Maintain labor and shop cost inputs

1Open Shop Costs and choose a location

Open Settings → Shop Costs as an owner. If no location is available, add one in Company Settings first. Select the location tab before editing equipment, labor fallbacks, vehicles or monthly overhead.

Shop Hours applies across the shop. Recurring Costs is tenant-wide. Employee and crew lists are filtered by location, but an employee without a location can appear under every tab. Read the warning above those employees.

2Understand the separate save controls

Shop Hours, equipment, labor fallbacks, vehicles and Monthly Overhead use the top Save Changes button, which appears after a draft change. That button saves the current draft across location tabs.

Employee pay-type and login choices, active state and crew membership save immediately. Employee rate fields save when you leave the field. Recurring Costs has its own immediate saves. Reloading discards only unsaved settings drafts; it does not undo these separately saved changes.

3Set working hours and workdays

In Shop Hours, set Opens and Closes, then toggle the workdays the auto-scheduler may use. Review the time range and selected days before Save Changes. These are scheduling hours, not a record of an employee's actual time or a configurable salary divisor.

4Add closures with Time Blocks

Choose Add block, enter a descriptive name, and set From and To. Use a single date for a one-day closure or a range for a shutdown. Remove deletes that block from the current draft; Save Changes applies it.

Auto-scheduling skips these closed dates and moves to an open day. The calendar also shows the closure and warns when booking a blocked day. Adding a block is not a promise that every previously booked event has been moved; inspect existing bookings.

5Add an employee without creating a login

Team members appear automatically in Employees. To add someone else, enter Employee name and choose Add. This creates a costing and assignment record; it does not send an invitation or create a login account.

An employee without a shop location appears under multiple tabs. Editing that employee's pay or login controls can pin the record to the selected location. Confirm the tab first, then reopen the row after the change.

6Choose Hourly, Salary or By SqFt

Use the pay-type selector on the employee row. Hourly uses the entered cost per hour. Salary uses annual pay and displays an hourly equivalent based on 2,080 hours per year. Leave the rate field to save its value.

By SqFt uses the employee's cost per square foot of the job. That employee is charged once per job, including when assigned through a crew, rather than once for every activity or scheduled hour. The job's available drawing area is used, with fabrication or installation quantities as a fallback when drawing area is absent.

Switching pay type retains the other stored rate values for a later switch back. These are internal cost inputs; changing them does not change the selling rates on a price list.

7Link the intended team login

Use the Login selector to connect an employee record to the correct SlabOS user. No login is appropriate for a person who does not sign in. The link lets the Crew App relate that login to employee and crew assignments.

Auto-link logins matches employees to users by name across the shop. Missing or ambiguous matches need manual review. It performs a saved action, so inspect the resulting links and do not assume every employee needs an account. Use Add users, employees and crew access for invitations and permissions.

8Disable employees while keeping history

Disable removes a person from normal assignment choices while keeping the record for historical costing. Expand the disabled employee list to review those entries and use Enable when the person returns.

Remove is a separate deletion action with a confirmation. It is not interchangeable with Disable. Prefer retaining the record when older jobs still refer to that person.

9Import names from an assignee screenshot

Drop an image into the employee import area or click it to choose an image file. The app extracts names and creates missing employee entries, then reloads the list. This is not a draft waiting for the top Save Changes button.

Review the imported spelling, location, pay model and login links. Existing names are skipped without regard to letter case, and separator names beginning with asterisks are skipped. Importing names does not establish their pay rates or invite users.

10Create a crew and edit its members

In Crews, enter Crew name and choose Add Crew. Choose Edit Members and select the employees who belong to that group. Membership changes save as you select them; close the member editor when finished.

The displayed combined hourly rate sums members' hourly or salary-equivalent rates. By SqFt pay is handled separately and does not become an hourly crew rate. On a job, inspect each contributor and the By Sq Ft cost row rather than treating the crew badge as the entire cost. Remove deletes the crew group after confirmation.

11Set equipment operating costs

Choose Add Equipment, enter its name, select the matching Activity type and set the hourly operating cost. Save Changes applies the draft. Remove removes an equipment entry from the draft.

Costing matches the activity type to an equipment rate and multiplies by the activity duration. Use one intended matching rate for each type; duplicate matching rows are not summed. These costs are separate from employee labor and customer pricing.

12Configure labor fallback rates

Choose Add Fallback Rate, select the activity type, enter the default crew size and the hourly cost per person, then Save Changes. For example, two people at $30 per hour for two hours produce a $120 fallback cost.

The fallback applies when an activity has a usable duration but no billable employee rate. It does not add hourly labor on top of known square-foot pay. Inspect the fallback label in the job breakdown, and replace missing assignments or rates when better information is available.

13Enter vehicle fuel inputs

Choose Add Vehicle, enter a name, select a crew when appropriate and enter Fuel Rate and Fuel Price. Match L/100km with price per litre, or MPG with price per gallon. Save Changes applies the draft; Remove removes a draft vehicle row.

Fuel costing needs a saved route distance and usable vehicle inputs. A blank or zero input can produce zero fuel cost. The calculator selects a matching crew vehicle where available, otherwise the first applicable vehicle; it does not add every vehicle together. Check the selected vehicle and route in the job breakdown.

14Maintain Monthly Overhead

Choose Add Overhead Item, give the expense a useful name, choose Rent, Utility or Other and enter its monthly amount. The page shows the total for the selected location. An empty Other name is highlighted as a prompt; fill it in so the breakdown is meaningful.

Save Changes applies these items. The calculator allocates the selected overhead total across the shop's jobs with an activity scheduled in the current month, including jobs still in progress. The denominator is at least one and is shop-wide. Read the location, monthly total, active-job count and per-job amount in the breakdown; it is not a completed-jobs-only allocation.

15Add and schedule Recurring Costs

Recurring Costs is separate from Monthly Overhead and feeds Upcoming dues in Company Health. Choose Add Recurring Cost, set the name and category, and enter the amount for each occurrence. Changes in this section save independently.

Choose Monthly — 1st & 15th, Monthly — custom day or Every 14 days (biweekly). From sets the earliest occurrence; Anchor sets the starting point for the fourteen-day cycle. A custom day past the end of a short month uses that month's last day. Active determines whether the cost contributes to upcoming dues.

The approximate 30-day total is a rough cadence-based estimate, not the dated Upcoming dues list. Check Company Health for actual projected occurrences. These entries do not themselves create an invoice, send a payment or run payroll. Use the delete control only when you intend to remove the saved recurring record.

16Save and recheck the intended settings

Return to the top and choose Save Changes for the settings draft. Reopen the page and location to verify the saved hours, equipment, fallbacks, vehicles and overhead. To discard that draft, reload before saving.

Separately reopen employee and crew rows and the Recurring Costs section after their immediate saves. A successful top-level save does not prove those other records have the intended values.

17Explain a representative job's cost

Use a representative job's Job Cost breakdown and Recalculate when you intend to refresh its stored costs. Labor duration uses actual start/end first, then a usable scheduled range, then a suggested duration from comparable work when available. Suggested labor is marked as estimated.

Check individual contributors, square-foot pay, equipment, fuel, material cost and overhead. Verify the job area, assignments and rate units before interpreting margin. Costing can use configured location fallbacks, so read the location shown rather than assuming it came from the tab you last edited. Cost and margin views depend on available inputs and are not a reconciled general ledger.