WageTime is payroll for bookkeeping and tax preparation firms: the filing-season crew, the year-round bookkeepers, and the contract EA on 1099 settle in one payroll built for a roster that triples for the season and shrinks back to the core.
Bookkeeping and tax preparation firms run about 110,359 US establishments (BLS QCEW, Q4 2024: 72,578 bookkeeping and other accounting-services locations plus 37,781 tax-preparation offices), and most are small shops with a huge seasonal swing. The roster multiplies from late January through April 15, paid by the return, then shrinks back to the bookkeepers who keep the recurring clients on the books all year. Payroll built for a steady twelve-month headcount fits none of that.
A tax office hires a wave of preparers and front-desk staff for the January-April rush, then offboards most of them by May. Per-seat or per-run-priced payroll makes you pay for twelve months of a headcount you carry for three, and every seasonal hire and layoff is a fresh setup fee or a plan you forget to downgrade until the summer invoice arrives.
Preparers are rarely just hourly. The pay is a per-return amount, or a percentage of the prep fee, or an hourly base plus a season-end bonus tied to volume. That incentive is nondiscretionary, so it re-prices every overtime hour of a 55-hour filing week, and a spreadsheet that adds the bonus after the fact quietly underpays the overtime it should have lifted.
There is no seasonal exemption from overtime. A seasonal preparer or bookkeeper working nights and Saturdays through March is a non-exempt employee owed time and a half, and the busy-season crunch is exactly where unpaid overtime turns into a wage claim in May. Calling the job temporary changes nothing about the hours you owe.
Every paid preparer needs a valid PTIN on every return, and PTINs expire December 31, right before the season. Non-credentialed preparers need the Annual Filing Season Program record; enrolled agents renew on their own three-year clock. Miss one and that preparer legally cannot touch a return on day one, and nobody notices until the schedule is already full.
The PTIN is just the federal floor. California preparers renew CTEC registration by October 31, New York preparers register for a NYTPRIN every year, Oregon licenses its preparers through a state board, and Maryland, Connecticut, Nevada, and Illinois each add their own rule. A firm with preparers in three states is tracking three different renewal calendars per person.
Underneath the surge is a steady bookkeeping business: a handful of full-time bookkeepers on recurring monthly clients, paid the same in July as in March. When the seasonal crew and the year-round core share one payroll, telling what the tax season actually cost versus what the book of monthly clients costs is a reconstruction nobody has time to do.
How do you run payroll for an office that goes from five people to twenty and back in four months? The season staffs in bulk, offboards in one pass, and WageTime bills only the people you actually pay each month.
| Month | People paid | Company cost |
|---|---|---|
| Decembersteady core | 5 | $100.00 |
| January+7 onboarded | 12 | $170.00 |
| March+9 onboarded | 21 | $260.00 |
| May-15 offboarded | 6 | $110.00 |
Replaces the twelve-month per-seat plan you pay through a summer when half those seats are empty.
How do you pay a base plus so much per return and still get overtime right? The per-return incentive runs as a pay code, folded straight into the overtime rate by WageTime, so a 55-hour March week prices on what the preparer actually earned.
Replaces the season-end spreadsheet that pays the per-return bonus but never re-prices the overtime it should have lifted.
How do you make sure the whole crew can legally prepare a return on day one? Every preparer’s PTIN, AFSP or enrolled-agent status, and state registration live on the employee record in WageTime, alerted on each person’s own clock before the season opens.
| Preparer | Credential | Next deadline |
|---|---|---|
| Dana WhitfieldTX, none required | PTIN + EA, renews 2027 | 45 days |
| Marco ReyesCTEC (CA), CE due Oct 31 | PTIN + AFSP record | Action needed |
| Aisha PatelNYTPRIN (NY) | PTIN + AFSP record | Renewal filed |
| Priya ShahOregon LTP | PTIN + EA, renews 2026 | EA CE 54 of 72 hrs |
Replaces the sticky-note check every December of who still has to renew a PTIN before the season starts.
What does the season cost, and what does the year-round book of business cost? One payroll answers both, in WageTime: bookkeepers on recurring monthly clients land on one service line, the seasonal 1040 crew on another, kept cleanly apart from the client work you run.
| Service line | People & hours | Labor cost |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly bookkeeping BOOK | 5 people, 1,040 hrs | $28,600.00 |
| Individual tax prep 1040-SEASON | 12 people, 1,880 hrs | $46,120.00 |
| Business tax & advisory BIZ-TAX | 4 people, 620 hrs | $21,700.00 |
| Payroll & office admin ADMIN | 2 people, 300 hrs | $7,500.00 |
Replaces the April guess where someone blends every wage into one number and calls it the cost of the season.
Full-service payroll is $10 a month per person paid that month, plus $50 a month per company, with unlimited runs. No long-term contracts, no per-run charges.
Off-cycle runs and bonuses cost nothing extra. No long-term contracts; cancel anytime.
Example: 50 people paid × $10 + $50 company = $550 for the month
HR & hiring, onboarding, PTO, time tracking, benefits, and workers’ comp are optional add-ons, priced separately when you’re ready.
See a demoBring the crew on with bulk onboarding, and self-onboarding with e-signatures and electronic I-9. Run payroll as often as the season needs, because runs are unlimited. When April closes, the bulk termination wizard offboards the wave and keeps the records for next year’s rehire. You pay $10 per person paid that month, so the bill shrinks when the roster does.
A per-return amount runs as a per-unit pay code and a percentage of fees settles through tiered commission structures, in the same run as the hourly base. Because both are nondiscretionary, WageTime folds them into the weighted-average overtime rate, so a busy-week overtime hour is priced on what the preparer actually earned, not the base alone.
Generally no. There is no seasonal exemption from FLSA overtime, and most seasonal preparers and bookkeepers are non-exempt hourly employees owed time and a half for the long filing-season weeks. Whether any specific role qualifies for an exemption is your and your advisors’ call. WageTime tracks the hours with attestation and computes the overtime automatically.
Yes. Each preparer’s PTIN, Annual Filing Season Program record, or enrolled-agent status lives on the employee record with 30/60/90-day expiration alerts. Because a PTIN expires December 31 and an EA renews on a three-year cycle, alerts fire on each person’s own clock, surfacing a lapse before the season opens rather than after the schedule fills.
Yes. State registrations (a California CTEC renewal due October 31, an annual New York NYTPRIN, an Oregon license) are tracked as recurring, per-state compliance tasks with their own deadlines and alerts. WageTime records the dates; whether a person may lawfully prepare a return is the state’s and the IRS’s determination, not a payroll outcome.
$50 a month for the company plus $10 for each person actually paid that month. A four-person off-season month is $90; a twenty-person March is $250. Runs are unlimited, so weekly season payroll and the season-end bonus run cost nothing extra. No long-term contracts, and you cancel anytime.
The March week with the whole crew on overtime, the per-return bonuses, the preparer whose PTIN lapsed, and the bookkeepers who never slowed down: bring it. Twenty minutes with a payroll specialist on a live demo firm, and you’ll watch a filing-week run price the per-return incentive into overtime, a credential board flag who is not season-ready, and labor split between the books and the season.
Book a 20-minute demo