Hotel and motel payroll for the whole property: housekeeping paid by the room, a front desk running all night, banquets on a service charge that is a wage, not a tip. WageTime carries each on its own pay code and gets the overtime right.
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.
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, with the half-time premium on hours past forty.
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.
House-set money is a wage: the IRS treats any part of a banquet service charge or event gratuity paid to staff as wages, so WageTime settles it on a wage pay code and runs voluntary tips through tip earning codes.
| Employee | Service charge | Voluntary tips |
|---|---|---|
| Diego R. · Banquet serverHourly + service-charge wage | $224.00 | $60.00 |
| Talia B. · Banquet serverHourly + service-charge wage | $224.00 | $45.00 |
| Marcus V. · BartenderHourly + tips | $168.00 | $92.00 |
| Priya S. · Banquet captainSalaried + service-charge wage | $196.00 | - |
Replaces the single “tips” bucket that swept banquet and event service charges into the tip credit and broke the calculation for the whole property.
Pay a night-audit differential or an on-call rate and it must fold into the regular rate before overtime. WageTime’s weighted-average engine blends every rate worked that week, differential included, before applying the premium.
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.
Yes: WageTime imports clock hours so there’s no double entry, and the pay period lands in one review screen, each department on 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.
| Department | Reg hrs | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Housekeeping18 people · Per-room · 44.0 OT | 1,392.0 | Ready |
| Front desk & night audit12 people · diff pay · 26.0 OT | 928.0 | Ready |
| Food & beverage14 people · Tipped · 18.0 OT | 1,010.0 | Ready |
| Banquets & events9 people · svc chg · 12.0 OT | 402.0 | 3 dual-rate |
| Engineering & maintenance5 people · on-call · 6.0 OT | 396.0 | 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 each property stays its own company: every LLC files under its own EIN, federal, state, and local taxes handled automatically, deposits included, and the next property is a company, not a vendor.
| Property | People paid | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Cedarline Hotel LLCEIN ••-•••5182 | 58 | Complete |
| Harbor Point Inn LLCEIN ••-•••2947 | 34 | Complete |
| Summit Lodge Resort LLCEIN ••-•••7613 | 71 | Complete |
| Gateway Suites LLCEIN ••-•••4405 | 41 | Complete |
Replaces a payroll account per property, four sets of year-end filings, and the portfolio spreadsheet nobody fully trusts.
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 demoA 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