Turn on overhead cost in Settings and make three decisions: what it costs to run your organization each month, how many past months Productive uses to estimate each new month, and on which day it calculates overhead. You set them once and can adjust them later.
If your organization has subsidiaries, you'll also choose how hours are counted.
Before You Turn It On
Wait until you have two to three months of data in Productive. Consistent time tracking matters most, because overhead is calculated from the hours you track.
How to Turn On Overhead Cost
Overhead cost needs three general settings:
Facility cost: The cost of running your organization each month. Productive can't see rent or software bills, so you enter them here. Each new month starts with this amount.
Averaging period: How many past months Productive uses to estimate each new month. Each new month starts with this setting.
Calculation date: When Productive recalculates the previous month from its tracked numbers, saves it to Overhead history, and starts a new projection.
Go to Settings > Overhead cost.
Turn on the toggle in the top-right corner.
Add your Facility cost.
Select an Averaging period.
Select a Calculation date.
Default Facility Cost
Click the Facility cost field to add your facility costs, such as utilities, software licences, and office rent. Organize them into cost groups and items to make them easier to manage.
Enter what it costs to run your organization each month, apart from salaries and costs you already log as expenses on internal budgets. Both are already counted elsewhere, so adding them here would count them twice.
This is the default for each new month. To change one month, see Review and Adjust Overhead Cost by Month.
Averaging Period
Select how many past months Productive uses to estimate each new month. If you set 5 months, each new month's projection takes the 5 previous months into account.
A longer period evens out busy and quiet months. A shorter one follows recent changes faster.
This is the default for each new month. Changing it doesn't affect the month that's already showing. To change the current month, see Review and Adjust Overhead Cost by Month.
Calculation Date
Select the date when overhead is calculated. On this day, Productive adds the previous month to Overhead history, calculated from the hours tracked in that month, and starts a new projection.
đ Until the calculation date, Projection for current month still shows the previous month.
Choose a date by which your team should have tracked all time for the previous month. Otherwise, the calculation runs on incomplete hours.
Productive limits the dates you can pick, so a month is never calculated twice or skipped.
Calculation Type
If your organization has subsidiaries, click the pencil icon next to Calculation Type to choose how hours are counted: Organization wide, Per subsidiary (by budget), or Per subsidiary (by person).
đ Learn how the types differ in Overhead Cost per Subsidiary.
Current Overhead per Hour
Current overhead per hour is the additional cost Productive adds to each hour tracked by someone with overhead turned on.
đ Learn how it's calculated in How Overhead Cost Is Calculated.
Check Your Setup
After you turn on overhead cost, check these three things to make sure the numbers work:
Current overhead per hour shows an amount above $0.00
The Overhead checkbox is turned on for everyone who should carry overhead
Your team tracks time on both client and internal budgets
đ If Current overhead per hour is $0.00, the month has no hours or no costs. Check that hours are tracked for the period by people with overhead turned on, and that the month has costs, such as a facility cost.
đ To review or adjust a single month later, see Review and Adjust Overhead Cost by Month.