A grant-funded nonprofit has to show which funder paid for each hour, with time records and controls a board and a Single Audit can lean on. WageTime splits each salary across grants at the pay line and keeps the records behind it.
US nonprofits employ about 12.8 million people, roughly one in ten private-sector workers, across more than 300,000 establishments, and most of them are small (BLS). That is a business manager and a bookkeeper doing some of the most documentation-heavy payroll there is: split-funded salaries, after-the-fact effort records, and internal controls, all on a fixed grant budget.
Your program director is 40% on the federal grant, 25% on the state contract, 20% on a foundation award, and the rest on unrestricted. Every period, someone rebuilds that split in a spreadsheet, multiplies it out, and re-types the result into payroll and again into the general ledger. Change the percentages and every downstream number has to be redone by hand.
Charge a salary to a federal award and the Uniform Guidance wants after-the-fact records of actual work, not the budget you planned. Personnel costs are the single largest category of disallowed costs in federal grant audits. Right now the “time and effort” behind a grant charge is a memory and a spreadsheet, reconstructed the week the monitor visits.
In a small shop the same person can add the employee, set the direct deposit, approve the run, and reconcile it. That gap is the one auditors flag first: the ACFE’s 2024 fraud study tied more than half of all cases to weak or overridden internal controls, with a $141,000 median loss at organizations under 100 people. A board wants to see approvals, not trust.
Grant budgets are fixed and watched. A per-seat contract that bills for the whole roster in a slow month, or a “call for a quote” payroll price, is hard to defend to a board that reads the functional-expense statement. The headcount that a summer program or a grant cycle swings up and down shouldn’t swing the payroll bill the same way.
The variable-hour roster that crosses the ACA line, the aide’s CPR card that expires next month, staff working in three states, the board report due Thursday, the year-end 1095-Cs. In an office of three, each of those is the finance director’s job after the program day ends.
WageTime allocates pay across grants, programs, and funding sources through configurable job-costing segments, so one person’s salary divides where the work happened instead of in a spreadsheet.
Replaces the allocation spreadsheet, and the second re-keying into the general ledger.
Federal awards want after-the-fact records of the work actually performed, and WageTime keeps them: every timesheet is attested, change-logged, and locked after approval, so the hours behind a grant charge are documented each cycle.
| Employee | Hours | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Maria O.Federal Title III | 32.0 | Attested |
| Maria O.State contract | 20.0 | Attested |
| James T.Youth program | 40.0 | Attested |
| Dana P.Food pantry | 28.5 | Change logged |
Replaces the reconstructed time study, and the estimate a monitor won’t accept.
An auditor sees exactly that: WageTime’s role-based access separates the person who enters a change from the person who approves the run, and a full effective-dated audit log shows who did what and when.
| User | Action | Recorded |
|---|---|---|
| A. RiveraPreparer | Entered pay change | Jul 15, 9:02a |
| L. ChenFinance director | Approved payroll run | Jul 15, 2:41p |
| A. RiveraPreparer | Added employee | Jul 12, 11:15a |
| Board treasurerApprover | Reviewed & released | Jul 15, 3:10p |
Replaces the trust-based approval, and the audit trail nobody could produce.
A multi-program agency runs from one WageTime login: department-level controls and division-level overrides per program, related entities under their own EINs, and reporting per program, per entity, or consolidated across the organization.
| Program | Gross pay | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Youth services14 people paid | $41,280.00 | Posted |
| Senior nutrition9 people paid | $23,650.00 | Posted |
| Housing assistance6 people paid | $19,900.00 | Posted |
| AdministrationShared costs · 4 people paid | $18,420.00 | Allocated |
Replaces the per-program spreadsheet reroll, and the export you reformat by hand every month.
For variable-hour and seasonal program staff, WageTime tracks ACA eligibility from payroll data, keeps credentials on the employee record, and prices by the person actually paid, so a roster that shrinks between grant cycles shrinks the bill.
| Employee | Avg hrs/wk | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Dana P.Food pantry | 28.4 | Under 30 |
| Sam K.Summer camp | 31.6 | Offer required |
| Priya N.After-school | 22.0 | Under 30 |
| Marcus L.Case aide | 29.1 | Monitoring |
Replaces the ACA spreadsheet for seasonal staff, and the payroll bill that ignores your roster.
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 demoSet the allocation once as percentages by grant, program, or fund, and WageTime divides that salary, its taxes, and its benefits on those percentages every run. Job-cost codes run up to 40 alphanumeric characters and match your own grant numbering, and the split carries through to the general-ledger export. Change a percentage or close an award and you edit it in one place, not across a spreadsheet and a GL.
Federal awards call for after-the-fact records reflecting the work actually performed, not budgeted estimates, backed by internal controls. WageTime timesheets carry employee attestation, an audit-ready change log, and post-approval locking, with staff recording time to each program worked. When a funder or monitor asks how a charge was supported, you produce a signed, timestamped report. Your auditor confirms how the rules apply to your specific awards.
501(c)(3) organizations are exempt from federal FUTA tax, and most states still cover them for unemployment while allowing a reimbursable election instead of paying SUTA contributions. WageTime files your state taxes automatically based on how your account is set up. Bring your state and your reimbursable-or-contributory election to the demo and we’ll confirm the exact setup for your organization.
WageTime gives a Single Audit the two things it tests hardest on payroll: documented costs and internal controls. Salaries carry time records with attestation and locking, and role-based access plus an effective-dated audit log show entry and approval were held by different people. WageTime does not provide audit or legal advice and does not guarantee outcomes, but the control environment auditors look for is built in, not reconstructed.
Yes. Finished payroll posts to QuickBooks mapped by department, and a configurable general-ledger export in CSV, IIF, or fixed-width formats feeds the fund-accounting system you already run. Tell us your accounting system on the demo and we’ll confirm the exact flow for your setup, including how your grant and program segments map to your chart of accounts.
Yes. Run each program with department-level controls and division-level overrides, and see reporting per program or consolidated across the organization. Related entities, an affiliated foundation or a separately incorporated program, each run under their own EIN with their own filings from the same login, reported separately or combined. Scheduled reports distribute to the board and program managers automatically.
$50 a month for the organization plus $10 per person actually paid that month, with unlimited runs. A summer roster of 40 costs more in July than a winter roster of 18 in January, because you pay for who was paid. Off-cycle runs, corrections, filings, and year-end W-2s and 1099s are included, with no long-term contracts: board-readable, and easy to line up against a grant budget.
One employee whose salary crosses two or more grants, your program and grant codes, and the way you report to funders today. Twenty minutes with a payroll specialist on a live demo organization: you’ll watch a salary allocate across funds, see the time record that documents it, and see the audit log that shows who approved the run.
Book a 20-minute demo