Financial controls overview

Financial controls are setup to control the:

• Target margin and operating overhead factor for the organisation
• Default factors applied to new staff records in Synergy

Different options are available in the Synergy Professional, Business, or Enterprise product levels. Set these financial control options before you start creating rates, staff, and transactions. 

With the Synergy Professional level product there are two options available:

1. Hours per week - helps to setup the staff records created by setting up the standard number of working hours per week.
2. Target margin - the organisation wide target profit margin. This is used for calculating the standard cost for each charge-out rate. Learn more about setting up rates.

Image above shows financial controls from the Professional level product.

The Synergy Business and Enterprise level products have some additional financial controls available. The hours per week and target margin features from the Professional level product are still available, plus these extra features.

1. Target margin - This will also impact how the staff target charge-out rate is calculated. Learn more about staff costs. The target margin impacts the target charge out value for staff.
2. Superannuation - This refers to the contribution to the retirement fund or pension fund. In Australia this in known as Superannuation, New Zealand its Kiwi Saver, in the UK it is National Insurance, and in the USA this is On-Costs or 401K. The retirement fund contribution impacts the actual cost calculation for staff.
3. Availability factor - This is the percentage of the year that the staff members are available for work after any leave time is deducted. Read more about how to calculate the availability factor. The availability factor impacts the actual cost calculation for staff.
4. Utilisation factor - This is the percentage of time that that the staff member will be completing billable tasks. The utilisation factor impacts the target charge out value for staff.
5. Overhead factor - the 'raw' cost of each staff member and how much it that needs to be marked up by to cover the business overheads. The overhead factor impacts the actual cost calculations for staff.

If the financial controls for staff above are updated the existing staff records are not altered. The changes are applied to new staff records that are created in the future.

Image above shows financial controls from the Business or Enterprise level products.

Learn more about the financial controls in Synergy.

Click here to watch a video about staff costs and charge-out rates.