Hi, I'm James Leichter from Aptora. I'm glad you're interested in Flat Rate
Simple. I built Flat Rate Simple myself, to be as simple flat rate as possible. Within about one hour or so,
you should be able to export your flat rate pricing books and import them
into your favorite program. You can also print them
if you want a hard copy. In this video,
I'm going to give you a quick tour on how to use the system, how to set up
the different preferences and settings, and how to get started with flat r
ate
pricing as quickly as possible. I hope you enjoy. Installation is very simple. Just double click on the zip file
to extract the two files. There's only two. I created a folder called Flat Rate
Simple. Inside my normal program files folder. I also put that inside of an Aptora
folder. Opening that folder reveals the two files
that come with the product. There's a simple “Read Me” file,
You probably don't need to read it. And there's your Excel file. Just double click
on that Excel file to open
it. You can also right
click and create a shortcut. And that put a shortcut on my desktop. That way I double click on the short cut. It'll open up this file,
which is where most of the program files are kept. When you open the file for the first time,
chances are you will land on the instructions worksheet
or tab, as I typically call them. You might notice
the autosave is turned off. I would leave
that turned off if I were you. That way if you do something
to the sheet that you regret, you can
always close it
and say no to saving it. If you do make changes
and you like what you see, click the save button often
just don't have it autosave. Save that way. The minute you mess something up,
you can close the whole workbook. That's what Excel calls this entire file. And then you can reopen it and continue this sheet includes some basic instructions
on how to use it. But I'm going to show you
how to get started quickly. Go to the setup tab and use the labor rate calculator to figure out wha
t you should be charging
per hour. You will notice as I hover over
each of these red corners, I'm getting lots of information
on what is needed in that field. You'll start out with your labor costs,
fringe benefits, etc. and you will get to a number. Enter your desired labor rate here. Now the calculator is going to populate this field right here. You will need to enter yours in the field
below it. So the calculated labor
rate is just a suggestion. You don't have to follow that suggestion. In ma
ny cases you probably would put your number there. There are workbook
worksheet statistics here as f y. The next thing you want to do is
look at your parts and multiplier table. You might want to accept the defaults or you can change
those to meet your needs. The diagnostic travel
fee setup is optional if you want the diagnostic fee and or your travel
fee to be built in to the task. You can fill out that information here. Your accounting preferences are important, especially if you plan to expor
t this file
and that is probably why you bought this. The purpose of this system
really is to be exported. Enter the chart of account number
in QuickBooks or Total Office manager that you want to represent
the income account. The invoice item
type should probably state at service. That means that will create a service
item type in QuickBooks total Office manager or other programs. Enter your desired gross
profit dollars per hour. You can read about that here. $375 is the default. This shouldn't
take long. Once you're finished, it's time
to move on to the tasks worksheet or tab. These are your flat rate tasks. If you scroll from top to bottom,
you can see that there are quite a few of them. If you'd like,
you can filter out by industry or by task category or both. The industry is the industry that you are in, or at least the industry
the book represents. We have the HVAC and refrigeration service book, the plumbing service
book, electrical service book. We also have a book
we identify a
s all industries service. Those are tasks
that apply to all of the industries. Chances are
you don't want to get rid of that. And then finally,
we have the HVAC installation book. You can filter simply by checking one of those, and now you're only looking at the HVAC service industry. To go back to how it was flipped the clear filter from industry. Now you can do the same thing with task
categories. These are all the task categories. And let's say that you are looking
for breakers. Type in the w
ord breaker
and you will see breaker panel, breakers and fuses, breakers and fuses
(comprehensive). Maybe it's these two
that you are looking for. Click okay to filter and you can see the contents of those categories. The comprehensive belongs to the electrical service book. If you want those in your HVACR service book, then you just have to change to the other industry. Again, to clear, we click clear filter from task category. All of these come all of these columns
are pretty self-explanatory.
