Construction pays weekly: required on federal jobs, expected everywhere else. Add a final check on a Tuesday, a make-up run after a rain week, a bonus when the job closes early, and per-run pricing turns your cadence into a fee schedule. WageTime is $50 a month per company plus $8 per person paid that month, with unlimited runs. And when the job is public, the WH-347 comes off the run you already ran: a construction add-on, scoped and priced on the demo, not a quote-only specialist priced for much bigger firms.
A contractor’s payroll isn’t complicated because the math is exotic. It’s complicated because it happens every single week, across trades, across county lines, with a workforce that changes mid-job.
Generic providers price per payroll run: fine for an office that pays twice a month, punishing for a contractor who pays 52 times a year plus final checks and job-close bonuses. The cadence is non-negotiable. The fee schedule shouldn’t be either.
Win a public job and payroll grows a second job: weekly certified reports, per-classification base-plus-fringe rates, and a signed statement someone personally certifies. The specialists who live in this world are quote-only, and priced for firms much bigger than a crew or three.
A carpenter forms up Monday at one rate and rides the laborer rate Thursday at another. Under the federal default rule, that week’s overtime comes out of a blended regular rate across everything worked, and the Friday spreadsheet gets it wrong in both directions.
The crew punches in ClockShark, ExakTime, busybusy, or QuickBooks Time, and every Thursday someone exports the week and re-types it into payroll. Worse: after the re-key, the hours land with no job number attached, so the next bid gets priced on a guess.
This month it’s a job across the state line and a municipality with its own occupational tax. Every jurisdiction the payroll touches wants its own filing, on its own calendar, with a deposit deadline the office has to discover before the agency does.
The hourly crew runs through payroll while subs get paid from accounts payable: two systems, two schedules, and a January scramble to reconstruct a year of sub payments into 1099s.
Every one of these gets a real answer below, the public-work one included.
Certified payroll is a WageTime construction add-on (scoped and priced on the demo, not silently bundled), and it works off the run itself: WH-347 reports generated from the payroll you already processed, with job-costing segments, for federal public work. Prevailing-wage rules apply per classification, project- and location-specific, with fringe payable as cash or against bona fide benefit plans. A worker who splits classifications mid-week is exactly the case it’s built for.
| Worker | Classification | Base + fringe | Hours | Gross |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Miguel A. | Cement Mason | $31.40 + $9.85 | 40.0 | $1,256.00 |
| Tom B. | Carpenter | $33.10 + $10.20 | 38.5 | $1,274.35 |
| Dre W. | Laborer, Group 1 | $24.75 + $7.60 | 40.0 | $990.00 |
| Sarah K. | Power Equipment Operator | $36.20 + $11.05 | 36.0 | $1,303.20 |
| Alex R. | Carpenter | $33.10 + $10.20 | 40.0 | $1,324.00 |
Replaces the quote-only certified-payroll specialist, and the Sunday night spent re-typing the week into a federal form.
WageTime is $50 per month per company plus $8 per person paid that month. That’s the whole bill for the base platform. Payroll runs are unlimited, and off-cycle runs and bonuses cost nothing extra, so a final check goes out the day someone leaves, and a job-close bonus pays the week the job closes, not whenever the calendar permits.
| Run | Type | People paid | Net pay |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fri Jun 5 | Weekly | 14 | $18,940.00 |
| Fri Jun 12 | Weekly | 15 | $19,875.00 |
| Fri Jun 19 | Weekly | 15 | $20,110.00 |
| Fri Jun 26 | Weekly | 13 | $17,630.00 |
| Mon Jun 29 | Off-cycle (final check) | 1 | $1,120.00 |
Replaces the per-run line items on the payroll invoice, and the math on whether a departing worker’s final check can wait until Friday.
When someone works two or more rates or classifications in one week, WageTime computes overtime on the weighted-average regular rate automatically: the blended-rate math for mixed weeks, done in the run instead of a side spreadsheet. A carpenter-Monday, laborer-Thursday week comes out as one correct paycheck, with the overtime premium itemized where the worker can see it.
| Line | Hours | Rate | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cement Mason · Job 2201 | 30.0 | $30.00 | $900.00 |
| Laborer · Job 2188 | 15.0 | $24.00 | $360.00 |
| Blended regular rate | 45.0 total | $28.00 | - |
| Overtime premium | 5.0 OT hrs | 0.5 × $28.00 | $70.00 |
| Per diem · non-taxable code | 4 nights | $120.00 | $480.00 |
Replaces the blended-rate spreadsheet, and the argument about it.
