In many companies, you have to keep track of internal activities and overhead expenses, even though they are non-billable. You might want to track overhead time and expenses like administrative expenses, training, research, marketing costs, etc. In any case, time and expenses in BQE CORE flow to the projects, allowing you to track both billable and non-billable expenses–whether you incur them for a revenue project or an in-house overhead project. CORE also allows you to track the utilization of all employees working on your projects.
An overhead project requires you to set up your company as a ‘client’ and then assign the overhead project to it. Overhead contracts trigger a business rule to flag all time and expenses charged to such a project as non-billable, regardless of the item's default Billable status.
To track overhead time and expenses in CORE:
- Open the Clients screen from the main menu > Contacts > Clients.
- Create a new client record for your company, say ‘BQE CORE Sample’.
- Now open the Projects screen from the main menu > Projects.
- Create an internal project for general office expenses, say ‘Overheads’ and assign the client 'BQE CORE Sample' to it.
- Next, assign the owner /principal/manager of your company (whoever checks and approves the general office time and expenses) as the Manager of this project.
- Select Overhead as the Contract Type and set the Status to ‘Active’. Save your information.
- Now you can record your time and expense against this 'Overheads’ project with any general office activities and expenses.
You can also track indirect costs to separate projects acting as cost centers. Check this article for details on how to do that.