Costpoint Shop Floor Time: Automated Timekeeping with Project-Level Costs

This year’s Deltek Clarity survey of government contractors reveals that 48% of manufacturers consider compliance requirements as a top risk, and 29% are grappling with calculating true manufacturing costs. 

Government contractors crossing several systems, spreadsheets included, to complete a process are understandably challenged. Data latency, lack of visibility, and increased risk are just a few of the characteristics associated with this type of manufacturing system. Meeting compliance requirements and capturing accurate material and labor costs are not nice-to-haves, they are must-haves, in particular for manufacturers delivering on government contracts; they are requirements written into the contract.

A majority of manufacturers focus on material costs as they are typically proportionally higher than labor. However, it can be the timekeeping and tracking of labor costs that can throw a Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) audit into disarray.

Now that the DCAA has worked down much of their backlog, they have “returned to their full range of audits in its portfolio and focused more effort on other audits such as business systems, Truth in Negotiation Act, Cost Accounting Standards and labor and material reviews." Yes, incurred costs submissions and executive compensation remain an auditor’s key focal points, however, government contractors should have their systems, processes, and controls intact for the expanded range of DCAA audits.

Deltek Costpoint is designed to help government contractors meet their compliance requirements, throughout the entire project life-cycle, from the back office to the shop floor.

Costpoint Shop Floor Time is the timekeeping application within the Costpoint Manufacturing product suite designed to seamlessly integrate with Costpoint for near real-time labor tracking of manufacturing orders and projects. It helps government contractors accurately track time and attendance for shop floor employees and administrative staff, so they have accurate data to invoice quicker and assess project costs.

Benefits of the product include:

• Seamless integration with Costpoint- no need to create files to import or export data
• Shop Floor employees can record time and labor through the use of mobile apps, a Web Time Clock kiosk, and other biometric hardware – provide low, to no-touch options for employee safety
• Shop Floor Time supports full DCAA compliance with its highly configurable Rules Engines and comprehensive audit trails for all transactions – be audit-ready with little effort

Shop Floor Time 2.0 features the Work Dispatch Queue.  This feature presents users with a prioritized list of job assignments. The built-in flexibility allows supervisors to easily change prioritizations should there be a shift in project priorities. Additionally, the work grid can include data from external systems such as detailed work instructions. Costpoint Shop Floor Time provides flexibility in a number of feature sets to help government contractors maintain the unique manufacturing processes that work well for them.

Shop Floor Time’s seamless integration with Costpoint’s powerful ERP solution improves productivity by helping employees spend less time tracking hours and searching for paperwork as all timekeeping information is in one system. The digitalization of data provides supervisors more visibility and control to find and correct issues quicker in the cycle, while also keeping them in an audit-ready state for government compliance reporting

A few highlighted features of this powerful automated timekeeping solution include:

• Demand-Driven Scheduling- schedules can easily be changed using a few mouse clicks
• Messaging around timecard modifications – streamline and track communications between shop employees and supervisors
• Automatic application of premium hours based on rules – reduce the complexity of validating complex labor rules
• Functionality for the application of California Meal Rules
• GDPR Compliance (makes Shop Floor Time compliant with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulations)
• Ability to loan employees between Supervisors – built-in agility to meet changing needs and priorities in a trackable and compliant manner
• Key Performance Indicators via a dashboard or separate reports for data-driven decisions on efficiency, utilization, and more

Check out this quick video for a demo of the seamless integration between Shop Floor Time and Costpoint. In this video you will see an example of how quickly the information flows when an employee logs out of a work order. 

If your federal contract includes manufacturing, or you are considering taking on a manufacturing contract, you can see more demo videos of Costpoint Shop Floor Time when you register for Deltek Insight and search on "Costpoint Shop Floor Time". You can also schedule your own Costpoint Shop Floor Time demo here.  

About the author:

Cherise Smith is a Sr. Principal HD Engineering and has worked with the Shop Floor Time application since its launch in 2012.  Prior to joining the Market R&D GovCon group, she was a Deltek Consultant for 10 years working in the People and TESS domains.