Material & Equipment Cost Code Matching in Ontraccr
🧾 Material & Equipment Cost Code Matching in Ontraccr
📘 Overview
Ontraccr tracks job costs for Material and Equipment by requiring users to select a relevant cost code when filling out forms that represent usage — such as material delivery, equipment time usage, or field logs.
Just like with Labor, these cost codes must already exist in the project for the form to be submitted successfully.
This ensures that all job costs, regardless of category, are accurately allocated to budgeted cost codes and included in job costing reports.
📦 Materials: How It Works
When submitting material usage via forms:
- The user selects a project
- Chooses the material being used (from the Materials database)
- Selects a Material cost code from the dropdown
- Enters quantity and unit price (if not prefilled)
🧠 This ensures the material cost is booked against the correct budget line item for the project.
🏗 Equipment: How It Works
When logging equipment usage:
- The user selects the equipment item
- Chooses the relevant Equipment cost code
- Enters:
- Daily or hourly usage
- Associated costs (if not already tracked via system override)
🔁 This data feeds into:
- Budget actuals
- Equipment usage reports
- Forecasting tools
🔒 Validation Rules
- Material and Equipment entries must use a valid project-level cost code
- If the cost code doesn’t exist in Step 3 of the project, the system blocks submission
- The cost code drop-downs only display:
- Material codes when logging materials
- Equipment codes when logging equipment
📊 Real Example
You added cost code “EQUIP-001: Boom Lift” to a project in Step 3.
Later, a foreman logs equipment usage:
- Equipment: 60ft Boom Lift
- Hours used: 8
- Cost code: “EQUIP-001”
The system records this usage and applies any configured hourly or daily cost override from the cost code, updating budget actuals accordingly.
🧠 Tips
- Use clear naming conventions for equipment and material codes (e.g., prefix with MAT- or EQ-)
- Double-check that all expected cost codes are added to each project during setup
- Ontraccr does not automatically map materials or equipment to a cost code — user selection is always required