WageTime is payroll for commercial grounds and HOA maintenance contractors: every hour and wage dollar lands on the contract that consumed it, so the fixed-fee account quietly eating extra crew hours surfaces months before renewal.
Commercial and industrial sites generated 53.72% of United States lawn care revenue in 2025, per Mordor Intelligence estimates. The payroll that serves that revenue looks nothing like a residential mow route’s, and the software pointed at it usually stops at an export file.
A commercial maintenance agreement bills the annual price in twelve identical installments while the labor underneath swings from dormant February to double-visit June. The client pays net 30 or 45 on top of that. Without labor cost pinned to each contract every month, the account that stopped earning its fee stays invisible until renewal, and renewal is the wrong day to learn it.
Commercial accounts live and die by scored walkthroughs: the property manager rates the beds, pins photos of bare turf, and issues a punch list. Every punch-list hour is unbilled labor against a fixed fee. If those hours don’t land on the contract’s job code, the walkthrough that saved the account also hid what it cost to keep.
A grounds contract on a federal facility pays by wage determination, occupation code by occupation code, with a health and welfare fringe line on top of the base rate and records an investigator can ask to see for three years. Winning the bid is the easy half. Paying a mixed crew by classification, week after week, is where the spreadsheet gives up.
Aspire job-costs every property visit to the minute and then generates the payroll file you export at the end of each week. BOSS LM ships export formats for outside payroll firms. Somewhere between the export and the paycheck, somebody re-keys hours, and the contract codes fall off exactly where they were supposed to pay off.
Property-management companies and HOA boards route vendors through credentialing portals: certificates of insurance checked against required limits, W-9s, workers’ comp verified before work orders release. The portal doesn’t run your payroll, but everything it checks rides on payroll records, and a contractor whose class-of-work documentation is a year-end reconstruction fails the check at the worst moment.
WageTime codes labor to the contract on every run: hours and wage dollars land on job-cost codes mirrored from your estimating system, so the fixed-fee account trending 12% over its estimate shows up while there’s still a season left to fix it.
| Contract | Hours | Labor cost |
|---|---|---|
| Stonebridge Commons HOABid estimate 232.0 hours | 261.5 | $5,459.00 |
| Gateway Office ParkBid estimate 168.0 hours | 154.0 | $3,214.00 |
| Riverwalk Retail CenterBid estimate 120.0 hours | 118.5 | $2,473.00 |
| Fed Center grounds (SCA)Bid estimate 96.0 hours | 96.0 | $2,916.00 |
Replaces discovering at renewal that the HOA’s punch lists ate the margin ten months ago.
A federal grounds contract pays by SCA classification off a wage determination, with health and welfare fringe on top. WageTime handles prevailing wage as an add-on, scoped and priced on the demo, and the three-year paper trail builds itself from archived runs.
Replaces pricing the federal bid off the base rate and eating the fringe line all year.
Snow riders, day-porter routes, and dormant pruning keep the same W-2 crew paid through February. WageTime tracks the benefits math that follows: the ACA’s seasonal carve-outs assume work that ends, so a crew employed twelve months is ordinary full-time staff.
| Employee | Avg hrs/wk | 1095-C |
|---|---|---|
| Luis M.Full-time, year-round | 41.2 | Ready |
| Dana K.Full-time, day porter | 38.6 | Ready |
| Pete S.Look-back, seasonal color | 22.4 | Measuring |
| Rosa T.Full-time, salaried | 40.0 | Ready |
Replaces finding out from a proposed-assessment letter what “seasonal” stopped meaning two years ago.
Seasonal color, mulch, irrigation repairs, and storm cleanup sell on top of the base contract. WageTime settles the account manager’s tiered commission inside the payroll run, computed from what was actually sold, next to the install crew’s hours on the same contract code.
| Account manager | Sale value | Commission |
|---|---|---|
| Rosa T.Seasonal color · Stonebridge | $18,400.00 | $552.00 (3%) |
| Rosa T.Irrigation repair · Gateway | $6,200.00 | $186.00 (3%) |
| Jamal W.Mulch install · Riverwalk | $9,750.00 | $487.50 (5%) |
| Jamal W.Storm cleanup · Stonebridge | $14,300.00 | $715.00 (5%) |
Replaces the quarter-end commission spreadsheet the account manager keeps “just in case yours is wrong.”
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 demoPut labor cost on the contract’s own job code, then read each month’s actual hours against what the bid assumed. WageTime codes labor to contracts and crews on every run, using code numbering mirrored from your estimating system, so a fixed-fee account trending over its hours shows up months before renewal.
$5.55 per hour, effective July 2025; the Labor Department revises the rate each summer, and it is payable in cash, bona fide benefits, or a mix. WageTime handles prevailing wage and fringe as an add-on, scoped and priced on the demo, with fringe tracked per worker as cash or against benefit plans.
Private HOA and office-park contracts don’t come with certified-payroll requirements; public work can. California pays routine public grounds maintenance under its own Landscape Maintenance Laborer determination with electronic certified payroll, and New Jersey requires certified payroll on public work. WageTime offers certified payroll as an add-on, scoped and priced on the demo, generated from the run itself.
We import clock hours so there’s no double entry. Tell us your system on the demo and we’ll confirm the exact flow for your setup, including how hours land against your contract codes. Crews without an ERP can punch on WageTime’s GPS-stamped, geofenced mobile clock, and approved hours flow straight into the run.
The seasonal carve-outs assume seasonal work: the IRS seasonal-worker exception looks at 120 or fewer days, and the seasonal-employee definition assumes customary employment of six months or less. A crew kept twelve months is ordinary full-time staff. WageTime tracks eligibility, hours of service, and affordability, and generates and e-files 1094-C and 1095-C forms.
Credentialing portals verify certificates of insurance, W-9s, and workers’ comp before work orders release, and everything they check rides on payroll documentation. WageTime keeps per-run archived records with hours and wages tagged to class-of-work job codes, so the COI, the comp audit, and the portal file all tell the same story.
The annual price of your biggest account, June’s hours from your ERP or time clock, and your crew list. Twenty minutes with a payroll specialist on a live demo company: you’ll see labor costed to the contract, a wage-determination week with the fringe itemized, and what the commission close looks like when it runs itself.
Book a 20-minute demo