Home building pays by construction-loan draw while the crew is owed every Friday, across lots and phases the labor has to land on. WageTime runs payroll for spec, production, and custom builders on your cadence, not the lender’s.
Building new homes breaks generic payroll in ways renovation never does: the pay clock is weekly but the money arrives by draw, the workforce is half employee and half production sub, and the one person you pay salary is the one a wage auditor asks about first.
Your super runs four lots, coordinates the subs, and draws a salary, so you treat the job as exempt and never track the hours. But exempt status turns on the duties actually performed, not the title, and the burden of proving it is yours. Guess wrong and the back overtime comes due for every week worked, often as a class action.
The framing crew gets paid this Friday. The draw that reimburses that framing clears after the inspection, after the lender’s review, and short by retainage, a week or two later. Payroll priced per run and locked to a rigid cadence turns that gap into a fee and a scheduling fight.
A crew pours at 12 Oak on Monday, frames at 14 Oak on Wednesday, and trims a spec across the subdivision on Friday. When the hours land in payroll as one number, the cost of each lot and each phase is a guess, and the draw request is built on that guess.
Your lead carpenters and laborers are on the books. The framing crew, the drywall hangers, and the trim carpenters are labor-only subs paid by the house or the square foot. Two payment systems, two schedules, and a January spent rebuilding a year of sub checks into 1099s.
Field crews punch busybusy or Buildertrend, and every Thursday someone hand-keys the week into payroll with no lot and no phase attached. By the time the draw request goes to the lender, the labor behind it is a number re-typed from a spreadsheet, not a total the payroll can stand behind.
Run a superintendent salaried in WageTime and, the day the call changes, pay the same person hourly with overtime computed in the run: the classification is a decision you make on purpose, not a default you back into.
| Worker | This week | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Dave R. · SuperintendentSalary (exempt) · untracked | 52.0 hrs | Current |
| Carla M. · SuperintendentSalary (exempt) · untracked | 48.5 hrs | Current |
| Nate P. · Working foremanHourly+OT, weighted-avg rate | 47.0 hrs | Blended OT |
| Effective Jul 1 · by ownerNate P. salary→hourly, logged | - | Dated |
Replaces the assumption that a title settles overtime, and the back-pay math when it turns out it didn’t.
The crew gets paid on the build’s cadence no matter where the draw is: WageTime costs $50 per month per company plus $10 per person paid that month, unlimited runs, off-cycle checks and bonuses at no extra cost.
| Run | People paid | Net pay |
|---|---|---|
| Fri Jul 3 · Weekly | 18 | $24,180.00 |
| Fri Jul 10 · Weekly | 19 | $25,940.00 |
| Fri Jul 17 · Weekly | 19 | $26,110.00 |
| Tue Jul 21 · Off-cycle (final check) | 1 | $1,510.00 |
| Fri Jul 24 · Weekly | 17 | $23,050.00 |
Replaces the per-run line items on the payroll invoice, and the wait to pay a departing framer until the draw clears.
Labor lands in WageTime the way the draw is built: crews punch from the lot, GPS-stamped and geofenced per address, and hours reach payroll already tagged to the lot and phase your schedule of values uses.
| Lot | Hours | Labor cost |
|---|---|---|
| 12 Oak Ridge · FoundationAll punches in geofence | 88.0 | $2,904.00 |
| 14 Oak Ridge · FramingAll punches in geofence | 132.5 | $4,372.50 |
| 9 Oak Ridge · MEP rough-inAll punches in geofence | 61.0 | $2,196.00 |
| 3 Oak Ridge · Trim & finish1 outside geofence, flagged | 44.5 | $1,513.00 |
Replaces the Friday lump of hours, and the draw request built on a guess about which lot the labor went to.
One check date pays both papers: carpenters and laborers as W-2 employees with tax withheld, the framing, drywall, and trim subs as 1099 contractors on the same WageTime payroll, coded to the same lots.
| Payee | Lot | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Luis T.W-2 laborer | 12 Oak Ridge | $1,184.00 |
| Sam K.W-2 carpenter · piece + OT | 14 Oak Ridge | $1,626.00 |
| Ridgeline Framing1099 sub · per sq ft | 14 Oak Ridge | $6,400.00 |
| BoardRight Drywall1099 sub | 9 Oak Ridge | $3,150.00 |
| TrimCo Finish1099 sub | 3 Oak Ridge | $2,240.00 |
Replaces the sub checks buried in accounts payable, and the year-end scramble to turn a subdivision’s square-foot payouts into clean 1099s.
Every federal, state, and local tax the payroll touches is filed automatically, deposits included, on each agency’s own calendar, so opening a subdivision in the next county doesn’t inherit a folder of logins.
| Jurisdiction | Amount | Status |
|---|---|---|
| FederalForm 941 + deposits · Q2 | $61,420.00 | Filed |
| State AState withholding · Q2 | $9,880.40 | Filed |
| State BWithholding, adj county · Q2 | $3,210.75 | Filed |
| CityLocal withholding · Q2 | $1,144.60 | Filed |
Replaces the folder of agency logins for every county you’ve broken ground in, and the deposit-deadline sticky notes.
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 demoThat call is yours and your counsel’s, not ours. Exempt status under the FLSA needs both a salary basis and a duties test, and it turns on what the super actually does, not the title. WageTime runs supers salaried or hourly, and if you decide one is non-exempt, it computes weighted-average overtime in the run and logs the change with an effective date.
On your cadence, at a flat price. WageTime is $50 per company per month plus $10 per person paid, with unlimited runs, so weekly pay, a final check the day someone leaves, and a spec-sold bonus all cost the same. The draw can clear on the lender’s timetable; the crew gets paid on yours, and off-cycle runs cost nothing extra.
Yes. Every hour is coded to the lot and the construction phase it was worked on, with a cost code up to 40 characters, adjustable to your NAHB or custom scheme. Labor cost reports by project and crew, so the labor behind each draw request reconciles to that phase’s schedule-of-values line before the request goes out.
On one run. Your carpenters and laborers run as W-2 employees with tax withheld, and your labor-only framing, drywall, and trim subs run as 1099 contractors on the same payroll, coded to the same lots. Year-end W-2s and 1099s are included, built from the payments already made, so sub costs land in the lot instead of accounts payable.
We import clock hours so there’s no double entry. Name the project or field-time app your crews punch in, and the demo shows the exact path those hours take to their lot and phase codes in payroll. No app? Crews can punch on WageTime’s own GPS-stamped mobile clock, geofenced per lot.
$50 per company per month plus $10 per person paid that month, with unlimited runs, so 52 weekly runs cost the same as 26 biweekly ones, and off-cycle final checks and bonuses are at no extra cost. Certified payroll for the occasional public or affordable-housing job is an add-on, scoped and priced on the demo. Switching is full-service and paid.
One week of timesheets, your open lots and their cost codes, your sub list, and how you pay your supers today. Twenty minutes with a payroll specialist on a live demo company: you’ll see the run, the labor coded by lot and phase, the W-2 crew and 1099 subs on one check date, and the invoice math for a weekly cadence.
Book a 20-minute demo