WageTime is payroll for engineering and technical staffing agencies: salaried-exempt engineers, hourly drafters and field technicians, and crews on per diem all paid in one run, coded to the project each hour belongs to.
Whether per diem and mileage are non-taxable depends on IRS accountable-plan rules; whether a role is exempt depends on its actual duties. Those are decisions for you and your advisors. Certified payroll and prevailing wage are offered as an add-on, scoped and priced on the demo. Screens use a demonstration environment.
Engineering staffing is not one payroll repeated. It is a degree-gated exemption line, a field workforce that spends the week on the road, and a public-works tier with its own wage rules, all running weekly on the same thin staffing margin. Miss the classification on a tech, botch a per diem, or skip certified payroll on a survey crew, and the mistake is a back-wage claim or a failed audit, not a rounding error.
A licensed professional engineer can be exempt under the FLSA learned-professional rule because engineering is a recognized field where a degree is the price of entry (29 CFR 541.301). The drafter, CAD operator, or engineering technician at the next desk usually is not, because those roles do not require that degree, so they earn overtime. The word “engineer” on a business card decides nothing; the degree and the duties do.
A commissioning engineer flies to a plant for three weeks; a field-service tech drives site to site. Their pay is a base wage plus per diem for lodging and meals plus mileage, and only the base is ordinary taxable wages when the per diem is run under an accountable plan. Payroll that only knows one hourly wage cannot build the package your recruiter quoted, and lumping per diem into gross gets the taxes wrong.
Win a survey or field-tech contract on a federally funded road or transit job and the rules change. Under the 2023 Davis-Bacon rule, survey crew members doing physical site work are covered laborers, owed prevailing wage and reported on certified payroll (Form WH-347). Your monitor-only inspectors and your degreed engineers usually are not covered, so the same crew list splits into two payroll regimes on one project.
After the 2024 overtime rule was struck down, the thresholds are back to $684 a week and a $107,432 highly-compensated line, and your senior engineers clear them easily. But a technician paid a flat weekly figure is not exempt just because the check looks salaried; the duties test still decides. Call a non-exempt tech “salaried” and skip the overtime, and you have a wage claim per person.
A single branch places civil, structural, mechanical, and electrical talent across a dozen client projects, each with its own cost code and pay rate. A tech who works two projects at two rates in one week has one weighted-average overtime rate, and labor has to report by project and discipline, not as one company blob. Generic payroll flattens all of it into a single rate and a single bucket.
The line runs through the degree and the duties, not the title: a degreed engineer can be salaried-exempt under the FLSA learned-professional exemption (29 CFR 541.301), while technicians, drafters, and CAD operators earn overtime in the same WageTime run.
| Name | Pay basis | Overtime |
|---|---|---|
| Dana R.Prof. engineer, PE · salary | $128,000/yr | Exempt, no OT |
| Miguel S.Project engineer · salary | $104,000/yr | Exempt, no OT |
| Priya T.CAD drafter · hourly, OT>40 | $38.00/hr | OT |
| Cole W.Field tech · hourly, OT>40 | $34.50/hr | OT |
Replaces the blanket “everyone on this project is salaried” setting that quietly underpays every technician and drafter on the crew.
A field engineer’s package settles on one WageTime check: base wage as ordinary taxable pay, per diem for lodging and meals and mileage as separate earning-type pay codes you can configure as non-taxable.
| Also on field pay | This check |
|---|---|
| Ava L.Transit, Denver · base+PD+mi | $2,706.50 |
Replaces the second spreadsheet that tracks per diem and mileage off to the side, and the taxable-wages mistake when it gets merged into gross by hand.
