Overview
Before you can run, you have to walk - with Parallax, that means that before you start adding Employees, you'll want to create some basic units that you'll use within Parallax: Departments and Roles to assign your Employees to, and Rate Cards to set Billing Rates to determine what you'll bill for Employees.
| We’ll cover how to add your first Department here. | |
| You can find info here on how and why to add Roles. | |
| Rate Cards |
Find out more on how Rate Cards work and what they're used for here. |
Departments
Departments are more or less what you'd expect - they are the divisions of your Company that you'll want reflected within Parallax, to which Roles will be assigned.
Adding a Department is fairly straightforward:
- Click on Settings > Departments to visit the Departments page
- Click Add Department
- Enter Department Name and Abbreviation.
- Click Save
To ensure accurate reporting, you'll want to create Departments before adding Roles and Rate Cards.
Roles
Roles are the positions your Employees will fill. While you can customize Employees to override the decisions you're making for a position, this allows you to standardize the settings for a specific Role and override it on an Employee basis only when necessary.
To add a Role:
- Click on Settings > Roles
- Click Add Role
- Enter Role Name and Department
- Add a Default Billable Capacity, Target Utilization and Cost Rate*
- Click Save
Parallax Tip: What are Capacity, Target Utilization and Cost Rate?
We'll start with the easiest one first - Cost Rate is the hourly rate of the Employee. Essentially, it's what it costs you to employ them. This is different from the Billing Rate you'll charge for them, which you'll set in the next step.
Capacity and Utilization represent respectively the maximum amount of hours that should be billable work (i.e. anything that's billed to the Client). Utilization represents the goal over time that you want to align with Capacity. In short, Capacity is used for Planning, Utilization helps you understand how well you're aligning with that Plan.
Rate Cards
While the Cost of an Employee is standardized to a Role (and can be overridden for an Employee), the Bill Rate that you'll charge a Client for each is set by a Rate Card that you'll add to each Project and can be swapped out as needed. This allows you to set standardized Rates you'll bill for each Role, while being able to swap those Rates out based on different types of Project or Client.
You'll want to make sure you've added both Departments and Roles, then to add a Rate Card:
- Click on Settings > Rate Cards
- Click on Add Rate Card
- Enter Rate Card Name and Default Bill Rate (the Rate each Role will start at)
- (Optional) Click select the "Add all company roles to rate card" box if you don't want to add each Role manually.
- Click "Save"
- If you don't already have a Default Rate Card, select "Make Primary Rate Card"
- (Optional) Select the "Add Role" button to add any Roles you left out
- Click "Edit" next to each Role to modify the Bill Rate for that Role
- In the module that appears enter the desired Bill Rate
- Click "Save"
And you're done!
Updating Role for Employee
When a role change is needed for an employee, you can do this from the edit link within Settings>Employee.
When clicking on the field, begin to type in the new role and select from options presented then click Save (upper right corner).
Parallax will not assume or automate changing the role on projects for this employee and you will need to update the role name within in Active Project the employee is assigned to. This is because Roles are not tied to an employee since employees are added to roles within a project and some projects may list an employee with a role that is not their primary role.
Note: If you change an employees role, Parallax will use the new roles Cost Rate on any project that employee is assigned to no matter the role they are assigned too.