If you hover over, you will see. Let me scroll to the top. Notice, by the way,
let me show you what I noticed. It looked like the the tip was incorrect or buggy. Now order over it. Everything's been explained thoroughly. It's pretty self-explanatory, though. One nice feature is the rounded number so many people want around
the retail price. This allows you to use both the retail
price calculated or a rounded amount. When you export the information,
you'll have both. When you imported into your
program,
then you will have an opportunity to pick which one you want to import. You can inactivate any of these tasks simply by selecting true that inactivates it. You can also copy down that value common No markup that will usually be false. There are times where you might not want
to mark up the part cost. That does not apply to labor. It applies to the part cost. In this case, the part costs $94.28,
or I should say, the parts in case there's more than one thing, it's multiplied by 1.33 for a
retail of $125.39. The Labor cost is $32.91. It looks to see how many minutes are in the task. There's 45 minutes in this task, so it multiplies 45 by $32.91 to give you a labor retail of $273.75, your gross profit dollars on labor is $240.81. Your cost of goods sold is $127.19. Your gross profit dollars is $271.96. Again, if you want to know more about any of these values,
you'll get an explanation by popping over the gross profit. Dollars per hour is an important number and it tells you
if yo
u've met that goal based on how you set up here. $375 is the goal. If we're not making it, it will say no. If we're making it, obviously yes. You can see the date that the task was last revised and the time. And there's room for comments here. The export, the print export settings tab allows you to filter
for what industries you want to print your books for. In this case, I'm filtering for the HVACR that stands for refrigeration service. All industries is also included inactive, equal to false.
So in other words, I don't want inactive tasks can be marked as common. I'm including both true and false. So common and not common. I also have the opportunity
to pick from the various categories that are within these selections. You can enter your company's name here. Name your book. Give it a book title. The flat rate book format is either a technician report
or manager report. Manager report shows you your costs,
the technicians report doesn't. You'll see that in a moment. You can check for
duplicated task numbers. You can check for task descriptions
that might be too long. This is your export button. You can refresh
all of your task information here and you can sort your task information
with this button. We'll talk more about those. Let's go to the printed book tab. Here we have the books ready to be printed. If I scroll down, you can see that we have a our industry name book name vac service. And this is the category task number
description and the investment, the price. Now, ho
w does that look when it's printed? You can click control P on your keyboard or you can hit the print
preview button provided and it shows you
your book looks pretty nice. You can print that out,
You can create a PDF whatever you do normally on your computer,
you will notice that the title that you gave it is at the top,
your company name down at the bottom. We have the page X of Y. You can't control that. This footer is customizable prices
don't include sales tax. You can modify that if you'd l
ike to,
and you're ready to print the lists are here. These are the various selection lists your industries, your categories,
the departments. This is where you can
go to maintain those lists. We've
provided a truck stock list template. Just for your information,
it does not make any difference in how you use the software. And we have provided you with tool lists for your installation work
and your service and maintenance work. These tool lists
don't affect your flat rate book at all. They have
just been added
for your convenience. Once you get the book looking the way you want it,
and that means usually doing a lot of inactivating,
getting rid of things you don't need. You might also delete things
if you don't need them, then it's time to export. You can check for duplicates first,
make sure you don't have any duplicate task numbers. Click export. A temporary sheet is
created, as you can see here. After that sheet is created, it wants to know where to put that information. I'll call i
t FPO Export zero one and click Save. And that's all there is to creating your export file. If you were to open that export file up in, say, notepad, then you would be able to see, All right, that's all there is to it. Let's go back to tasks. If you want to modify
the book, it's been protected. You'll click the protect sheet and enter a password. All of the sheets are protected. If you want to give yourself
a little bit more room to work. You can get rid of the formula bar. You probably don't ne
ed it. You can get rid of the headings. You can go to
full screen mode if you like. Those are normal Excel features. I'm just pointing that out. Your task number here is made up of your task number. A core and your labor. Time. Again, hover over here for details on how that works. I think that's about it. Well,
I think it's time to wrap up this video. I wanted to keep it as short as possible, but I wanted to do a good job explaining
how to use Flat Rate Simple. If you like the video, please cons
ider
giving it a thumbs up or like subscribe to the channel if you have any questions or comments
as always, please lead them below. We would love to hear from you and I will do my best to answer
each and every one of them. Once again, I'm James Leichter with Aptora, thank you so much for your
interest in Flat Rate Simple.
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