Often yes: under the 2023 Davis-Bacon rule, survey crew members doing physical site work on federal construction over $2,000 are covered laborers. WageTime’s certified payroll add-on, scoped and priced on the demo, generates WH-347 from the run you already processed.
| Worker | PW rate + fringe | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Marisol V.Survey chief · +$12.40 fringe | $41.80 | WH-347 |
| Trent B.Instrument op · +$12.40 fringe | $36.15 | WH-347 |
| Owen D.Rod/chain · +$12.40 fringe | $31.90 | WH-347 |
| Rachel K.Project engineer, PE | Not a covered class | Standard payroll |
Replaces the after-hours re-typing of a week’s hours into a state certified-payroll form, and the guess about who on the crew the prevailing wage even applies to.
The whole desk pays in one run: salaried-exempt engineers, hourly techs and drafters, W-2 field crews, your recruiters on base plus placement commission, and any legitimate 1099 specialist alongside, with W-2s and 1099s at year-end.
| Project | Hours | Labor cost |
|---|---|---|
| City transit designTRANSIT-CIV · civil/structural | 168.0 | $8,412.00 |
| Refinery turnaroundREF-TURN · mechanical / field | 212.5 | $11,904.75 |
| Grid interconnect studyGRID-ELEC · electrical | 96.0 | $6,240.00 |
| Internal recruitingOVERHEAD · base + commission | 80.0 | $5,180.00 |
Replaces the one-rate, one-bucket payroll export that cannot tell a civil project from a refinery turnaround, or a billable engineer from an internal recruiter.
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 the split runs exactly that way. A degreed professional engineer can be exempt under the FLSA learned-professional exemption, because engineering is a recognized field where an advanced degree is a standard prerequisite (29 CFR 541.301). Engineering technicians, drafters, and CAD operators usually are not exempt and earn overtime. WageTime pays both in one run; the classification itself is your call with counsel.
Generally yes. DOL treats technologists and technicians as non-exempt because their roles do not require the advanced degree that defines a learned profession (DOL Fact Sheet #17O). So they earn time-and-a-half past 40 hours, computed on the weighted-average rate when they worked more than one project rate that week. WageTime runs them hourly with overtime while the exempt engineers run salaried in the same payroll.
WageTime runs per diem and mileage as separate earning-type pay codes you can configure as non-taxable, paid on the same check as the base wage and coded to the assignment. Whether they actually stay non-taxable depends on running them under an IRS accountable plan, which is your decision with your advisor. The federal reference rate is $319 a day in high-cost areas and $225 elsewhere in the continental US (GSA).
On federally funded construction over $2,000, survey crew members who do physical site work are covered laborers owed prevailing wage and reported on certified payroll, Form WH-347, under the 2023 Davis-Bacon rule. Monitor-only inspectors and degreed professional engineers generally are not covered. WageTime generates WH-347 and applies prevailing-wage rates by classification as an add-on, scoped on the demo.
After the 2024 rule was vacated, the thresholds reverted to $684 a week ($35,568 a year) for the standard exemption and $107,432 a year for the highly-compensated shortcut. Most senior engineers clear those, but salary alone never exempts anyone; the duties test decides, which is why a “salaried” technician can still be owed overtime. WageTime pays each role the way its classification requires.
Yes. WageTime pays salaried-exempt engineers, hourly non-exempt technicians and field crews, and your internal recruiters on base plus placement commission in the same run, with legitimate 1099 specialists alongside and W-2s and 1099s both produced at year-end. Hours code to each client’s project and discipline, and taxes follow each worksite so a new project site withholds correctly from its first check.
$50 a month for the company plus $10 for each person actually paid that month, with unlimited runs. Weekly costs the same as biweekly, off-cycle corrections add nothing, and a slow month costs less because you only pay for people paid. An agency paying 30 engineers and technicians and 3 recruiters in a month is $380, whether payday landed four times or five.
A crew that mixes a licensed engineer, a couple of hourly technicians, one field hand on per diem, and, if you have it, a survey crew on a public job. Twenty minutes with a payroll specialist on a live demo company: you’ll see exempt and non-exempt pay in one run, per diem and mileage on one check, certified payroll for the survey crew, and labor coded by project and discipline.
Book a 20-minute demo