A food truck breaks the one thing every payroll system assumes: a fixed address. The same cook preps at the commissary Monday, serves a brewery lot Wednesday, and works an out-of-town festival Saturday, across three cities that can each set their own minimum wage and their own local tax. Then a rainout cancels Friday’s service after the crew showed up. WageTime resolves the wage floor and the local tax by where each punch happened, blends overtime across the prep rate and the service rate, and carries show-up pay and travel pay as codes on the run.
None of these is a tip problem, which is what generic restaurant payroll is built for. They’re the standing conditions of paying a crew whose workplace changes by the day, and each one is either the owner’s late-night math or a wage-and-hour claim waiting on a slow month.
Sixty-six cities and counties set their own minimum wage above the federal $7.25, and the floor follows where the work happens, not where the truck is registered. Work three towns in a metro this week and one crew member can be owed three different minimums, each due on the same check.
Almost 5,000 jurisdictions in 17 states levy a local income or wage tax, and Pennsylvania alone has 2,506 municipalities that do. A truck that crosses municipal lines in a single week can owe withholding in several of them for one employee, keyed by hand off a mess of stop addresses.
Nearly every state makes a truck prep from a licensed commissary, so the crew clocks base-kitchen prep hours in one place and mobile service hours in another, often at two different rates. Overtime that ignores the split comes out wrong, and nobody knows which booking actually cleared its labor.
A truck lives on weather and events, so a cold Friday or a scrapped festival cancels service after the crew has driven in and clocked on. In several states that means reporting-time pay is owed, and figuring the show-up hours by hand is one more thing at the end of a lost day.
Most trucks are the owner plus a handful of people, and the owner is also the payroll clerk between the prep list and the lunch rush. Generic payroll priced and built for a fifty-seat dining room is the wrong tool for a four-person crew that moves every day.
The route, the two clocks, and the rainout each get a product screen or a straight answer below.
WageTime resolves the pay rules by where each shift happened, not by one company address. Every punch on the mobile time clock carries a GPS stamp, so the run knows the stop, and minimum-wage processing runs at federal, state, and local levels, so a shift in a higher-floor town is tested against that town’s floor. Local income and wage taxes ride the same logic across 11,000+ local jurisdictions, geolocated to the rooftop, with reciprocity handled. When one crew member works three towns in a week, each stop settles against its own floor and its own local tax on one check. Punches come from WageTime’s mobile clock, or we import them off the point-of-sale the crew already runs, from Square to Toast to Clover, so there’s no double entry either way. Tell us your POS and your usual route on the demo and we’ll confirm the exact flow for your setup.
| Stop | Local floor | Paid rate | Local tax | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Millbrook brewery lot Mon | $15.00 | $16.00 | none | Above floor |
| Center City curb Wed | $16.50 | $16.50 | 1.5% withheld | At floor |
| Riverside market Fri | $17.25 | $16.50 | 1.0% withheld | $0.75 under |
| Fairview festival Sat | $15.00 | $16.00 | none | Above floor |
Replaces the spreadsheet of town-by-town wage rates and local taxes the owner updates from memory, and the underpayment nobody catches until the truck works a higher-floor town.
WageTime tracks hours by location and rate, so a crew member’s commissary prep and mobile service stay split, and overtime computes on the weighted-average regular rate across both. Almost every state requires a truck to prep from a licensed commissary, so base-kitchen hours (dawn prep, packing, cleaning) are real hours, often paid at a different rate from curbside service. When the week crosses 40 hours, WageTime blends the rates the way federal rules describe for mixed weeks, rather than picking one. Job costing carries the labor behind each event or booking, so the owner can see which festival cleared its crew cost and which one ran at a loss. Break and meal rules and rounding live in the timesheets.
| Line | Location | Hours | Rate | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prep | Commissary | 16.0 | $17.00 | $272.00 |
| Service | Truck (curb) | 28.0 | $15.00 | $420.00 |
| Blended regular rate | 44.0 total | $15.73 | ||
| Overtime premium | 4.0 OT hrs | 0.5 × $15.73 | $31.46 | |
| Reported tips | service shifts | $186.40 |
Replaces the flat overtime rate that ignored the prep-versus-service split, and the guess about whether last weekend’s festival actually paid for itself.
