Understanding types of labor

Article • 4/10/2026 • 1 min read

Labor is either direct or indirect:

Direct labor is any labor performed towards a job order.
Indirect labor is any labor that is not associated with a job order, such as time spent in meetings or on vacation.

Do not confuse indirect labor with the barcode F4 Clock-Off Indirect function. Use the barcode F4 Clock-Off function to record labor tasks like maintenance and compensated breaks.

Made2Manage processes direct labor as regular, serial, or parallel:

Regular labor processing records straight time spent working only one job over the time period.
Serial labor processing records time spent on several short-run operations. It calculates the amount of time spent on each job based on the quantity completed for each operation.
Parallel labor processing records time spent on more than one job simultaneously. The system then allocates the amount of time spent on each job.