WageTime is payroll for consulting firms: the booked, the benched, and the freelance settle in one run, and every billable hour finally carries a real cost, coded to the engagement instead of a blended rate.
Management, scientific, and technical consulting runs about 425,260 US establishments (BLS QCEW, Q4 2024), and most are small: a few principals, a bench of consultants, an analyst or two, and one contractor you keep on speed dial. Delivery firms target 70-85% billable utilization, yet the professional-services average sat near 66-69% in 2024-2025 (SPI / industry benchmarks). Every point under target is salary you paid and could not bill, and generic payroll never shows you where it went.
Your senior consultants likely qualify for the administrative exemption: DOL rules name advisers who study a client’s operations and recommend changes. The first-year “analyst” building decks and cleaning data to a manager’s spec may be doing production work, which is non-exempt no matter what the business card says. The exemption turns on duties and a salary floor, not the title, and the same person can be billable all week and still owed overtime.
Utilization tells you what an hour earned. It says nothing about the salary you paid the consultant who spent the week between engagements. On generic payroll the benched consultant and the fully-booked one look identical, so the cost of an under-sold week disappears into one gross-pay number instead of landing on the engagement that should have absorbed it.
Firms routinely report engagement profitability off a single blended cost rate applied to everyone, which treats a principal’s hour and an analyst’s hour as the same money. A partner-heavy fixed-fee project and a leverage-heavy one look alike on that math, and the bench absorbed against either never shows up at all.
Consulting compensation is heavily variable, and some firms tie bonus payouts to hitting utilization thresholds. A bonus promised for hitting a target is nondiscretionary under federal rules, so for a non-exempt analyst it factors into the regular rate and re-prices every overtime hour in the period. That is the calculation someone reconstructs in April, long after the checks went out.
Your team flies to the client, works six weeks on-site in another state, and takes the next engagement two states over. Each creates registration and withholding where the work happens, and the hybrid analyst splitting weeks between a New Jersey home and a New York client site can owe both. Per diem and travel land on the same checks, and a downtown home office adds a municipal wage tax nobody set up.
How do you pay a firm whose people are booked, benched, and freelance in the same two weeks? WageTime settles all three in one run, W-2s and 1099s included at year-end, with the benched consultant paid in full and flagged, not buried.
Replaces the spreadsheet where the commission tab, the contractor invoices, and the “who was on the bench” note never agree with the register.
What did that engagement really cost to staff? WageTime prices it from the payroll you actually ran: each hour coded to the engagement at the person’s real cost, so a principal’s hour and an analyst’s hour stop looking like the same money.
| Engagement / code | Consultants | Hours | Labor cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aldridge Retail ops review ALDR-OPS | 4 | 196.0 | $11,270.00 |
| Northwind Health strategy NRTH-STRAT | 3 | 142.5 | $9,120.00 |
| Pemberton Fund diligence PEMB-DD | 2 | 88.0 | $6,160.00 |
| Bench / internal BENCH-INT | 2 | 74.0 | $4,255.00 |
Replaces the quarterly ritual where someone multiplies headcount by a blended rate, calls it project cost, and quietly leaves the bench out.
Are your consultants exempt from overtime? The senior advisers usually are; the analyst doing production work to a manager’s spec may not be, and a target-based utilization bonus can re-price a non-exempt week’s overtime; WageTime keeps that math automatic and the hours defensible.
Replaces the April true-up when someone finally counts the overtime the two-rate weeks were owed.
Which state do you withhold for when a consultant spends six weeks on the client’s site two states away? WageTime resolves it from home and work-site addresses, with effective-dated setup that comes online the week the engagement starts and off when it ends.
| Person | Home / work site | Setup applied | State |
|---|---|---|---|
| M. Webb on-site | Austin TX · Columbus OH site | Work-state withholding, OH | OH |
| P. Anand remote | Austin TX | No state income tax | TX |
| D. Cole hybrid | Hoboken NJ · NY client site | NY withholding, NJ credit tracked | NY |
| R. Singh traveling | Denver CO · Chicago IL, 6-week | IL setup effective on assignment | IL |
Replaces the year-end surprise that starts with “our consultant was on-site in Ohio all spring” and ends with a stack of registration forms.
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 demoOften, but not automatically. DOL rules cover employees who advise clients on their operations and recommend changes, on a salary basis above the federal floor ($684 per week after the 2024 increase was vacated). Whether a specific role qualifies turns on its actual duties, which is your call with counsel. WageTime tracks hours with attestation and locking for anyone non-exempt and computes overtime automatically.
Possibly. Exemption depends on duties, not the title on the card: an analyst whose work is production (building models and decks to a manager’s spec) can be non-exempt even when billed to clients. The determination is yours to make. In WageTime, non-exempt analysts run with attested, lockable timesheets, and overtime computes on the weighted-average regular rate.
For non-exempt staff, it can. A bonus promised for hitting a utilization or hours target is nondiscretionary under DOL rules, so it factors into the regular rate used to price overtime; whether a given bonus belongs there is your advisor’s call, not WageTime’s. In WageTime the bonus runs as a pay code in the same run, and weighted-average overtime on multi-rate and multi-role weeks computes automatically, so the hours math is in one place instead of an April spreadsheet.
WageTime codes hours and pay to engagement and phase codes (up to 40 alphanumeric characters, adjustable to your numbering), so labor cost reports per engagement from actual payroll rather than one blended rate. The bench you absorb against internal time shows as its own line, so a fixed-fee engagement’s real staffing margin is visible before you scope the next one.
Generally you withhold where the work physically happened, and a hybrid schedule can trigger more than one state. WageTime resolves it from home and work-site addresses, geolocated to rooftop level across 11,000+ local jurisdictions, with effective-dated setup that starts when the on-site engagement starts and files in every state and locality automatically.
$50 a month for the company plus $10 for each person actually paid that month: 15 people paid is $200 in a normal month. Runs are unlimited, so a semi-monthly cadence, the mid-project spot bonus, and the quarter-end utilization payout all cost exactly what the formula says. No long-term contracts; cancel anytime.
The utilization tiers, the analyst you’re not sure is exempt, the SME on 1099, and the engagement whose margin never quite adds up. Twenty minutes with a payroll specialist on a live demo company: you’ll see a mixed W-2 and 1099 run, overtime priced on a bonus-loaded regular rate, and labor cost coded to your engagements.
Book a 20-minute demo