Piece rate is this trade’s default way to pay, and federal enforcement keeps proving how often the overtime math fails. WageTime pays drywall and insulation crews the boards, the feet, and the hours on one check, every week.
Drywall and insulation payroll fails in trade-specific ways: pay that counts boards and feet while the law counts hours, crews on a labor broker’s paper, and energy-funded work that arrives with a wage determination stapled to it.
In January 2025 the Labor Department took a $7.45 million consent judgment against Phoenix drywall companies that paid 1,400+ workers piece rates with the overtime moved out of sight: split across straight-time checks, routed through labor brokers as cash. Five months later a Las Vegas contractor paid $824,276 for 680 painters, hangers, and tapers. Same trade, same math.
The hang crew is on nine-dollar boards. The finishers are per foot, and the Level 5 ceilings pay better than the Level 4 field. The stock kid is hourly. One worker can touch all three in a week, and overtime is defined by everything earned divided by every hour worked: arithmetic a spreadsheet gets wrong quietly.
Half the hands on your job came from a labor broker as 1099s, but you set the hours, the rates, and the schedule. States keep fining drywall companies for exactly that pattern, and federal investigators walked straight through the broker in the Phoenix case. The paper doesn’t decide; the working relationship does.
Weatherization Assistance Program contracts on buildings of five or more units carry Davis-Bacon wage determinations, and builders chasing federal energy incentives now ask insulation subs for prevailing-wage records on private jobs too. That’s weekly certified payroll landing on a crew that has never filed one.
The trade’s arithmetic runs as WageTime pay codes: hangers earn per sheet, finishers per square foot, stock and shop time hourly, and the week settles into one check with overtime on the blended regular rate.
Replaces the board tally that becomes a paycheck only after someone survives the math.
The drywall cases the Labor Department publicizes move overtime somewhere cheaper; WageTime closes those doors by default: each worker is one employee on one check, with overtime computed in the week it was worked.
Replaces the second checkbook, the banked-hours notebook, and the records that collapse when an investigator starts counting.
Labor Code 226.2 is why these columns exist: WageTime runs per-unit piece lines with hourly rest-and-recovery and nonproductive lines beside them, all on one check, each itemized as its own line on the stub.
Replaces the California wage statement drafted in a spreadsheet, line by nervous line.
Weatherization Assistance Program jobs on buildings of five or more units carry Davis-Bacon wage determinations. WageTime’s certified payroll add-on, scoped and priced on the demo, builds the WH-347 off the payroll you already ran.
| Worker | Hours | Gross |
|---|---|---|
| Irene S. · Laborer (Residential)$19.75 base + $5.90 fringe | 40.0 | $790.00 |
| Colin B. · Laborer (Residential)$19.75 base + $5.90 fringe | 38.0 | $750.50 |
| Yusuf A. · Laborer (Residential)$19.75 base + $5.90 fringe | 40.0 | $790.00 |
| Dana W. · Carpenter$27.40 base + $8.10 fringe | 24.0 | $657.60 |
Replaces the wage-determination binder and the crew’s week retyped into a federal form.
To a comp auditor a hang-and-spray shop is two class codes, and payroll that can’t split the hours gets the year priced at the higher rate. WageTime codes every hour to a job and cost code, so each trade’s hours keep their own bucket.
| Comp class | Hours | Payroll |
|---|---|---|
| 5445Wallboard hang & finish | 6,240 | $196,560.00 |
| 5479Insulation installation | 2,180 | $56,462.00 |
| 8810Office & estimating | 1,040 | $28,600.00 |
Replaces the one-bucket payroll the comp auditor prices at the drywall rate, and the fit-test dates in a glovebox notebook.
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 demoYes. Piece pay never waives the workweek: the regular rate is everything earned that week divided by hours worked, with a half-time premium on hours past forty. WageTime pools per-sheet, per-foot, and hourly earnings into that calculation automatically and itemizes the premium on the stub.
Paying banked overtime back later as straight-time days off is the pattern behind the trade’s biggest recent penalties: a Las Vegas contractor paid $824,276 after investigators found piece-rate crews’ overtime banked that way. WageTime computes the premium in the week the hours happened and pays it on that week’s check.
Labor Code 226.2 requires rest and recovery periods and other nonproductive time paid separately from piece earnings and itemized on the wage statement. WageTime runs hourly and per-unit pay codes side by side on one check, each as its own itemized line. How the rules apply to your crews is a question for you and your counsel.
Often. Weatherization Assistance Program work on multifamily buildings of five or more units carries Davis-Bacon wage determinations, and energy-incentive projects increasingly require prevailing-wage records. WageTime’s certified payroll add-on, scoped and priced on the demo, generates WH-347 reports from the run; bring your determination to the demo and we’ll walk through it.
Yes. Hours code to jobs and cost codes up to 40 characters, so wallboard and insulation hours accumulate under their own workers’ comp classes for the audit. SPFA certification levels, respirator fit tests, and medical evaluations sit on each installer’s record with 30, 60, and 90-day expiration alerts.
$50 per month per company plus $10 per person paid that month, with unlimited runs: weekly checks, final checks, and job-close bonuses at no extra cost. Certified payroll and union payroll are add-ons, scoped and priced on the demo. Switching is full-service and paid; we’ll scope the cutover with you.
Last week’s tallies (sheets hung, footage finished, hours on the clock), your rate card, and the states you work in; if there’s a weatherization or public job on the books, the wage determination too. Twenty minutes with a payroll specialist on a live demo company: the piece week runs, the premium itemizes, and the price is on the screen.
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