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71.1 Overview |
  
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71.1 Overview |
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71.1.1 The field ticket (or work log) module allows field crews or teams to record work details on a single screen. This makes it quicker to enter hours, expenses, supplies, equipment items and third party disbursements spent offsite. Field tickets can be entered directly on projects (for smaller projects) or tasks (for larger projects that require a work breakdown).
71.1.2 Getting Started
Types of Field Work
List all the types of field work your crews are doing onsite, eg. Field Survey
Typically, these becomes your ticket styles.
Work Types
On each of these ticket styles, you need to define what sorts of hours/items (ie. components) you want to track.
Employee (or Crew Member) Time Items
These are normally hourly-based items the employee has spent onsite. On a typical field work, you may only need:
"Work" - actual total field hours worked.
"Calc" - separate actual total calculation hours performed.
Employee (or Crew Member) Expense Items
These are normally expenses the employee has spent onsite. On a typical field work, you may only need:
"Hotel" - total hotel expenses spent
"Meal" - total meal expenses spent
Supply Items (or Materials)
Equipment Items
Third Party Disbursements
These are normally disbursements incurred onsite. On a typical field work, you may only need a "generic" disbursement to track all of them:
Daily Rates
Once you have the components, you need to create (or nominate existing work types) to link them, eg.
Field Ticket Component = Work so a Work Type = "FW" (for field work) has to be created
NOTE:
When a field ticket component is not linked to a work type, there will be no timesheets or disbursements generated when the field ticket is approved.
See "Set Up Work Types", "Set Up a Field Ticket" and "Set Up a Field Ticket Style" for more information to enter these components into Latitude.
Rates
After the work types were set up, see "Set Up Employees" to link these to employee's rates. More often, you will have jobs that have different rates depending on the type of work or client, see "How do I set Charge Rates for a particular Job" for a list of options you can choose from.
Crew Types and Crew Rates
Field work is usually comprised of two or more crew members including the crew chief doing the work. Each crew member hours are normally itemized separately on an invoice, ie. one invoice line item for crew chief hours and one invoice line item for the total survey assistants' hours. In case you want them combined and charged by crew rather than by individual crew member, see "How do I raise an Invoice -> Crew Invoice".
Submit Field Ticket
To create and submit a field ticket, the current logged on employee must be a Crew Chief or has permissions to create a field ticket on behalf of the Crew Chief.
To flag an employee as Crew Chief, see Ribbon -> Management -> Employee screen -> go to your desired employee -> tick "Crew Chief" and "Schedule" to "Yes"
To have permissions to create a field ticket on behalf of the Crew Chief, see "Set up Latitude Security" and assign the appropriate security code to the Employee and Object name "frmFieldTicket".
Approve or Reject a Field Ticket
To approve or reject a submitted field ticket, see "Set Up Employees -> Enter Details for Each Employee -> Approval tab"
NOTE:
At the onset of implementing Latitude in your company, a Latitude consultant will contact you with a several structured spreadsheets ready for you to enter the above information.
After you have filled them in, send them back to us and we'll handle the configuration for you.
71.1.3 Field Ticket Components
Below are the different elements and components of a field ticket:
Ticket Number - An auto-generated unique sequential number that can be changed if necessary.
Client Field Rep - Field representative of the client for the job or task.
Client Cost - Allocated budget of the client for the work.
Ticket Style - Type of field work to do on a job. Pick the desired field ticket style based on the required crew type, crew rates, equipment items and supplies.
Site Description - Brief description of the project, site or location. Separate fields are also available for finer detail information such as legal description, work description, weather & road conditions, travel location and attachments.
Client References - Extra configurable fields used to link order numbers, AFE numbers, client file numbers, etc. See "How Do I Enter Jobs/Projects -> Client References" for more information.
Crew Time - 5 configurable fields for work related items such as Work, Travel, Calculations, etc.
Crew Expenses - 2 configurable fields for expense related items (as opposed to third party disbursements) such as Hotel, Meal, Subsistence, etc.
Equipment - List of equipment items used in the field. See "Set Up Equipment" for more information.
Supplies (or Materials) - List of supply items used in the field. See "Set Up Supplies" for more information.
Third Party Charges - List of third party disbursements incurred. See "Set Up Third Party Disbursements" for more information.
Daily Rates - List of field work related items in units of "day". See "Set Up Daily Rates" for more information.
Signature - Optional customer and crew chief signatures. These are configurable through the field ticket style and can affect submission & approval of the field tickets. See "Set Up Ticket Style" for more information.
Once a field ticket is submitted, the project manager (or authorized officers) sees the submitted field tickets on the field ticket list screen for approval or rejection. See "Search for Field Tickets" for more information.
Once a field ticket is approved, the field tickets are turned into timesheets & disbursements that can be allocated when raising invoices. See "How do I raise an Invoice -> Create the new Invoice" for more information.
Prior to entering Field Tickets ensure the following is completed:
Create work types to be used for timesheet, expense items, equipment items, supply items, daily rate items and disbursement items. See "Set Up Work Types".
Assign the work types to the employees who work offsite. See "Set Up Employees -> Billing Rates".
Assign the work types to the default disbursement employee "zzFieldTicket".
Flag employees who are crew chiefs (ie. Team leaders). See "Set Up Employees".
Authorize employees that can approve field tickets. See "Set Up Employees -> Approval tab".
Configure the field ticket setup.
Create one or more field ticket styles.
Set the labels for the time and standard expense columns.
Assign a field ticket style to the job types that field tickets can be created for.
71.1.9 Electronic Signatures
To enable this, the Microsoft Ink Services must be installed and enabled. See the following steps appropriate to your respective operating systems:
Windows Server 2008 R2, 2012
Administrative Tools -> Server Manager
Features -> Add Features
Check Ink and Handwriting Services and its sub-features
Ink Support and Handwriting Recognition
Click Install and restart server
Administrative Tools -> Services
Right-click "Tablet PC Input Service" and click Properties
Click Start (make sure Service status = Started)
Change Startup type to Automatic
Click OK to close
Windows XP
Install www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=20039