A private club is one employer running golf, grounds, dining, banquets, and seasonal crews, each on its own pay rule. WageTime runs every department on one EIN and blends the overtime when someone crosses.
No single pay rule fits a private club. The dining room runs on a service charge that is legally wages, the grounds crew doubles for the season, and the same person who mowed a fairway on Tuesday waits a wedding on Saturday. Each card below is either work the controller redoes by hand every month or a wage exposure building quietly under it.
Many clubs don’t allow member tipping and add a mandatory service charge to the dining and banquet bill instead. Because the club sets that amount, federal law counts it as wages, not a tip: no tip credit, and it has to enter the regular rate before overtime. It also stays outside the new tips deduction. Treat it like a tip and the overtime rate, the credit, and the W-2 all land wrong.
The club is a single legal entity, but golf operations, the turf crew, the dining room, banquets, the pool and tennis courts, and the office each pay on their own basis: salary, hourly, service charge, seasonal. Generic payroll wants one pay style per company, so the club ends up with a spreadsheet stapling the departments together.
Grounds, aquatics, and much of F&B ramp up for the season and wind down when it ends. Every spring is a bulk onboarding wave and every fall a bulk termination wave, and next spring most of them come back and get re-keyed from scratch.
Seasonal grounds and hospitality crews often come in on H-2B visas, which carry a prevailing-wage floor per classification and a guarantee to pay at least three-quarters of the hours you promised, rain or shine. That’s a pay rule the club’s regular payroll has no idea how to run.
A grounds worker who serves a Saturday wedding, a lifeguard who bartends, a pro-shop clerk on the beverage cart: one employee earning two rates in two departments. The banquet service-charge wages have to ride into the blended regular rate, and overtime settles on that blend, not on either rate alone.
A tax-exempt social club is still a full employer. The income-tax exemption doesn’t touch withholding, Social Security, or Medicare, and unlike a charity the club gets no break on federal unemployment tax. The exemption changes the club’s tax return, not its payroll.
A club service charge is wages, not a tip, and WageTime runs it that way: members don’t set the amount, so federal rules treat the house-set charge as a wage, outside the new qualified-tips deduction that reaches only voluntary tips.
Replaces the service charge run through the tip line by mistake, and the overtime rate and W-2 boxes that come out wrong when it is.
One EIN, six pay bases, one run: WageTime pays salaried pros, hourly turf, and service-charge dining as departments of a single company, and blends the overtime when one person works two of them in a week.
| Department | Reg + OT hrs | Dept gross |
|---|---|---|
| Golf operations12 people · salary + hourly | 410.0 + 3.0 OT | $9,850.00 |
| Grounds & turf22 people · hourly + H-2B | 902.0 + 41.0 OT | $19,240.00 |
| Food & beverage48 staff · svc chg + hourly | 1,540.0 + 22.0 OT | $31,180.00 |
| Banquets & events26 staff · svc chg + hourly | 848.0 + 18.5 OT | $17,905.00 |
| Racquet & aquatics18 people · hourly + seasonal | 470.0 + 2.0 OT | $8,120.00 |
| Administration8 people · salary | 320.0 + 0.0 OT | $11,540.00 |
Replaces a payroll that only understands one pay style, and the consolidation spreadsheet the controller keeps by hand to make the departments agree.
WageTime pays H-2B crews the prevailing wage their certification requires, an add-on scoped and priced on the demo, and keeps the records the three-quarters guarantee is measured against when weather cuts the week short.
| Employee | Prevailing rate | Make-up pay |
|---|---|---|
| Tomás R.Landscape laborer · 40.0/35.0h | $18.42 | - |
| Andrés V.Landscape laborer · 40.0/35.0h | $18.42 | - |
| Beatriz S.Irrigation tech · 32.0/35.0h | $21.10 | $63.30 |
| Camila O.Groundskeeper · 40.0/35.0h | $18.42 | - |
Replaces the prevailing-wage rates tracked on a side sheet, and the three-quarters guarantee nobody reconciles until an auditor asks.
The club’s twice-a-year churn becomes two bulk actions in WageTime: a spring cohort self-onboards from their own phones before the first shift, and the fall wind-down closes out in one pass instead of hundreds of packets.
| Department | Self-onboarded | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Grounds & turf6 new · 12 rehires | 18 of 18 | Ready |
| Food & beverage3 new · 15 rehires | 16 of 18 | 2 in progress |
| Racquet & aquatics5 new · 9 rehires | 14 of 14 | Ready |
| Banquets & events1 new · 3 rehires | 4 of 4 | Ready |
Replaces the spring packet pile and the fall termination one keyed by hand, and the returner onboarded from scratch every single year.
WageTime pulls dining punches off the club POS and grounds hours off the time clock into one review matched to the pay period, no double entry. Tell us your club-management system on the demo and we’ll confirm the exact flow for your setup.
| Department | Reg + OT hrs | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Food & beverage48 people matched | 1,540.0 + 22.0 OT | Ready |
| Banquets & events26 people matched | 848.0 + 18.5 OT | Ready |
| Grounds & turf22 people matched | 902.0 + 41.0 OT | 2 awaiting |
| Racquet & aquatics18 people matched | 470.0 + 2.0 OT | Ready |
| Golf operations12 people matched | 410.0 + 3.0 OT | Ready |
Replaces the export-reformat-upload ritual between the club POS, the grounds clock, and payroll every single cycle.
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 demoA club service charge is a wage, not a tip. A mandatory service charge is a house-set charge the member doesn’t choose, so federal rules treat it as wages. That means no tip credit is taken against it, it withholds like other pay, and it folds into the regular rate before overtime. WageTime carries it on its own wage earning code, separate from any voluntary tip line.
Yes. Because a distributed service charge is wages, it enters the regular rate used to figure time-and-a-half, so overtime built on the base hourly rate alone underpays. WageTime folds the service-charge wages into the weighted-average regular rate automatically, then applies the premium on the hours past forty.
No. The new tips deduction reaches only voluntary tips a customer chooses to leave, so mandatory service charges and automatic gratuities are not qualified tips. WageTime keeps service charges on a wage code and off the qualified-tips W-2 line, and reports any voluntary tips separately. Bring your reporting questions to the demo.
WageTime applies the prevailing wage as a location- and classification-specific rate per role, offered as an add-on scoped and priced on the demo. The crew earns at least the higher of the prevailing rate or the applicable minimum, and WageTime keeps the hours and pay records the H-2B three-quarters guarantee is measured against, running make-up pay as a pay code when a short week leaves someone under it.
Yes. A tax-exempt social club is still a full employer: the income-tax exemption doesn’t touch federal income-tax withholding, Social Security, or Medicare, and unlike a charity the club gets no federal-unemployment-tax break. WageTime files every federal, state, and local payroll tax automatically, deposits included, whatever the club’s tax status.
$50 per month per company, plus $10 per month per person paid that month. A club runs as one company on one EIN, so the 134-person club in these screens comes to $1,390 for the month: one $50 base plus $1,340 in per-person fees. No long-term contracts, runs are unlimited, and an off-cycle final check for a departing seasonal worker costs nothing extra.
Bring one week: the dining service charge, a grounds crew on prevailing wage, and the one person who worked two departments. Twenty minutes with a payroll specialist on a live demo club, and you’ll watch the service charge run as wages, the blended overtime settle, and every department close on one EIN.
Book a 20-minute demo