual Management Solutions Ltd to gain new business.

Amongst other things, the Spending Review has unearthed a £3.3 billion overspend by the Ministry of Defence during the last twelve months of Labour’s rule. The National Audit Office has blamed a failure to set "realistic" budgets, resulting in a "mismatch" between the MoD's planned expenditure and its forecast funding by the Treasury.

Suppliers to the MoD have always been competitively priced however the new cuts to be introduced on 20^th October will have a significant impact upon Manufacturers ability to win contracts and ensure their profitability.

CaptureIT, by Vizual, helps Manufacturers to cost all aspects of a project from initial planning through to setting budgets and monitoring labour costs. By setting a budget for a particular job and subsequently monitoring the time taken to complete the job and the cost of labour, Production Managers gain a clear picture of non-profitable areas to be addressed.

The MoD currently spends around £15 billion a year on a vast range of goods and services and has 32,000 suppliers. Every pound spent will now be more closely scruntinised than ever and CaptureIT users have a clear advantage over their industry piers.

The expectations are that the Coalition Government will make these spending cuts work however tough times lay ahead for businesses competing for a smaller quantity of contracts in an already compact market.

Vizual aims to be the leading provider of Job Costing Systems to UK Manufacturers and already boasts household names amongst its growing customer base.

'Mined' Your Business

The News that the Chilean Mine Workers are finally breathing clean air again and back with their loving families is fantastic news. But what will happen when the dust settles?

As soon as the news broke that the miners were trapped there was confusion as to how many were trapped and who was trapped.

Knowing where you employee’s are should a disaster strike falls under every employers duty of care. The Health and Safety of every individual under the company roof is paramount and in such cases of a fire alarm sounding every department head should have instant access to the attendance data of their direct reports.

Knowing who is in the building, out on site, off sick or on lunch helps the emergency services greatly in their task to bring the dangerous situation under control.

Attendance Monitoring Systems record, track and report upon employee attendance, absence, sickness and general whereabouts during the working day.

Only time will tell how the Miners will react to their ordeal. We offer our congratulations to the emergency services who rescued them and once again humanity has prevailed.

The X Student Factor

Gamu Nhengu’s mothers failed attempt to renew her visa following the conclusion of her education has left them both facing a legal battle, exclusion from a life changing opportunity and the prospect of returning to their home country.

Way back in May 2009 we introduced a student attendance monitoring system following huge demand from colleges who were under intense pressure from the UK Border Agency to record the attendance of their international students.

Since then our system has developed and at the touch of a button comprehensive reports can be emailed directly to the Home Office to show a breakdown of attendance and non-attendance.

Of course the Home Office is more interested in who did not attend so that they can track that person down and send them home. This clamp down stems from terrorist attacks in Manchester back in 2008 where three of the terrorists where registered students whom has failed to attend their college.

Both the Labour and Coalition Governments have been desperately trying to close the huge loophole that appeared in the immigration process and only now are they enforcing their guidelines on educational establishments.

Only time will tell if Gamu wins her battle. We wish her luck.

As for our student attendance monitoring system, more and more colleges are contacting us every day telling us that we are the recommended supplier.

You can read more about our system here