Generating estimates and purchase orders
Warning
Pre-Requisite: Rate cards for internal users and/or rate cards for LSPs are required. It is also recommended to generate estimates with dummy users. Please contact your XTM administrators and project managers can set these up.
Tip
A purchase order can only be created after an estimate has been generated.
Tip
This procedure is also used to determine how much to pay linguists after a project is completed, as long as the project wasn't updated during its life cycle.
Select a project from the project list, and open its project editor.
From the left-hand side menu, click on the Estimates tab.
From the frame that just opened, click on the Costs tab.
From the Generate costs based on the drop-down, select the report type based on the information indicated below:
Tip
Statistics always show current data, while metrics can show either initial or current data. This is described here.
Statistics (current), metrics (initial), and current metrics options are described here.
Selecting Source and target will calculate based on the number of words/characters in the segments (source text) or the number of words/characters in the translations for each segment (target) accordingly.
Any time selections use the hours worked per step as entered by a project manager or linguist here, in addition to the automatically generated costs.
Tip
To generate time-based estimates enter the approximate hours the assignee is expected to work in the workflow, and then replace this figure with the number of hours worked after a project has been completed.
Optionally select a Dummy assignee, with the following options:
Tip
If no Dummy user is selected then calculations are based on the rate cards. of the linguists or LSPs assigned to each workflow step, for each file, and for each language.
Select Where no assignment or for the entire workflow from the dropdown where:
entire workflow calculates the cost for all workflow steps using the rates of the dummy user's rate card.
Where no assignment calculates the cost for all workflow steps based on the individual linguist's rate cards and uses the dummy users' rate cards for those steps where linguists are not yet assigned.
Tip
There is no need to assign a dummy user to a workflow step in order to use any of these two options.
Check both or either of the following options: Use zeros for missing rates , Use zeros for missing time.
Note
If these boxes are unchecked, estimates will generate errors If any rate cards, linguist assignments, or time-sheet entries are missing, resulting in these estimates not counting any words for workflow steps with missing assignments.
Tip
If these boxes are unchecked, anyworkflow step with missing assignments will be considered along with the respective word count but will show a cost of 0.
Click on the Generate button to build the report.
The report will be added to the list below the Filter by section.
Note
If the report does not appear, refresh the screen by selecting a different filter from the cost type drop-down list (choose the all option if estimates still don't appear), or enter a PO Number if applicable (instructions to generate POs will be shown further down this procedure).
To view the estimate, simply double-click on it or click the
icon and select View.When the estimate is opened, clicking on the
icon will provide the following PO generation options:Generate PO (Generates a PO with default settings) and download the PO as a pdf file.
Generate custom PO (Allows for customization of the default settings), and download the PO as a pdf file.
Email PO to linguists (Emails a PO with the default settings to the assigned linguists).
To delete the estimate click the
icon and select delete.If an estimate contains errors due to step 5b, then click on the
icon and select confirm costs. This will remove the error warning and provide a note explaining that these costs were approved despite having errors (The exact errors will be listed). Word counts will remain unaffected.