Many shops use a flat rate model for their labor costs. Whether it’s a canned service or a labor item from Motor, the labor time is fixed from a profitability standpoint. Assigning a flat rate to a technician will automate the task of manually entering labor costs, and may provide a newfound appeal to profitability metrics that otherwise may not have been utilized before.

The first step is to make sure the technician has an hourly rate assigned. To do this, go to the Settings > Users page and click on the desired technician to view their settings menu. Next, click on Rates & Commissions.

From there, the first item on the menu will be the Labor Rate field. Look just to the right of the Rate field to find the Flat Rate setting.

Click the Flat Rate toggle to turn it on:

These steps will need to be followed for each technician you intend to use flat rates with.

Now that your technician is set up, whenever they are assigned to a labor line item on an estimate or invoice, their Labor Cost will be automatically configured.

Within an estimate or invoice, click on the labor line item, then in the Enter Labor Information panel that appears on the right side of the page, click the Select Technician drop-down and click on a technician:

Alternatively, to assign a single technician to all labor line items within a service, click on the Assign Techs + button and click on a technician:

Once a technician with a flat rate is assigned to a labor item, the labor item's Labor Cost will be automatically populated. The Hours field will match the labor item's quantity, and the Rate field will reflect the technician's hourly rate:

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