Resource Groups

Resource groups group staff into teams for the purposes of reporting (and resource levelling in the Technical version of Timemaster). The likelihood is you need to use Timemaster not only to report on each individual’s cost and performance, but also to assess the cost of a group or department as a whole. To do this you would group staff into resource groups and then request a report for the group rather than each individual.

In a small office, it is likely that there is only one group, in a larger office you would make a separate group for each group of staff you wish to report on as a whole.

Item	Database Item	Description
Group	resource_group	Ten character code to identify the group
Group Name	group_name	A name for the group
Group Leader	group_leader	A member of staff nominated as the group leader. This is for informational purposes only and serves no other purpose within Timemaster.
Resource Rate	resource_rate	The rate used by Timemaster for costing productive work.
Charge Rate	budget_cost	The rate used by Timemaster for what you charge the client at
Available for use?	avail_for_use	Un-tick this checkbox if you no longer wish the code to appear in lookups
Income Code – billing accounts	income_code	The code used by Timemaster as a reference to an income code.
Income Code – trade accounts	trading_incomecode

TIP: In a large office you may wish to think about coding the groups in a hierarchical fashion. You may request many of the reports using a range of groups, so if each character that makes up the group code is meaningful you will be able to request reports which reflect a position in an office hierarchy.

For example:

▪TSE1 -- Estates Group

▪TSH1 – Major Highways Group

▪TSH2 – Highways Maintenance Group

▪TSP1 -- Property Revenue Group

▪TSP5 -- Property Capital Group

By careful coding in the example above, reports could be obtained for Technical Service (TS) by entering TSE to TSP5, or for Highways Section TSH1 to TSH2.

NOTE: Once they have been defined and implemented, the coding of resource groups should not be changed without consideration. The resource group is written to the timesheet line as it is saved (to allow different staff from different groups to share projects), so just changing the group on the staff record does not automatically change all historic time for that individual.

Resource Groups and Departments

Timemaster also contains department codes as an alternative method of reporting and grouping of staff. This section describes the difference between the two entities to further assist you in defining what a resource group is and what a department is.

Resource Groups are allocated both to staff, to define their cost centre, and also to tasks, to define which cost centre is receiving the income for carrying out the work. Staff may also be restricted to accessing information contained in reports by resource group. For example, staff can be restricted to seeing the costs associated ONLY with their own (or nominated) resource groups.

Departments are simply a grouping of staff. They are selections on reports and information grids ONLY where the report or the grid is associated with staff. You cannot, for example, obtain a profit and loss report by department, whereas you can obtain one by resource group.

Resource Groups

Purpose

Resource Groups and Departments