Crews clock in on their phones at the jobsite: every punch carries a GPS stamp, geofenced to a radius you set per site, with a map view of where the week actually happened. Hours land in payroll already coded to the job: cost codes up to 40 characters, adjustable to the codes your bids already use, with labor cost reported by project and crew. Already running a time app? 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.
| Job | Crew | Hours | Labor cost | Punches |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2201 · Maple St office build-out | 4 crew | 118.0 | $3,481.00 | In geofence |
| 2214 · Kestrel Ridge Elementary (public) | 3 crew | 96.5 | $2,988.20 | In geofence |
| 2188 · Warehouse TI punch list | 2 crew | 22.0 | $587.40 | 1 outside geofence |
Replaces the rained-on timesheets, the Thursday-night re-key, and the zero-dollar-check workaround that pretends the books can job-cost labor.
Crews go where the work is, and every jurisdiction the payroll touches wants its filing and its deposit on its own calendar. WageTime files every federal, state, and local tax automatically, deposits included, not just the quarterly forms. Work and home addresses are geolocated to the rooftop and matched against 11,000+ local jurisdictions, with state reciprocity and withholding overrides for crews that cross the line daily. New-state registration stays a one-time step on your side; we’ll walk through what’s needed on the demo, and every filing and deposit after it runs on the agency’s calendar automatically.
| Jurisdiction | Filing | Period | Amount | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Federal | Form 941 + deposits | Q2 | $38,214.60 | Filed |
| Ohio | State withholding | Q2 | $6,480.25 | Filed |
| Kentucky | State withholding | Q2 | $2,112.40 | Filed |
| Columbus, OH | Local withholding | Q2 | $1,206.80 | Filed |
| Covington, KY | Occupational license fee | Q2 | $487.15 | Filed |
Replaces the folder of agency logins and the deposit-deadline sticky notes, one per state and city you’ve ever poured in.
Yes. Certified payroll is a construction add-on: WH-347 reports are generated from the payroll run with job-costing segments for federal public work, and prevailing-wage rules apply per classification, project- and location-specific, with fringe as cash or against bona fide benefit plans. It’s scoped and priced on the demo, so bring your wage determination and your last certified report.
Union payroll runs as an add-on: multiple unions, locals, and classifications, with dues checkoff, fringe calculations, and fund contribution handling inside the payroll workflow instead of a spreadsheet rebuilt every remittance cycle. Bring your CBA rate sheet and fringe-fund list to the demo and we’ll scope and price it against your actual locals.
On the blended rate, automatically. When someone works two or more rates or classifications in a week, WageTime computes overtime on the weighted-average regular rate: in the run, not a side spreadsheet. Bring one real split week to the demo and see it run, down to the paystub the worker would see.
We import clock hours so there’s no double entry. Tell us your time-clock app on the demo and we’ll confirm the exact flow for your setup, including how hours land against your job codes. No time app? Crews can punch on WageTime’s own GPS-stamped mobile clock instead.
Yes. Workforce modules built for a crew business: equipment and tool tracking (assignment, returns, and paycheck deductions where state law permits), safety training assigned and tracked with completion records, crew scheduling with conflict safeguards, labor-law poster compliance, and on-demand HR legal support. Which of these fit your operation, and how they’re packaged, is a demo conversation.
$50 per month per company, plus $8 per person paid that month, with unlimited runs: 52 Fridays cost the same as 26, and off-cycle checks and bonuses are at no extra cost. Certified payroll and union payroll are add-ons, scoped and priced on the demo; same conversation for the workforce modules. Switching is full-service and paid; we’ll scope the effort and timing so you can pick a sane cutover week.
One week of timesheets, your sub list, and the states and cities you worked in, and if you do public work, your latest wage determination. Twenty minutes with a payroll specialist on a live demo company: you’ll see the run, the WH-347, the filings, and the invoice math.
Book a 20-minute demo