Financial Controls

This is the standard number of hours that each staff member works each week. This is the company standard number of hours, and will default onto each new staff record created in Synergy. The default value can be adjusted if required. i.e. Staff work an agreed 37.5 hours or 40 hours each week.

This is the standard Superannuation levy rate (SGC) that is applied to all new staff records created in Synergy.

Update this value if the government defined retirement fund levy is changed. Upon saving the changes a wizard is available to let you apply the new superannuation levy to all the existing Synergy staff records. This is a great time saver if you are part of a large organisation and need to apply the new Australian super levy rate of 9.5% to all the existing Synergy staff records on 1 July 2014.

Update the super levy on all staff records by NEW 4.8.8

1. Go to Tools > Financial Controls.
2. Update the Superannuation Levy % to the new rate. i.e. Enter the Australian default levy rate of 9.5%.
3. Click the Save button.

Click the image above to view the Financial Controls.

4. Click Yes on the pop-up message to use the Bulk staff update wizard.

Click the image above to view the pop-up message.

5. The Staff Update Super wizard is shown. All the 'active' staff records are automatically checked and will be updated. The wizard defaults the effective date for this change to be today's date.
6. (Optional) Use the Select all button to also apply this change to the 'inactive' staff records. Inactive staff are people that no longer work for the organisation and have no access to Synergy.
7. (Optional) Adjust the 'New Effective Date' field using the calendar if you want to apply this to start on an alternate date. i.e. Select 1 July 2014.
8. Click Save.
9. The wizard is closed and all the selected staff records have been updated.

Click the image above to view the Staff Update Super wizard.

Availability factor is the percentage of a year that employees are available for work. This creates the default % for the entire practice. This default availability % is applied to all new staff records when they are created. Availability takes into account that out of the 52 weeks in the year that an staff member may only work 43 weeks after annual leave and sick leave have been taken into account.

Availability Calculator

Availability is the number of working weeks any staff member is available to you as a percentage and is factored in to each staff’s cost.

Use the calculator to enter the standard number of holiday weeks per year, the number of public holidays, and amount of sick leave. These values are use to create the default availability factor applied to new staff records created in Synergy.

Long Service Leave based on 13 weeks over 10 years = 1.3 per year.  Long Service Leave over 7 years = 1.857

Public Holidays table

The utilisation factor is a percentage of staff time of which they are expected to be completing billable tasks. This is the target proportion of time that should be billable against projects.

The value entered here is the system default % value. This utilisation factor value will be automatically copied to new staff records when created. Each staff record can be manually adjusted to an alternate value if required. Changes made to this utilisation factor value will not update the existing staff records. 

Spreads the total cost of business over chargeable salaries to provide a break-even factor.  That is, if the hourly labour rate is multiplied by the Overhead factor, the practice should break-even.

Practice Overhead Calculator

The practice overhead factor should be reviewed say every three, six or twelve months.  This will update all of the actual staff costs and charge-out rate Std. Cost/hour.  The current staff settings is reflecting staff package / est. utilisation factor.

Use the current staff settings column and type this total in to the first column, then add the overall practice cost figure at the top to calculate OH.

Example

Staff cost = $30

OH = 2.0

______________

$30 x 2.0

______________

Staff OH cost = $60

Should you charge this staff out at $90, then an Actual profit of $30 will be recorded against the project.  If the transaction is written off, there will be a loss recorded of $60.

Timesheet history

Once there's 3 months of timesheets added by all staff, you'll be able to return to the Overhead calculation screen to get an idea of actual timesheet entries and the probable OH factor for the previous 3 months. This can be done then at 6 months then at 12 months.  

Select either 3, 6 or 12 months from the drop down and then select the Print icon. This will return all timesheets entered for the time interval selected. The time intervals start from today e.g. 3 months of history will be based on the actual date 3 months prior from today, it's not based on a 'quarter' period.

Print InFocus PDF for a detailed guide to Timesheet History

Target margin is a percentage % added above the overhead factor to determine target profitability levels. This will add the % margin above the break-even Overhead Rate to determine the target charge-out rate for staff. 

The target margin will also calculate a budget cost based on the nominated charge-out rate less margin.

Displays the values of overhead and margin for each time these values have been altered in the Financial Controls.

If a changes to the overhead or margin have been made by mistake, use the 'Undo last change' button to go back to the previous settings.

When updating the Overhead or Target profit factors an effective date will need to be set.  By default the system will set itself to the day after the last timesheet entered:

If you attempt to set the effective date prior to this date, you will get an error:

This tab displays the history of the margin and overhead settings, who changed them and when.