WageTime carries reporting-time pay, also called show-up pay, as a flat-amount pay code on the run, so a rained-out service doesn’t become end-of-day arithmetic. Several states require it when a worker reports and is furnished less than half a day’s work: California’s wage orders, for one, owe half the scheduled shift at the regular rate, no less than two hours and no more than four. A food truck triggers this more than a fixed restaurant does, because a cold Friday or a scrapped festival cancels service after the crew has driven in and clocked on. You decide when a premium is owed for your states; WageTime puts the hours on the check with the right taxes. This is a payroll mechanism, not legal advice.
| Employee | Scheduled | Worked | Show-up hrs | Total paid |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sofia R. | 8.0 | 1.0 | 3.0 | 4.0 hrs |
| Diego M. | 5.0 | 0.0 | 2.5 | 2.5 hrs |
| Marcus J. | 6.0 | 2.0 | 1.0 | 3.0 hrs |
Replaces the show-up-hours math the owner does in the truck after a lost lunch, and the reporting-time premium that gets skipped because nobody remembered it was owed.
WageTime carries travel pay as codes on the same check as wages, so a weekend two states away doesn’t spill onto an expense app. Per diem and mileage reimbursement are configurable as non-taxable earning types, and a day rate for a festival hire is a custom pay code, all paid alongside the crew’s regular wages. When off-season and catering push the truck out of town, that’s how the road costs get onto payroll cleanly, and it’s a mechanism only, so bring your travel-pay setup to the demo rather than expecting a tax outcome. Seasonal event help self-onboards from a phone before the first shift, and unlimited runs mean a final check after a one-off festival goes out off-cycle at no extra cost.
| Crew | Code | Basis | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sofia R. | PER-DIEM | 3 days, Riverbend Fest | $210.00 |
| Sofia R. | MILEAGE | 220 mi round trip | $154.00 |
| Diego M. | PER-DIEM | 3 days, Riverbend Fest | $210.00 |
| Alex T. event hire | DAY-RATE | Sat festival day | $180.00 |
Replaces the shoebox of gas receipts and per-diem IOUs, and the day-rate festival hire who waits until the next regular run to get paid.
WageTime runs the whole operation from one login, with each entity filing under its own EIN. A truck that grows into a fleet, usually with a commissary or catering LLC alongside, keeps each company’s federal, state, and local returns separate, deposits included, while reporting comes per entity or combined. 1099 event help (the weekend server, the festival hand) pays alongside W-2 crew on the same run. Role-based access lets a manager run one truck’s payroll without seeing the whole fleet, and division-level overrides keep each entity’s setup its own. Finished payroll posts to QuickBooks mapped by department, so labor cost per truck is a report you pull, not a reconciliation you build. The next truck or the catering arm is another company in the same login, not another payroll vendor.
| Entity | EIN | People paid | Federal | State & local |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rolling Bistro Truck LLC | ••-•••5120 | 6 | Filed | Filed |
| Harbor Cart LLC | ••-•••7744 | 5 | Filed | Filed |
| Rolling Bistro Catering LLC | ••-•••2098 | 9 | Filed | Filed |
Replaces a payroll account per LLC, three sets of year-end filings, and the spreadsheet that tries to see the trucks and the catering arm together.
Every punch on the mobile time clock is GPS-stamped, so WageTime knows the stop behind each shift. Minimum-wage processing runs at federal, state, and local levels, and local taxes resolve across 11,000+ jurisdictions by where the work happened. Tell us your usual route on the demo and we’ll confirm the setup.
WageTime tracks hours by location and rate, so commissary prep and mobile service stay split, and overtime computes on the weighted-average regular rate across both. Job costing carries the labor behind each event, so you can see which festival cleared its crew cost. Bring a real two-rate week to the demo.
Yes. Reporting-time or show-up pay is a flat-amount pay code, so it posts on the run with the right taxes. Some states require it when a worker reports and is sent home; California, for one, owes half the scheduled shift, two to four hours at the regular rate. You set when it’s owed. This is a mechanism, not legal advice.
Yes. Per diem and mileage reimbursement are configurable as non-taxable earning types paid on the same check as wages, and a festival day rate is a custom pay code. It’s a payroll mechanism, so bring your travel-pay setup to the demo; we don’t promise a tax outcome, we put the codes on the run.
No. Pricing is $50 per month per company plus $10 per month per person paid, so a single truck paying six people is $110 for the month. No long-term contracts, cancel anytime. Runs are unlimited, so off-cycle final checks and bonuses cost nothing extra, and the crew self-onboards from a phone.
One login covers all three. Each LLC files under its own EIN with its own federal, state, and local returns, deposits included, and you pull results per entity or combined. 1099 event help pays alongside W-2 crew. The three-entity group above, 20 people paid, is $350 for the month: $150 in company bases plus $200 in per-person fees.
The three towns you parked in, the commissary prep hours, and the Friday that got rained out. Twenty minutes with a payroll specialist on a live demo truck: you’ll watch a stop settle against its local floor, a two-rate week blend for overtime, and a show-up premium land as a pay code.
Book a 20-minute demo