WageTime is payroll for independently owned U.S. Lawns franchises: the commercial-only grounds shop whose margin lives in whether a property’s crew-hours come in under the hours you bid. Every hour codes to the property, the contract, and the account, so labor reads per site.
For independently owned and operated U.S. Lawns® franchises. WageTime is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by U.S. Lawns, EverSmith Brands, or their affiliates. U.S. Lawns® and related marks are trademarks of their respective owners, used here only to describe the businesses this page serves.
A retail center or an office park pays a flat monthly number, and you won that number on a bid of estimated crew-hours. The fee stack comes off the top and the supply prices are set. The one cost that decides whether the contract earns its margin is labor, and generic payroll hands it back as a single blended figure that never says which property, which account, or which extra work order ate the hours.
You bid the office park at a set of crew-hours per visit and billed it flat. If the crew runs long on that property week after week, the contract quietly slides to break-even, and you find out at renewal instead of in a report. Commercial maintenance is priced on the hours a site is budgeted to take, so the actual hours per property are the number the whole deal turns on.
Land a regional account and one contract covers a dozen properties across the metro, sometimes past your home territory line. Billing sees one client; the margin lives site by site. When payroll reports the whole account as a single labor total, the two locations bleeding hours hide behind the ten that don’t, and the account looks fine until it isn’t.
The flat contract is the floor. The money on top is enhancement work: seasonal color, mulch installs, irrigation repairs, storm cleanup, usually run by a day-rate or per-job install crew, not the hourly maintenance route. Fold that into the base contract’s labor and the “extra” you priced to profit disappears into the number it was supposed to beat.
Reported FDD terms describe an ongoing royalty of roughly 4% to 6% of gross billings, stepping toward the low end as revenue grows, plus about a 2% brand fund. That stack is fixed and it comes off your billings. Labor is the one large cost you steer week to week, and an office that can’t read it per property and per account is steering the controllable line blind.
Crew hours live in Aspire, LMN, or Jobber, GPS-stamped and coded to the site. Then somebody exports the week, cleans it, and re-keys it into a payroll system that never heard of a commercial contract. The property and account codes fall off in the handoff, so labor cost per site is a guess by the time the invoice prints and the renewal bid is due.
WageTime puts every crew-hour and wage dollar on the property and contract your bid already numbers, and the answer is a report: actual hours per site set against the man-hours you budgeted, so the office park running long shows up before renewal.
| Property | Visits | Crew-hours | Labor cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Northgate Office Park | 4 | 96.0 | $2,112.00 |
| Riverside Retail Center | 4 | 128.0 | $2,816.00 |
| Cedar Industrial Park | 4 | 72.0 | $1,584.00 |
| Lakewood Apartments (multi-family) | 8 | 104.0 | $2,288.00 |
Replaces finding out the office park lost money at renewal, and pricing next year’s contract off a hunch.
Yes: WageTime reads a multi-site account the way its margin actually works, per site and then combined, so the two locations quietly eating hours stop hiding behind the eight that don’t.
| Site | Crew | Crew-hours | Labor cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Store #118 · Elmwood | Crew 1 | 84.0 | $1,848.00 |
| Store #204 · Northgate | Crew 1 | 112.0 | $2,464.00 |
| Store #251 · Cedar Falls | Crew 2 | 76.0 | $1,672.00 |
| Store #263 · Lakewood | Crew 2 | 90.0 | $1,980.00 |
Replaces the regional account read as one lump, and the Friday spent proving which store a paycheck belonged to.
The flat maintenance route and the enhancement crew run on one WageTime payroll with their labor on separate lines: hourly for the recurring contract, day-rate or per-job codes for the extras, so the mulch install you priced to profit is measured against what it cost.
Replaces the mulch install that lost money inside the maintenance number, and the day-rate week that skipped the overtime it raised.
A flat number you can read without a sales call: $50 a month per company plus $10 for each person actually paid that month, unlimited runs included. The fee stack rides your billings; payroll is the line that holds still.
Replaces the payroll bill you couldn’t read without a quote call, and the per-run fee on every summer Friday.
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 demoCommercial maintenance is priced on the crew-hours a property is budgeted to take per visit, so the actual hours on that site decide its margin. WageTime codes every crew-hour and wage dollar to the property and contract, then reports labor per site each run, so you can set actual hours against the man-hours you bid and catch a site running long before renewal.
Yes, WageTime reads it site by site. Each site carries its own job-cost code under the account, so labor rolls up per property and per account instead of a single lump. U.S. Lawns runs a regional and national account program, and this is how a franchisee reads which locations in a multi-site win earn their margin. Owners running several entities keep each under its own EIN with one login.
Enhancement work runs on its own day-rate or per-job pay code alongside the hourly maintenance route, and a week that mixes them earns overtime on the weighted-average regular rate automatically. Each enhancement books to its own work-order code, so seasonal color, mulch installs, and irrigation repairs are costed on their own line instead of vanishing into the base contract’s labor.
We import clock hours so there’s no double entry. Tell us your scheduling or field app on the demo and we’ll confirm the exact flow for your setup, including how hours land against your property, contract, and account codes. No app for it yet? Crews can punch on WageTime’s own GPS-stamped, geofenced mobile clock, so every site visit books proof of the hours.
$50 per month per company plus $10 per person actually paid that month, with unlimited payroll runs, weekly pay at no extra cost, and off-cycle and final checks included. Every federal, state, and local tax files automatically with year-end W-2s and 1099s. Set against the reported royalty of 4% to 6% of gross billings and the roughly 2% brand fund, payroll stays the line that doesn’t surprise you.
Crews you keep for winter snow contracts stay on the roster with on-call and shift-differential pay codes ready for storm-week overtime. Crews you release run through a bulk termination wizard in one pass, not one-by-one, and return in spring on retained records rather than a re-key. You pay $10 only for the people actually paid each month, so an off-season roster doesn’t bill like a summer one.
One property’s week of crew-hours, a multi-site account, and your enhancement work orders. Twenty minutes with a payroll specialist on a live demo company: you’ll see the hours become cost per property, the account read site by site, an enhancement week run with blended overtime, and what payroll costs against your royalty.
Book a 20-minute demo