By June the crews are doubled, split across properties, and paid by the yard as much as by the hour. WageTime is payroll built for a season that never holds still.
Landscaping payroll isn’t hard because any one paycheck is exotic. It’s hard because the roster, the hours, and the pay method all change with the season, and generic payroll prices and behaves like it’s February all year.
Paying the mow crew per lawn is a great productivity deal right up until the math check: under the FLSA, piece-rate earnings still have to average at least minimum wage for every hour worked, and hours over 40 still earn overtime on the blended rate. The spreadsheet that “handles” this is the one that gets audited.
Once the day starts at the shop loading trailers, the ride to the first property and every hop between properties is payable time under federal rules. Forty properties a week means hours of drive time that never hit the timesheet, quietly turning into unpaid overtime. Labor investigators know exactly where to look.
Spring hiring lands all at once: W-4s, I-9s, direct deposit forms, and half the crew filling them out on a truck tailgate. Landscaping was the largest H-2B occupation in FY2024, taking 43.4% of all H-2B visas issued, so for many companies the surge comes with federal wage paperwork on top.
Per-head software pricing bills the whole roster whether anyone mows or not, and per-run fees meter the weekly Fridays your crews expect: 30-plus runs a season, each with a line item. The season ends. The invoice doesn’t.
The crew clocks in with Jobber, LMN, Service Autopilot, or ClockShark, GPS stamp and all. Then somebody exports the week to a spreadsheet, fixes it, and re-types it into a payroll system that has never heard of a property. The job numbers fall off on the way, so the next bid gets priced on a guess.
Workers’ comp premiums ride on estimated payroll, and a payroll that doubles between February and July makes every estimate wrong. When the audit letter arrives, you need per-run records by class of work, not a year-end reconstruction from bank statements.
WageTime charges $50 a month per company plus $10 per person actually paid that month. Nothing per run, nothing per Friday, nothing for the laid-off crew waiting on spring.
| Month | People paid | Invoice |
|---|---|---|
| February4 runs · winter crew | 6 | $110.00 |
| March4 runs · spring hiring starts | 14 | $190.00 |
| April5 runs · 5 Fridays, one price | 19 | $240.00 |
| July5 runs · peak season roster | 22 | $270.00 |
| November4 runs · layoff wave | 9 | $140.00 |
| December4 runs · nobody mows | 6 | $110.00 |
Replaces the January software bill for a crew that’s home watching football, and the per-run fee on all thirty Fridays.
Pay the crew per lawn, per yard, per job, or by day rate: each runs as a WageTime per-unit code next to hourly, minimum-wage processing at federal, state, and local levels. A 100-lawn week with hourly shop time gets weighted-average overtime, blended in the run.
Replaces the per-yard spreadsheet that never heard of the regular rate, and the week it finally meets an investigator.
WageTime’s mobile crew clock lives on the phones the crew already carries: every punch lands with a GPS stamp, geofenced to a radius you set per property, and approved hours flow straight into the payroll run.
| Property | Hours | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Maple Grove HOACrew 2 | 9.5 | In geofence |
| Hillcrest Office ParkCrew 1 | 6.0 | In geofence |
| Riverbend ApartmentsCrew 1 | 4.5 | 1 off-geofence |
| Drive time between propertiesCrew 1 | 2.0 | Paid-time code |
Replaces the export-and-re-key ritual, and the drive time nobody wrote down until a lawyer asked for it.
WageTime tags every hour and wage dollar to a job-cost code matched to the property and contract numbers your estimates already use, so the HOA that eats three extra visits a month shows up before renewal, not after.
| Contract | Hours | Labor cost |
|---|---|---|
| Maple Grove HOACrew 2 | 148.0 | $2,886.00 |
| Hillcrest Office ParkCrew 1 | 92.5 | $1,795.50 |
| Residential route ACrew 3 | 176.0 | $3,168.00 |
| City of Fairview groundsCrew 1 · public contract | 108.0 | $3,283.00 |
Replaces pricing next year’s contract off a guess, and the shoebox reconstruction when the comp auditor asks what the tree crew earned.
Municipal mowing and grounds work on public money bring prevailing wage and certified payroll. WageTime handles both as an add-on, scoped and priced on the demo, so the same crew can mow private Monday and prevailing-rate Tuesday without a second system.
Replaces turning down the city contract because the paperwork needed a second office person.
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 demoYes, as a per-unit pay code, with the compliance math handled in the run: piece-rate earnings are checked against minimum wage for all hours worked, and weeks that mix per-yard and hourly pay compute overtime on the weighted-average regular rate automatically. You set the per-lawn or per-yard rate; WageTime does the reconciliation every payday.
$50 for the company plus $10 for each person you actually paid that month. A December roster of six costs $110; the twenty seasonal crew members you laid off in November cost nothing until you rehire them. There are no per-run fees, so weekly summer Fridays don’t inflate the bill either.
The November layoff is one pass through a bulk termination wizard, not twenty individual terminations. When the crew returns in March, their records are still there: returning workers confirm details rather than starting over, and anyone new fills out everything from a phone before the first route runs, I-9 and E-Verify included.
We import clock hours so there’s no double entry. Tell us your field app or time clock on the demo and we’ll confirm the exact flow for your setup, including how hours land against your property and contract codes. No app? Crews can punch on WageTime’s own GPS-stamped, geofenced mobile clock instead.
Yes. Certified payroll is offered as an add-on, scoped and priced on the demo. The reports generate from the payroll run itself, each worker’s classification carries its own project-specific rate, and fringe is tracked per plan instead of guessed at quarter’s end. Bring the city’s wage determination and your route list to the demo.
The 1099-or-W-2 call belongs to your accountant or attorney: the Labor Department applies an economic-reality test, not labels, and landscaping is a named enforcement target. What WageTime removes is the operational excuse. W-2 crew and 1099 subs run in the same payroll, with year-end W-2s and 1099s both included, so classifying someone correctly never means buying a second system.
A route sheet, last week’s hours from your field app, and your crew count in July versus January. Twenty minutes with a payroll specialist on a live demo company: you’ll see the per-yard math, the GPS punches, the labor cost by contract, and what your season actually costs.
Book a 20-minute demo