Rooms are cleaned by the room, the front desk runs an overnight audit, food and beverage lives on tips, banquets pay out of a mandatory service charge that is a wage and not a tip, and engineering is on call at 3 a.m. That is five pay bases in one building, and overtime touches all of them. WageTime carries each as its own pay code, computes overtime on the weighted-average rate the rules require, and runs every property in the group from one login.
A hotel’s payroll problems don’t look like a diner’s. The pay bases stack, the building never closes, and the money on a banquet invoice is taxed differently than the money left on a nightstand. Each one below is either a manager’s after-shift chore or a wage liability quietly running up.
Housekeepers cleaned to a per-room rate, which is a piece rate, and piece-rate overtime is never the room rate times one and a half. It rides the weighted-average of the week: total pay divided by total hours, then the premium on hours past forty. Do it on the room rate and every busy week is an underpayment.
The service charge added to a banquet, conference, or catered event bill is set by the house, so the IRS treats it as a wage, not a tip: it needs withholding, it takes no tip credit, and it enters the overtime regular rate. Sweep it through the tip line and the tip-credit math for the whole property breaks.
The night auditor works overnight for a differential, and maintenance answers a page at 3 a.m. on an on-call rate. Both are fine to pay, but once you do, they fold into the regular rate before overtime. Time-and-a-half on the base rate alone is how the audit finds you.
A front desk agent covers the breakfast buffet, a banquet server picks up a housekeeping shift, and now someone worked two rates in one week. Overtime is owed on the blended rate across both, and labor cost has to land in the right department, not one bucket.
A resort doubles its roster for the season, including H-2B crews, then cuts back when it slows. Every wave is a stack of onboarding packets, and every end-of-season is a stack of final checks and terminations, keyed by hand between check-ins.
The downtown hotel, the highway motel, and the lake resort each sit in their own LLC with its own EIN and filings. Generic payroll answers with a separate account per property and a portfolio spreadsheet the controller rebuilds every quarter.
Rooms first, then the money that isn’t a tip. Each card gets a product screen or a straight answer below.
WageTime pays housekeeping on a per-room piece-rate code and figures overtime the way the rule requires: the week’s piece earnings divide by hours actually worked to set the regular rate, and the half-time premium applies to hours past forty. A week that mixes rooms with a laundry or lobby shift blends both into one regular rate, so a busy turn-day week is paid right without a hand calculation. The room rate drives pay; the hours drive overtime; the software keeps the two straight.
| Employee | Rooms cleaned | Piece + hourly | Hours | Blended rate | Week gross |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rosa M. | 132 | $594.00 | 45.0 | $13.20 | $627.00 |
| Ana L. | 108 | $486.00 | 40.0 | $12.15 | $486.00 |
| Marta D. | 150 | $675.00 | 48.0 | $14.06 | $731.25 |
| Kevin T. | 90 + laundry | $525.00 | 44.0 | $11.93 | $548.86 |
Replaces the per-room spreadsheet that pays overtime on the room rate, and the back-pay correction three periods later when someone checks the math.
A banquet service charge and an event gratuity are set by the house, not left to the guest, so the IRS treats any part paid to staff as a wage: it goes on the W-2, takes no tip credit, and enters the overtime regular rate. A voluntary tip left for a valet, bellhop, or housekeeper is different money. WageTime keeps them on separate pay codes: service-charge dollars settle as a wage code and count toward overtime, while voluntary tips run through tip earning codes with the tip-credit math applied correctly. The line that trips up hotel payroll becomes two labeled lines on the run.
| Employee | Role | Banquet service charge | Voluntary tips | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Diego R. | Banquet server | $224.00 | $60.00 | Hourly + service-charge wage |
| Talia B. | Banquet server | $224.00 | $45.00 | Hourly + service-charge wage |
| Marcus V. | Bartender | $168.00 | $92.00 | Hourly + tips |
| Priya S. | Banquet captain | $196.00 | - | Salaried + service-charge wage |
Replaces the single “tips” bucket that swept banquet and event service charges into the tip credit and broke the calculation for the whole property.
A hotel never closes, so the night auditor earns an overnight differential and engineering answers a page on an on-call rate. Neither is required, but once you pay a differential it must fold into the regular rate before overtime, and an agreement to leave it out doesn’t hold. WageTime carries night, weekend, and holiday differentials and on-call pay as pay codes, and its weighted-average engine blends every rate worked in the week, differential included, before applying the premium. Scheduling adds overnight-shift validation so an audit shift that crosses midnight into a new day is counted correctly, not split by accident.
| Line | Hours | Rate | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| Front desk · evening shift | 16.0 | $17.00 | $272.00 |
| Night audit · overnight differential | 28.0 | $20.00 | $560.00 |
| Blended regular rate | 44.0 total | $18.91 | - |
| Overtime premium | 4.0 OT hrs | 0.5 × $18.91 | $37.82 |
Replaces the overtime figured on the base rate that skips the differential, and the on-call hour paid off the books because payroll had no code for it.
