The Settings tab within your Company tab houses the setup for global financial-related items.
Departments
Your Department setup is housed in the first card from the left. You can create a new department within your account by selecting the New button in the upper right corner of this card. The management of your department, including items like Labor Cost, default Accounting Category, etc will be kept within the department name hyperlink and a current count of active technicians is available at a quick glance next to the name.
If you ever need to archive a department, click on the department name and select Archive. Archiving a department will inactive any technicians and any items attached to that department's pricebook. A warning will pop up indicating that all technicians attached to the department will be achieved. If jobs are scheduled for the retired department, they will remain active. We recommend rescheduling any jobs assigned to a department before archiving it. Departments can be unarchived, as well. Click on the department name and unarchive the department. Technicians will need to be manually unarchived and items in the pricebook will need to be unarchived, as well.
Note: the Hourly Labor Cost found in the Department setup will be your labor cost in dollars and will be utilized within the establishment of the COGS equation to configure your margin pricing in your Pricebook. If you need assistance calculating your hourly labor cost or hourly labor rate, please download our helpful worksheet. Users can change their Hourly Labor Cost by clicking on the department and typing in a new hourly labor cost.
Pricing/Finance
Global pricing and finance setup are managed in the next card. Your company defaults for taxability should be entered here. You can set a default for taxability (Taxable vs. Nontaxable) and also a default Tax Zone if you would like. If you do not charge the bulk of your customers the same tax rate, you can leave the Tax Zone dropdown blank and select it when creating the customer going forward. For more information on taxing, please see our article on How do I set up my tax rate in Sera? The Finance Markup is typically between 3-7% for our clients and will be an upcharge to cover incidentals like credit card charges, financing fees, etc. This will be charged to all customers within your pricing of your tasks to spread those charges out amongst all jobs in hopes of turning those negative charges into a positive return.
From the dropdown you will select if you would like your quotes and invoices to contain one or two column quoting. If you intend to offer membership comparison pricing, select two column quoting.
If a membership has been entered into your account in Company --> Programs, you will be asked to select your default membership program. This will appear as the membership comparison program on all quotes and invoices unless changed by the creator of the quote.
Accounting Settings
Accounting Categories and Accounting Classes are covered in the final card. These items are requested to assign revenue from your invoices that are processed in Sera to those areas in Quickbooks through our batching process. Categories in Quickbooks are also known as GL codes or accounts within your Chart of Accounts. Sera will, by default, pass over the Accounting Category as the Product/Service name within the batching process to simplify the display and service tracking in Quickbooks on the invoice and to streamline the income reporting process.
Enter your Accounting Categories and Classes in the appropriate sections by using the + Add button. Accounting Categories should match a Product/Service within your catalog in Quickbooks and that Product/Service will be mapped to the appropriate Income account. Accounting Classes will need to match the classes set up in your Quickbooks character for character including any spaces or special characters.
Feature Settings
Enabling Appointment Pre-Work is permitted within this area. This setting enables the technician to see pertinent job-related data, in a read-only setting, prior to the customer being notified in case they should have to obtain parts, call in to the office for further instructions, etc. Simply alter the toggle to On and Save in order to make this functionality available within your account.
Select the Learn More button to access other articles related to the feature.