A collision estimate splits into body, refinish, frame, and mechanical hours at four rates, then grows a supplement the day teardown finds hidden damage. WageTime is payroll for body shops that pays each category to the tech who earned it.
Automotive body and related repairers are about 151,910 workers earning a median $48,740 a year, most of them in shops small enough that the estimator and the owner do payroll after the doors close. The hardest part isn’t the total hours. It’s that one repair order pays four kinds of labor at four rates, plus money that isn’t labor at all, and the spreadsheet in the middle gets it wrong.
A collision estimate breaks a job into body labor, refinish labor, frame or structural labor, and mechanical labor, each at its own door rate. The body tech is paid on body hours, the painter on refinish hours, the frame tech on structural hours. A payroll that sees one lump of “labor” pays the wrong person the wrong rate, and nobody catches it until a tech does.
Teardown finds the damage the adjuster couldn’t see, so a supplement adds hours to a repair order that’s already open, often after the original estimate and sometimes after the pay period closes. Those hours belong to whoever did the work, in the right week. Batch them into next month and you’ve shorted a tech; cut a side check and the bookkeeper untangles it in January.
Refinish hours generate two numbers: the painter’s labor and a paint-and-materials allowance billed as hours times a material rate. The allowance is shop revenue, not tech pay. Route a slice of it to the painter, as many shops do, and that slice is its own pay code, separate from labor, riding overtime like any earning. Blur the two and either the painter or the ledger is wrong.
On a heavy hit the A-tech, B-tech, and helper share the job, so the flat-rate hours split by fixed percentages: sixty, twenty-five, fifteen. One repair order becomes three pay lines at three rates. Done by hand, the percentages drift, the math stops tying to the estimate, and the crew stops trusting the check.
I-CAR Gold Class is a shop credential assembled from each role’s ProLevel training, with welding qualifications retested about every three years and OEM programs stacking aluminum and structural requirements on top. Let one tech’s welding cert lapse and the shop’s standing, and the pay tier tied to it, lapse with it. Right now that lives on a whiteboard.
In WageTime, each labor category on the estimate pays the tech who earned it, at that category’s own rate: body hours as a per-unit code at the body tech’s rate, refinish at the painter’s, frame and structural at the frame tech’s.
| Labor line | Hours | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Body laborMarco R. (body) · $32.00/hr | 18.5 | $592.00 |
| Refinish laborDana P. (painter) · $30.00/hr | 9.0 | $270.00 |
| Frame / structuralLeo T. (frame) · $38.00/hr | 4.5 | $171.00 |
| Mechanical laborSam W. (mech) · $28.00/hr | 2.0 | $56.00 |
Replaces the labor lump a generic payroll pays to one line, and the guess about which hours were body, paint, or frame.
Supplement hours attach in WageTime to the tech who did the work and pay in the right period: when a supplement lands after the close, it goes out on an off-cycle run at no extra cost, not next month’s check.
Replaces the supplement batched into next month’s check, and the side check the bookkeeper reconciles in January.
WageTime keeps the painter’s labor and the paint-and-materials allowance apart, and pays only the wage: refinish hours earn the painter’s rate, while the allowance, billed as hours times a material rate, stays shop revenue.
Replaces the paycheck that either pays the painter the whole materials line or forgets the cut he was promised.
Every cert lives on the tech’s record in WageTime, with the document attached and alerts before anything lapses: Gold Class rolls up each role’s ProLevel completions to the shop’s standing, and a pay tier tied to a cert stops the day the cert does.
| Tech | Expires | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Marco R.I-CAR ProLevel Struct · weld | renews Aug 20 | 30-day alert |
| Dana P.ASE B2 Refinish + ProLevel | May 2028 | Current |
| Leo T.OEM aluminum GMA welding | Sep 12 | 60-day alert |
| Sam W.ASE B5 Mechanical | card on file | Current |
Replaces the whiteboard of expiration dates, and the pay premium still running on a cert that lapsed last month.
DRP bonuses land in WageTime as pay codes that fold into the overtime regular rate: a bonus tied to a metric, cycle time, CSI, supplement rate, is generally nondiscretionary, so it rides the weighted-average math instead of sitting outside it.
| Person | Basis | Amount | OT treatment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marco R. | Cycle-time bonus | $180.00 | Into regular rate |
| Dana P. | CSI bonus (score 94) | $120.00 | Into regular rate |
| Carla M. (estimator) | Supplement-accuracy bonus | $150.00 | Into regular rate |
| Leo T. | Comeback rework | -$95.00 | Adjusted this period |
Replaces the KPI bonus paid outside overtime that a wage-hour auditor turns into back wages, and the comeback nobody reconciled.
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 demoEach labor category on the estimate runs as its own per-unit pay code at its own rate: body hours to the body tech, refinish hours to the painter, frame and structural hours to the frame tech, mechanical hours to the mechanical tech. On a crew job the flat-rate hours split by the percentages you set, so one repair order pays several techs and still adds back to the estimate.
Supplement hours attach to the tech who did the work and pay in the correct period. When they land after the pay period closes, they go out on an off-cycle run at no extra cost, because payroll runs are unlimited. If the hours belong to a week already paid, the weighted-average overtime rate recomputes on the true total and the minimum-wage floor is retested on actual clock hours.
On refinish hours. The paint-and-materials allowance, billed as refinish hours times a material rate, is shop revenue and stays out of the wage. If your plan gives the painter a cut of that allowance, WageTime pays the cut as its own pay code, separate from labor and folded into the overtime regular rate, with labor and the materials cut shown as separate lines on the stub.
Yes. Every credential sits on the tech’s record with the document attached and recurring 30, 60, and 90-day expiration alerts. Gold Class rolls up each role’s ProLevel completions, the welding qualification that renews about every three years is flagged before it lapses, and ASE B2 through B5 sit beside the OEM aluminum and structural programs. A pay tier tied to a cert binds to the credential with an effective date.
Yes. A bonus tied to a metric like cycle time, CSI, or supplement rate is nondiscretionary, so it folds into the weighted-average overtime regular rate rather than sitting beside it. WageTime runs each DRP bonus as a pay code and includes it in the overtime math automatically. Whether a specific plan is discretionary is a question for you and your counsel.
We import clock and flag hours so there’s no double entry, and hours code to jobs with cost codes up to 40 characters matched to your repair-order numbers. WageTime does not claim a direct integration with any estimating or management system; tell us whether you write on CCC, Mitchell, or Audatex on the demo and we’ll confirm the exact flow for your shop.
$50 a month for the company plus $10 per person actually paid that month: $130 for an eight-person shop, with unlimited runs, so supplement and off-cycle bonus runs cost nothing extra. Filings, W-2s, and 1099s are included. Run the shop and a separate detail or towing LLC? Each company keeps its own EIN, with one login and reporting per company or combined.
A recent estimate with body, refinish, and frame hours, the supplement that came after teardown, and your painter’s materials arrangement. Twenty minutes with a payroll specialist on a live demo shop: you’ll watch four labor categories land on four checks, a supplement run off-cycle, and the paint-materials line stay off the wage.
Book a 20-minute demo