Setting labor rates, percentage adders, and adjustments

Required role: Admin · Tier: Pro (Financials)

Labor rates, percentage adders, and price adjustments are the Monterra Price Book settings that turn raw equipment costs into a finished quote. Open Price Book in the top nav to set them.

Defining labor rates per trade

Open Labor rates. Click Add labor rate for each trade you bill (Foreman, Journeyman, Apprentice, Laborer, and so on). Name the rate and set its Hourly rate. Rates save automatically as you type.

A rate cannot be deleted while it is in a crew. Remove it from the crew first.

Building crews and setting blended rates

A crew bundles labor rates into a single blended hourly rate that gets multiplied by the labor hours on each line item.

1. Under Crew, click Add crew and name it.
2. Pick a rate from the dropdown and click Add member to crew. Repeat for each member.
3. Set No. of people for each member.
4. Under Crew Rate Calculation, pick one:
   • Average (averaged rates). The blended rate is the mean across crew members. Use when one person does the work at a time and rates rotate.
   • Sum (summed rates). The blended rate is every member's rate added together. Use when the whole crew is on the clock at once.

The Total Crew Rate and Total Crew Size update as you edit.

Setting the Default Crew

Every new project starts with one crew's blended rate already applied. Open the crew you want as the standard and click Set Default Crew. The DEFAULT badge moves to that crew. Only one crew can be default at a time.

Each project can override the default from its own Financials tab without affecting the Price Book.

Percentage adders

Percentage adders are line items priced as a percentage of another value on the same project (a permit fee at 2% of total cost, a warranty at 5% of equipment subtotal). Open Percentage adders from the catalog menu.

Click Add percentage adder, then fill in the sentence: a Category and Item Name, the percentage, the financial category to track it under, and what it is a percentage of:

• Total cost or Total price
• Material, Labor, or Other subtotal cost
• Material, Labor, or Other subtotal price

Adders flow into every new project. Existing projects keep their current adders until you sync them.

Default price adjustments

Open Price adjustments. Three sections:

• Blended Price Adjustments, a markup applied across material, labor, and other together (a single project-wide margin)
• Fees, flat or percentage line items added to the price
• Discounts, flat or percentage reductions

Use + Add in each section. Adjustments apply only to new projects, not ones in flight.

Raceway labor estimation

Open Estimating settings. Under Wire Labor Calculation Method, pick how labor for a raceway run is calculated:

• Sum of Labor Units × Run Distance. Multiply each wire's labor unit by its total length and sum them. Best when every wire's labor unit is dialed in independently.
• Weighted Average Labor Unit × Run Distance. Weight each wire's labor unit by its material quantity, then multiply by raceway length once. Best when wires are pulled together as one job.

The setting applies to every new raceway you draw.

Tips

• Changes here apply to new projects only. Open an in-flight project's Financials tab to push Price Book updates into it.
• Name labor rates after trades, not people. The same crew rolls onto every project.