Manufacturing: Accurate Time Tracking for High-Speed Production

Many manufacturers operate production lines where an individual operation for a single unit takes only a few seconds. This is common in high-speed and automated production environments, such as plastic molding, food and beverage packaging, electronics assembly, and garment or glove production. In these environments, precision is essential to accurately represent how work is planned, executed, and analyzed on the shop floor.

MYOB Acumatica 2026.1.1 supports entering, recording, storing, and reporting time in seconds across production, labor, and machine processes. Manufacturers can define operation times exactly as they occur, capture labor and machine usage with greater precision, and view planned, actual, and variance times in a format that aligns with real production behavior. This precision extends to labor costing, delivering a more accurate calculation of true production costs.

Support for Seconds in Time Formats

On the BOM Preferences (AM101000) form, the Operation Time Format and Total Time Format settings now let you select time formats that include seconds, as shown below. If you select a format that supports seconds, time values in manufacturing forms and reports are displayed with second-level precision.

Figure 1. New time formats


The following forms and reports show operation time in the selected time format:

When you create new bills of material, production orders, engineering change requests, or engineering change orders, the system applies your currently selected time format automatically, allowing you to work with seconds if your time format includes them.

Hard-Coded Support for Second-Level Labor Tracking

Regardless of the time format selected on the BOM Preferences (AM101000) form, your labor time is recorded and processed in seconds on the following forms:

If you’ve selected a minute-based time format on the BOM Preferences form, labor time is displayed in minutes on the following forms and reports:

Although minutes are the smallest units displayed in this case, the system continues to store and process time in seconds. As a result, costing and labor transactions are calculated with full second-level precision. Seconds are not rounded—they are simply hidden from view to match the selected format.

Time Storage and Cost Calculation in Seconds

All manufacturing time data—including operation times, labor times, and clock entries—is now stored in the database in seconds. Your selected time format controls how time is displayed on forms and reports, but all calculations are performed using second-level precision.

As a result, manufacturing costs are always calculated by using the exact operating time in seconds. This applies to:

  • Labor costs
  • Machine costs
  • Production order cost rollups and updates

Exceptions

On the Create Labor Time Activities (AM513000) form, labor time is rounded to whole minutes when activities are created, even if the original time was reported in seconds. If the recorded time is between 0 and 29 seconds, no value is displayed. This reflects how employee time activities are handled (only in minutes).