I have “Use Estimates” setup in our environment. I just got off with Professional Services to solve some of the issues in our environment. I believe I just wasted an issue of my life but before I do tag this time as DOA I wanted to get the communities thoughts and understanding how it works and how it should work.
Could you all tell me how you all think it should work when you have the button checked on your resource groups?
When i asked our internal AI ChatBot which also uses Kinetic’s “Epicor Knowedge Agent” (an AI Agent built into the cloud), I got the following answer:
The Use Estimates checkbox controls how Kinetic distributes actual labor time when an employee is clocked into multiple operations at the same time.
When selected, Kinetic uses each operation’s estimated hours as the weighting basis for splitting the employee’s actual elapsed labor time across those concurrent operations.
In practical terms:
Actual labor time is apportioned by operation estimate, not split evenly and not necessarily assigned independently by clock duration.
An employee is clocked into two operations at the same time for 2 actual hours.
| Operation | Estimated Hours | Share of Estimate | Actual Labor Posted |
|---|---|---|---|
| Op A | 1 hour | 25% | 0.5 hours |
| Op B | 3 hours | 75% | 1.5 hours |
| Total | 4 hours | 100% | 2.0 hours |
Without Use Estimates, the distribution behavior depends on the burden/labor configuration and data collection logic, but Use Estimates specifically tells Kinetic to use the operation estimates as the apportionment driver.
It matters primarily in Data Collection / MES labor reporting, especially when:
The Epicor help text states that when an employee clocks into multiple operations on the same resource group, Kinetic uses the estimated hours on each operation to calculate how much actual labor time to place against each operation. It also says that if the employee is clocked into operations across different resource groups and one relevant group/resource is set to Use Estimates, Kinetic includes the operation estimates when applying labor against each operation.
The important distinction:
| Level | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Resource Group Use Estimates | Applies the estimate-based labor apportionment behavior for operations using that resource group. |
| Resource Use Estimates | Same concept, but at the specific resource level where applicable. |
The documentation is clearer and more explicit for Resource Group Maintenance than for individual Resource Maintenance. It also notes that Split Burden and Burden = Labor are resource group burden-hour behaviors, while Use Estimates is available regardless of whether burden is calculated using Split Burden or Burden = Labor.
It does not change the job’s estimated hours.
It does not change scheduling capacity by itself.
It does not recalculate production standards.
It does not mean “use estimates instead of actuals” globally.
It is specifically about how actual labor time gets distributed when concurrent labor activity exists.
What happens when the operations are in different resource groups?
I am also looking for feedback from users that are using this in their environment?
its actually the other way around… you have multiple operations that are assigned to the resource group.
but since you can have two (or more) resources on an operation, it would treat the charging differently depending on the resource and its setting.
Lets say resource 1 is the person, and you DO have the “Use Estimates” set.. but resource 2 is a machine and you DO NOT have it set… then if the person clocks into more than one job, it will use the estimate for the time, and not simply divide the time by 2 (which is the normal behaviour). Since the Machine is also clocked into more than one job, it will "split its time evenly since you didn’t tell it to use estimates.