There are many ways to add labor for your projects on D-Tools Cloud, such as by tying it to the product category, using a labor package that combines labor requirements, or directly adding labor line items in the quote.

This article explains how to add labor for products at the category level using the "Category Rules" feature.

Check out these articles for other ways to add labor.

Adding labor to products via category rules automates labor calculations in the quotes. When products are added to a quote, the labor is also added, and you don't have to worry about adding labor for every product in the quote.

As a good practice, consult with your installers and service technicians when you add labor using category rules.

To be able to add labor for products at the category level, you should first set the Category Option setting to "On." This will fetch D-Tools-curated labor estimates for all categories. From here on, you can retain our estimates or update them to your liking.

Check out this article for more details about the Category Option setting on D-Tools Cloud.

Go to "Catalog > Categories" under Settings. Click the 3-dot menu of a product category and click “Edit.” In the “Labor” area, you will see our labor estimate. You may not see our estimate for all categories.

You can update our estimate or add your own estimate for this entire category. Click "Add Labor" and add the labor types and hours required for the products in the category.

If you want to apply this estimate to all products in the subcategories, click the 3-dot menu and click "Update items." Now, the estimate will be applied to all products in the category.

This may be required to fine-tune the labor estimate because the products in a subcategory require more or less time for installation and programming.

For example, in the "Control Systems" category, Servers may need up to 2 hours of labor, and IR receivers may need only 30 minutes.

On the Categories page, click the 3-dot menu of a product subcategory and click “Edit > Disable rule.”

Click "Add Labor" to add another labor type, or click "Edit" for the existing labor type and increase or decrease the labor hours.