WageTime is payroll for engineering firms: salaried exempt engineers and the non-exempt techs, drafters, and crews beside them settle in one run, with every hour coded to the project so your direct labor stays audit-clean.
Engineering services runs about 101,000 US establishments (BLS QCEW, NAICS 541330), and the small ones carry a payroll no generic tool expects: a few licensed engineers who are exempt, a bench of technicians and drafters who are not, a field crew that clocks overtime at the jobsite, and a project list split between private clients and publicly funded infrastructure. Every one of those facts changes how a check is built.
The FLSA names engineering as a learned profession, so a degreed PE or a graduate EIT doing engineering work is generally exempt above the federal salary floor. The CAD drafter, survey technician, and field inspector next to them usually are not: the learned-professional test wants advanced knowledge from a prolonged course of specialized instruction, and technician roles rarely meet it. The overtime exposure lives inside your own engineering team.
Win a DOT or municipal project and the field classifications on it can fall under Davis-Bacon prevailing wages, paid by the work actually performed and certified weekly on a WH-347 signed under penalty of perjury. Whether a given survey-crew member or inspector is even covered is a question of fact, not job title, so the answer changes job to job while the certified payroll is still due at the end of the week.
If you bill state DOTs or federal agencies, your FAR Part 31 overhead rate is allowable indirect cost divided by total direct labor, and a FAR audit tests the payroll system itself for a clean split. When technician hours land in the wrong pool or PTO gets coded to a project, the rate that prices every government contract is wrong, and the auditor finds it.
Your ability to seal drawings depends on live PE licenses, and licensure is maintained, not earned once: most state boards want continuing professional development hours every renewal cycle, and engineers who stamp across state lines carry several licenses at once. A lapsed license or a short PDH count is a project-stopping surprise when it is tracked in someone’s inbox.
Survey parties and inspectors are at the site, not the office, and their hours arrive as texts, notebooks, and Monday-morning memory. Reconstructed field time is where prevailing-wage classifications get blurred, overtime gets missed, and project labor cost stops tying to anything real.
Phases, tasks, and billing rates sit in your project accounting or ERP system, feeding invoices and utilization. Then someone re-enters the same hours for payroll and again for job cost, and the three numbers stop agreeing by the second project.
Are your salaried engineers exempt and your technicians not? Usually yes, and WageTime runs both in the same payroll without pretending they are the same: PEs and EITs salaried, the drafters and field crews hourly with overtime priced automatically.
Replaces the spreadsheet where someone decides at 5 p.m. Friday whether the new tech should have been on overtime all along.
Do you owe prevailing wages on a federally funded project? On covered work, yes, by classification rather than job title: WageTime’s certified-payroll add-on, scoped and priced on the demo, generates the WH-347 from the run you already processed.
Replaces the Friday-night exercise of rebuilding a week of prevailing-wage hours by classification from field notes.
How does payroll support your FAR overhead-rate audit? By keeping the labor base clean before the auditor asks: every hour coded direct to a project or indirect to an overhead pool, per person, every pay period.
| Project / cost code | Type | Hours | Labor cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| SR-14 Bridge DOT-SR14 | Direct | 320.0 | $11,840.00 |
| Cedar Creek WWTP ENV-CCWW | Direct | 268.5 | $10,472.00 |
| Northgate Site Plan LD-NRTH | Direct | 152.0 | $6,080.00 |
| Business development OH-BD | Indirect | 44.0 | $2,860.00 |
| PTO & holiday OH-PTO | Indirect | 36.0 | $1,980.00 |
Replaces the annual scramble to re-sort a year of timesheets into direct and indirect before the overhead-rate audit.
How do you get honest hours from a crew that is never in the office? WageTime’s mobile time clock GPS-stamps every punch at the jobsite, and approved field hours flow into the run already coded to the project and classification.
| Crew member | Jobsite (geofence) | In / out | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| T. Muñoz | SR-14 Bridge | 06:58 / 15:32 | 8.1 |
| D. Reyes | SR-14 Bridge | 07:02 / 15:30 | 8.0 |
| K. Abara | Cedar Creek WWTP | 07:45 / 16:20 | 8.1 |
| L. Chen | Northgate Site | 08:05 / 14:40 | 6.3 |
Replaces the text messages and notebook pages a project coordinator turns into a timesheet on Monday morning.
Can you see every PE license and PDH count before one lapses? In WageTime, each stamp lives on the employee record on its own state’s renewal clock, with the PDH hours and documents tracked right beside it.
| Person | Credential | PDH / renewal | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Priya Nair | PE license TX + NM comity | PDH cycle ends Dec 31 | Renewal soon |
| Dana Okoro | PE license CA | Renews Sep 30 | 60-day alert |
| Marcus Field | EIT FE passed | PE-exam eligible 2027 | On track |
| K. Abara | Certified field inspector | Renews Feb 2027 | Current |
Replaces the shared calendar reminder that everyone ignores until a stamp is two weeks from expiring.
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 demoDegreed engineers doing engineering work, including PEs and graduate EITs, generally qualify for the FLSA learned-professional exemption above the federal salary floor, so they are usually salaried and exempt. Their duties and salary drive the outcome, not the title, and several states set higher bars. WageTime runs exempt and non-exempt staff in the same payroll.
Usually yes. The learned-professional exemption wants advanced knowledge from a prolonged course of specialized instruction, and CAD drafters, survey technicians, and field inspectors typically do not meet it, so they are non-exempt and overtime-eligible. WageTime tracks their hours with attestation and computes overtime automatically, including the weighted-average rate for multi-rate weeks.
Yes, as an add-on scoped and priced on the demo. Prevailing-wage rules apply per classification with multi-rate weeks supported, fringe is payable as cash or against a bona fide benefit plan, and WH-347 certified payroll reports generate from the run with job-costing segments for federal public work. Whether a worker is covered stays your and the DOL’s call.
WageTime keeps the labor base clean: every hour is coded direct to a project or indirect to an overhead pool, per person, per period. Since the FAR rate is indirect cost over total direct labor and the audit tests that split, the segregation is ready before the auditor asks. WageTime does not compute the rate or perform the audit.
Yes. PE licenses live on the employee record with 30, 60, and 90-day expiration alerts, per engineer and per state for firms that stamp across state lines. PDH completion records and the recurring renewal task are tracked on the same workflow, and supporting documents are stored on the record for client or audit requests.
$50 a month for the company plus $10 for each person actually paid that month: a 25-person firm is $300 in a normal month. Runs are unlimited, so a project-completion bonus, a correction, and a light month between awards all cost exactly what the formula says. No long-term contracts; cancel anytime. Prevailing wage and certified payroll are add-ons scoped on the demo.
The prevailing-wage job, the field crew on overtime, the subconsultant you pay 1099, and the overhead codes you are never sure about. Twenty minutes with a payroll specialist on a live demo company: you’ll see exempt and non-exempt staff in one run, a WH-347 generated from the run, and direct labor split from overhead by project.
Book a 20-minute demo