WageTime is payroll for travel nurse staffing agencies: the taxable base wage and the non-taxable housing and meals stipends settle on one weekly check, itemized the way the recruiter promised, with overtime computed on the regular rate.
WageTime provides payroll mechanics, not tax or legal advice. Whether a stipend is non-taxable depends on tax-home rules, and whether an hourly-tied stipend belongs in the overtime regular rate is a decision for you and your advisors. Sample screens use a demonstration environment.
Travel-nurse payroll is not high-volume the way warehouse staffing is. It is high-stakes: a smaller roster of credentialed clinicians, each on a structured thirteen-week contract, paid a blended package where the taxable hourly base is the small part and the non-taxable stipends are the big part. Get the split, the overtime rate, the license clock, or the work state wrong, and the error is expensive and personal.
A traveler's take-home is a low taxable hourly base, often $20 to $30 an hour, plus tax-advantaged housing and meals-and-incidentals stipends sized to the assignment location. On payroll they are different kinds of pay with different tax treatment, on the same weekly check. Software that only knows one hourly wage cannot produce the package the recruiter promised the nurse.
When a per diem or stipend is tied to hours worked, courts have treated it as compensation that belongs in the overtime regular rate, not a reimbursement outside it. The Ninth Circuit held exactly that in Clarke v. AMN Services (2021), and travel-staffing firms have paid settlements over stipends left out of the regular rate. Payroll that excludes hourly-tied stipends by default can underpay overtime on every traveler.
A traveler works on a compact multistate license or a single-state one, plus dated certifications like BLS and ACLS. If the RN license or a cert expires in week nine of a thirteen-week assignment, the nurse cannot work and you cannot bill. Nobody notices until the facility does, unless something is watching every expiration date.
Most contracts guarantee weekly hours. When a hospital calls off shifts for low census, some contracts still pay the guaranteed hours and the full stipend, and others prorate the stipend to hours actually worked. That is a per-contract rule your payroll has to honor exactly, traveler by traveler, or the paycheck fight lands on the recruiter.
A single traveler can generate several assignments and several state tax profiles a year: a resident tax-home state plus a rotating work state, each with its own withholding and unemployment. Your EIN sits in one state; your nurses are earning in five. Software that withholds to headquarters gets nearly everyone wrong.
The base wage is ordinary W-2 pay, the housing and meals-and-incidentals stipends are per diem pay codes configured as non-taxable earning types, and the whole package lands on one weekly paycheck, itemized on one stub.
Replaces the two-system workaround where the base runs in payroll and the stipends get bolted on by hand, and the stub the traveler cannot reconcile.
Sometimes it has to: the Ninth Circuit held in Clarke v. AMN Services that hours-tied per diems belong in the overtime regular rate, so each stipend pay code is classified at setup, with your counsel, and WageTime computes the premium on what you configured.
Replaces the default that quietly leaves every stipend out of the overtime rate, and the back-pay settlement that follows it.
Compact multistate licenses, single-state licenses for non-compact assignments, and dated certs all sit on the WageTime employee record with recurring expiration alerts, so a renewal starts before week nine turns into a nurse who cannot legally work.
| Clinician | Credential | Expires |
|---|---|---|
| Dana R., RNMultistate · home state TX | Compact RN | Jun 14 (61 days) |
| Priya N., RNSingle-state · May 2 (18 days) | California RN | Renew |
| Marcus B., RNDated cert · Apr 20 (6 days) | ACLS certification | Urgent |
| Lena K., LPNDated certification | BLS certification | Aug 1 (109 days) |
Replaces the spreadsheet of renewal dates nobody updated, and the shift a traveler could not work because a card expired mid-assignment.
Exactly what the contract says: when a contract guarantees 36 hours through a call-off, WageTime pays the guaranteed hours and full stipend, and when it prorates the stipend to hours worked, it does that instead, traveler by traveler.
Replaces the manual math after every low-census week, and the argument with a traveler over a stipend the contract already decided.
WageTime reads the answer off the addresses, not your headquarters: the resident tax-home state and the rotating work state are both on the record, and an April move picks up the new state on the day the assignment starts.
| Clinician | New assignment | Work state / local |
|---|---|---|
| Dana R., RNTax home TX, no state inc tax | Mercy Regional Denver CO | CO withholding |
| Priya N., RNTax home AZ · effective Apr 7 | Bay Harbor Medical Oakland CA | CA state plus local |
| Marcus B., RNTax home FL | Riverside Health Columbus OH | OH plus Columbus municipal |
| Lena K., LPNTax home TN | Lakeshore Care Louisville KY | KY plus Jefferson County |
Replaces the tax profile rebuilt from scratch every assignment, and the nonresident notice that arrives a year after the contract ended.
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 travel nurse is paid a taxable base hourly wage plus non-taxable housing and meals-and-incidentals stipends, all on one check. In WageTime the base is ordinary W-2 pay and the stipends are per diem pay codes configured as non-taxable earning types, so the whole package settles in one weekly run with each part itemized on the stub.
Whether a stipend is taxable depends on the individual nurse's tax-home situation, which is a decision for the nurse and their tax advisor, not a call WageTime makes. On payroll, WageTime pays the base wage as ordinary taxable W-2 pay and pays housing and M&IE stipends the way you configure them as pay codes. It does not determine tax-home status or promise a tax outcome.
Sometimes. When a stipend is tied to hours worked, courts have held it belongs in the FLSA regular rate used for overtime, as the Ninth Circuit ruled in Clarke v. AMN Services. WageTime computes overtime on the regular rate you configure and flags hourly-tied stipends so you and your counsel decide inclusion, rather than excluding them by default.
Yes. Each clinician's compact multistate license, any single-state license, and dated certifications like BLS and ACLS sit on the employee record with their own expiration dates and stored documents. Recurring alerts at 30, 60, and 90 days flag a credential before it lapses, so a renewal starts before it stops a shift mid-assignment.
Low-census pay follows the contract. If the contract guarantees weekly hours, WageTime can pay the guaranteed hours and full stipend through a call-off; if it prorates the stipend to hours worked, WageTime does that instead, per traveler. Guaranteed hours and stipend adjustments run as pay codes, and off-cycle corrections cost nothing extra.
$50 a month for the company plus $10 for each person actually paid that month, with unlimited runs. Weekly pay costs the same as biweekly, off-cycle corrections add nothing, and a slow month costs less because you only pay for people paid. An agency paying 60 travelers and 6 internal staff in a month is $710, whether payday landed four times or five.
One thirteen-week contract, its guaranteed hours and stipend terms, and a nurse who worked overtime. Twenty minutes with a payroll specialist on a live demo company: you'll see the base-plus-stipend package on one check, the overtime regular-rate setup with stipends flagged, the credential-expiration board, and an assignment tax setup for a nurse moving states.
Book a 20-minute demo