WageTime imports clock hours so there’s no double entry: the pay period lands in one review screen, grouped the way a hotel runs (housekeeping, front desk and night audit, food and beverage, banquets, engineering), each department carrying its own pay basis. Tell us your property-management and time system on the demo and we’ll confirm the exact flow for your setup. When a clerk covers breakfast or a server picks up housekeeping, the two rates blend into one overtime figure, labor cost reports by department, and finished payroll posts to QuickBooks mapped the same way. Variable-hour crews get ACA look-back tracking from those same hours, with 1095-C forms e-filed at year-end.
| Department | People | Reg hrs | OT hrs | Pay basis | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Housekeeping | 18 | 1,392.0 | 44.0 | Per-room piece | Ready |
| Front desk & night audit | 12 | 928.0 | 26.0 | Hourly + differential | Ready |
| Food & beverage | 14 | 1,010.0 | 18.0 | Tipped hourly | Ready |
| Banquets & events | 9 | 402.0 | 12.0 | Service-charge wage | 3 dual-rate flagged |
| Engineering & maintenance | 5 | 396.0 | 6.0 | Hourly + on-call | Ready |
Replaces five department exports reformatted into one upload, and the labor report the controller rebuilds by hand to see cost by department.
WageTime runs a hotel portfolio from one login while keeping each property its own company: every LLC files under its own EIN with federal, state, and local taxes handled automatically, deposits included, and you pull labor and cost reporting per property or across the portfolio. When a resort staffs up for the season, bulk onboarding brings a wave of hires in from their own phones with e-signatures and electronic I-9, and the end-of-season bulk termination wizard cuts the final checks as off-cycle runs at no extra cost. Adding the next property means adding a company, not adding a vendor.
| Property | EIN | People paid | Federal | State & local | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cedarline Hotel LLC | ••-•••5182 | 58 | Filed | Filed | Complete |
| Harbor Point Inn LLC | ••-•••2947 | 34 | Filed | Filed | Complete |
| Summit Lodge Resort LLC | ••-•••7613 | 71 | Filed | Filed | Complete |
| Gateway Suites LLC | ••-•••4405 | 41 | Filed | Filed | Complete |
Replaces a payroll account per property, four sets of year-end filings, and the portfolio spreadsheet nobody fully trusts.
A per-room rate is a piece rate, so overtime is owed on the weighted-average regular rate: the week’s piece earnings divided by hours worked, then a half-time premium on hours past forty, never the room rate times one and a half. Weeks that mix rooms with an hourly shift blend into one rate automatically.
A wage. Because the house sets the amount rather than the guest, the IRS treats a banquet service charge, an event gratuity, and a resort fee as service charges: any portion paid to staff is reported on the W-2, takes no tip credit, and needs withholding. WageTime keeps service charges and voluntary tips on separate pay codes so each is taxed and counted correctly.
Both fold into the regular rate before overtime is computed, so time-and-a-half on the base rate alone underpays. WageTime carries overnight and weekend differentials and on-call pay as pay codes and blends every rate worked that week into the regular rate before applying the premium, which is what the rule requires.
Overtime is owed on the weighted-average of the rates worked that week, so a clerk who covers a food-and-beverage shift has both rates blended into one regular rate before the premium applies. WageTime computes the blend automatically and reports each department’s labor cost separately, so the hours land in the right place.
Yes. Bulk onboarding brings a wave of seasonal hires in from their own phones with e-signatures and electronic I-9, records retained for the rehire next season. When the season ends, the bulk termination wizard cuts final checks as off-cycle runs at no extra cost, every tax withheld and filed.
One login, each property filing on its own EIN. Pricing is $50 per month per company plus $10 per month per person paid that month, no long-term contracts. A single 58-person hotel runs $630 for the month; the four-property portfolio in the screens above, 204 people paid, comes to $2,240. Runs are unlimited, so off-cycle checks cost nothing extra. Switching is full-service and paid, scoped on the demo.
Bring one week from one property: the housekeeping room counts, a banquet invoice, the night-audit hours, and the clerk who covered breakfast. Twenty minutes with a payroll specialist on a live demo hotel, and you’ll watch the per-room overtime compute, the service charges land as wages, and the differential ride into the regular rate.
Book a 20-minute demo