Q›TAR Labour Costing is typically used for keeping track of work done by each employee in respect of one or more of the following :

• Department
• Cost Centre
• Work Centre
• Location
• Activity
• Skill
• Grade
• Machine
• Work Cell

The breakdown of hours worked each day is stored for further analysis and summary. To minimise input, appropriate default values may be set up for each employee.

Changes from the default may then be entered at a Badge Reader at or near the place of work by either the employee or by a supervisor (as required). Alternatively, details of the changes may be entered at a computer screen (e.g. in a supervisor's office) using a Networked PC, or a VAX or UNIX terminal. As a third alternative, input by the employee can be minimised by having one input device per category monitored e.g. one per machine.

Details of the changes may be entered in "real time" (i.e. at the time that the change happens or is to take effect), or they may be entered retrospectively, by specifying either the time of day the change happened or the length of time the change was in effect. Reports may be generated directly from Q›TAR (by day or for a period of time) showing the breakdown of how labour is being used, by employee, by Department or any of the other categories suggested above. The results may be shown in monetary terms or by length of time spent in each category.

Additionally, the data may be passed to another system, such as a financial system or a mainframe or PC database (such as Lotus/dBase) for further analysis.

In deciding how best to collect the data, it is important to strike a sensible balance between the desire to get the maximum amount of useful and timely information, and the importance of ensuring that excessive time is not spent entering data.

The value to management of a variety of levels of information will help determine the relative merits of an solution which is initially cheaper but labour intensive and costly over time (i.e. manual keying at badge readers or computer screens) versus a solution requiring a higher level of initial capital outlay, but significantly reduced costs over time. (e.g. one badge reader per work place).