WageTime is payroll for marketing and advertising agencies: salaried creatives, hourly production staff, and the freelance bench settle in one run, and labor cost lands on the client, kept apart from the media and production you only pass through.
Advertising and marketing is a small-shop business: most establishments employ fewer than ten people (US Census County Business Patterns), so the founder is also the finance seat, running a roster that quietly mixes exempt creatives, non-exempt production staff, commissioned new business, and a rotating freelance bench. Meanwhile the invoice is mostly media and production the agency never keeps. Generic payroll flattens all of it into “salaried,” and the exceptions become someone’s weekend.
Federal law has a creative-professional exemption for work needing “invention, imagination, originality or talent” in fields that expressly include writing and the graphic arts, and it names “the more responsible writing positions in advertising agencies.” The same regulation says a copyist or a photo retoucher is not exempt, because the work isn’t creative in character. The line runs inside a single title: the designer who originates a campaign is exempt, the one building routine template layouts to spec often is not. Generic payroll never asks.
Designers, copywriters, editors, photographers, and developers cycle on and off your projects as 1099 freelancers, and each one is a classification call before it’s an invoice. California’s AB2257 singles out those exact creative occupations, and its conditions are strict enough that a freelancer embedded full-time on one account can slide back to employee. Get it wrong and back overtime and payroll taxes follow the paycheck.
A media-heavy invoice makes the agency look enormous while the team behind it is five people. Agency gross income is billings minus the media buys, print, and outside production you pass straight through, and it’s the only number staff cost can be measured against. So when someone asks what the Talcott account cost to service, the honest answer needs agency labor by client, not a percentage of the invoice.
The person who lands the accounts is usually on base plus commission, often paid as a stream over the account’s first year, not a one-time bonus. On payroll that charges per run, every off-cycle commission check is an invoice, so payouts get batched, delayed, or shoved through as an “adjustment” that distorts withholding and the general ledger both.
Creative talent is remote-first now, and the copywriter you hired works from a state you don’t file in yet. That one hire creates registration, withholding, and unemployment obligations where they sit, and a downtown office layers a municipal wage tax on top. Discovered in January, it’s a scramble; handled on the first check, it’s a setting.
How do you pay an agency where nobody is paid the same way? WageTime runs the salaried creatives, the hourly production staff, the commissioned new-business seat, and the freelance bench side by side in one payroll, one approval.
Replaces the freelancer invoice pile, the commission tracker, and the payroll export that never reconcile.
Are your designers and copywriters exempt from overtime? It depends on the work, not the title: original creative output generally is, execution to spec often is not, and the administrative exemption does not rescue those roles; WageTime keeps the hours defensible for whoever is non-exempt.
| Person | Reg / OT hrs | Period pay |
|---|---|---|
| Tasha WrenProduction artist · non-exempt | 40 + 6 OT | $1,323.00 |
| Marco EliasRetoucher · non-exempt | 40 + 3 OT | $1,046.25 |
| Sena OkoyeTraffic coord · non-exempt | 38 + 0 OT | $912.00 |
| Ivy CardozaJunior designer · non-exempt | 40 + 4 OT | $1,150.00 |
Replaces the reconstructed timesheet after a production artist asks why they never got overtime.
What did the Talcott account actually cost your team? Not a slice of the invoice, which is mostly media and production you pass through: WageTime reports agency labor by client from actual payroll, with the pass-throughs left out where they belong.
| Client | Hours | Labor cost |
|---|---|---|
| Talcott FoodsTALC-RETAINER · 5 staff | 196.0 | $8,428.00 |
| Larkspur OutdoorLARK-LAUNCH · 4 staff | 152.5 | $6,405.00 |
| Cedar & CoCEDAR-SOCIAL · 3 staff | 88.0 | $3,432.00 |
| New business / pitchNEWBIZ-PITCH · 6 staff | 61.0 | $2,684.00 |
Replaces the margin conversation that starts with total billings and never finds what the people cost.
Should you pay a freelance creative as 1099 or W-2? That call stays yours and your advisor’s, with AB2257’s conditions in view; once you have made it, the freelancer settles in the same WageTime run as staff, no per-run fee, no AP side channel.
| Freelancer | Basis | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Devin AlarieCopywriter · 1099-NEC | Project settlement | $3,900.00 |
| Rosa LindqvistPhotographer · 1099-NEC | Day rate x 3 | $3,600.00 |
| Theo MarshMotion designer · 1099-NEC | 32.0 hrs at $85.00 | $2,720.00 |
| June ParkIllustrator · 1099-NEC | Project settlement | $1,850.00 |
Replaces the accounts-payable side channel where freelancers get paid off the books payroll actually keeps.
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 demoExemption depends on the work, not the title. The federal creative-professional exemption covers original creative output, and it names writing and the graphic arts, but a production artist, retoucher, or copyist doing routine work is typically non-exempt. Whether a given person qualifies is your decision with your counsel; WageTime tracks non-exempt hours with attestation and computes overtime automatically, including weighted-average overtime on multi-rate weeks.
That classification is your and your advisor’s call, and it’s fact-specific: California’s AB2257, for one, names designers, photographers, and writers and sets conditions like a written contract and no onsite full-time replacement of staff. WageTime doesn’t decide it, but once you have, 1099 freelancers pay in the same run as W-2 staff, with both year-end forms included.
WageTime codes agency staff hours and pay to client and job codes, so labor cost reports by client from actual payroll, with the media buys and outside production you only pass through left out. Codes run up to 40 characters and adjust to your account numbering, and finished payroll posts to QuickBooks by department plus a configurable GL export.
New-business commission settles through tiered commission structures as a pay code, run on whatever cadence the plan uses. Because runs are unlimited and off-cycle runs cost nothing extra, a quarterly won-account payout goes out on its own schedule without a per-run fee or a batched “adjustment” that distorts withholding.
Generally the state where the employee actually works, and a few states add convenience-of-the-employer rules; the specifics are fact-dependent. WageTime geolocates every work and home address to rooftop level across 11,000+ local jurisdictions, all 50 states plus Puerto Rico, applies reciprocity and overrides, and files in every state and locality automatically.
$50 a month for the company plus $10 for each person actually paid that month: a 15-person agency is $200 in a normal month. Runs are unlimited, so a month with extra freelancer checks or an off-cycle commission payout costs exactly what the formula says. No long-term contracts; cancel anytime.
The launch sprint with six freelancers, the new-business commission that pays over four quarters, the production team’s overtime, and one client whose invoice is 80% media. Twenty minutes with a payroll specialist on a live demo agency: you’ll see a mixed W-2 and 1099 run, weighted-average overtime on production hours, and labor cost coded by client.
Book a 20-minute demo