A roofing company moves three kinds of money: per-square pay, storm commissions that release in stages, and a comp meter pricing unlabeled hours at rooftop rates. WageTime settles the squares and the splits in the same weekly run, every hour coded to a job.
Roofing payroll is three ledgers pretending to be one. The crew’s tally, the rep’s settlement, and the comp auditor’s worksheet all describe the same week, and in many shops none of them agree.
The aerial report says 24 squares, the crew lead’s tally says 26, and the office splits the difference on a clipboard. Tear-off pays one rate, install pays another, the 9/12 rear section should pay a premium, and by Friday the numbers have been retyped twice.
The rep sold at approval, took a draw in March, and the decking supplement changed the job’s value in May. Commission comes off net profit in stages, the spreadsheet holding it has one author, and every settlement ends in a negotiation.
Roofing workers’ comp, NCCI class 5551, commonly runs $25-45 per $100 of payroll, among the highest class rates in the country. When hour records don’t split rooftop work from ground and shop time, the auditor assigns the unlabeled hours to the highest-rated class, and the premium bill eats the season.
Per-square production pay and sales bonuses legally belong inside the overtime rate. Roofing companies keep learning that from investigators: $147,708 at a Phoenix roofer, $166,832 at a New York shop that left commissions and bonuses out of the math.
Below about 40°F, shingle sealant stops activating and the install season closes with it. November brings a layoff wave, spring brings rehires and H-2B arrivals, and payroll either handles both in bulk or the office does it one form at a time.
The squares, the pitch, the supplements, and the commission math live in AccuLynx or JobNimbus, with measurements from an EagleView report. None of those systems cuts a paycheck. So the office retypes the CRM’s numbers into whatever does, and the stub inherits the typos.
A 10/50/50 settlement is just arithmetic, and arithmetic belongs in payroll. WageTime runs commission plans as tiered structures inside the run: approval, production start, and collection each post as their own pay line, on a stub the rep can audit without a meeting.
| Release | Amount |
|---|---|
| Released at production startJob 4418 · 40% of split | $1,476.00 |
| Held for final collectionJob 4418 · 60% of split | $2,214.00 |
Replaces the settlement spreadsheet with one author, and the argument at the end of every storm.
A roof is sold by the square, and WageTime can pay it by the square, with the pay codes carrying whatever your own rate card says. Published crew-pay guidance runs about $30-60 a square for straightforward shingle installs, with steep pitches adding 25-50%.
Replaces the clipboard tally, and the time-and-a-half-on-base shortcut that fails the investigation.
In roofing, an hour that can’t prove where it happened gets priced like it happened on the ridge. WageTime lands every hour in payroll already coded to a job and cost code; class codes and premiums stay your carrier’s, the hour ledger is ours.
| Code | Hours | Labor cost |
|---|---|---|
| ROOFTear-off/install · 4418, 4423 | 168.0 | $5,712.00 |
| GRNDDebris/magnet sweep · Job 4418 | 22.0 | $528.00 |
| SHOPYard & load-out · warehouse | 14.0 | $322.00 |
| OFFCOffice & estimating · admin | 40.0 | $960.00 |
Replaces the audit-week archaeology through twelve months of unlabeled timesheets.
Fall protection was OSHA’s most-cited standard again in FY2025, its fifteenth straight year at the top, and roofing contractors lead the citation counts. The trade’s answer is training and inspection discipline, and WageTime gives both a system of record.
| Worker | Status | Next due |
|---|---|---|
| Marcus D.Fall protect · harness/anchor | On record | Aug 2027 |
| Luis R.Fall protect · harness/anchor | Assigned | due Sep 25 |
| Tay W.Ladder & roof access | On record | Jul 2027 |
| Sam O.First aid & CPR | 60-day alert | renew Nov 2026 |
| Crew-wideHarness & rig check · monthly | 2 open | due Sep 30 |
Replaces the binder of sign-in sheets nobody can find the week it matters.
Shingle sealant stops activating around 40°F, and in most of the country the roster follows the thermometer. WageTime runs that cycle in bulk, and the invoice shrinks with it: $10 per person actually paid that month, plus $50 for the company.
| Wave | People | Timing |
|---|---|---|
| Winter offboardingFinal checks issued, off-cycle | 9 crew | Nov 21 |
| Spring rehire listRecords retained for rehire | 9 flagged | invites Mar 9 |
| H-2B arrivalsI-9 captured · E-Verify opened | 4 | first run Apr 10 |
| December rosterInvoice $110 · $50 + 6 × $10 | 6 paid | Dec |
Replaces the January file boxes, and a spring of onboarding paperwork one packet per returning roofer.
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, for employees. Piece pay never switches off the Fair Labor Standards Act: a per-square week still has hours underneath it, and once they pass 40, a premium is owed on the weighted-average regular rate across everything the week earned. WageTime keeps the hours under the squares and does that math in the run, so the check that pays 24 squares also pays the overtime the law expects.
Generally yes. Nondiscretionary bonuses and commissions belong in the regular rate that overtime is computed from, and leaving them out is the violation investigators keep citing at roofing companies ($147,708 and $166,832 in two recent DOL cases). WageTime runs bonuses and commissions as pay codes inside payroll, where the overtime math can see them.
As configuration. Percentage-based comp settles through tiered commission structures, staged releases run as itemized pay lines per job, and a supplement true-up goes out on an off-cycle run at no extra cost. Which dollars count as commissionable is written in your plan, not ours; the run simply executes it the same way every cycle.
Clean hour records are what the audit runs on. WageTime codes hours to jobs and cost codes, so rooftop, ground, shop, and office time stays separated all year, with GPS-stamped punches showing where each hour happened. WageTime doesn’t set class codes or premiums and makes no promises about audit outcomes; it keeps the ledger the auditor asks for.
Keep the CRM; payroll picks up where it stops. The square counts and settlement amounts it produces become pay-code lines in the run, itemized on the stub. For crew hours, we import clock hours so there’s no double entry. Tell us your system on the demo and we’ll confirm the exact flow for your setup. Crews without a clock can punch on WageTime’s GPS-stamped mobile app.
$50 per month per company plus $10 per person paid that month, with unlimited runs: weekly checks, off-cycle supplement true-ups, and final checks at no extra cost, and a winter roster costs less than a summer one. HR, time, and benefits are optional add-ons, priced separately. Certified payroll for public work is an add-on, scoped and priced on the demo. Switching is full-service and paid.
A settled job’s commission sheet, a crew week of tear-off and install tallies, and your class-code worksheet if you keep one. In twenty minutes on a live demo company, a payroll specialist turns the squares into a check, the storm file into a staged settlement, and the split week into blended overtime, with the per-person invoice math on screen the whole time.
Book a 20-minute demo