Each man earns his tier's day rate for every day he works. The pool is the days you figured, multiplied by what a day of that crew costs — every man's tier rate plus the equipment allowance. Whatever is left after the day rates and the equipment is shared back out by hours worked. Crews paid by the job is how post-frame buildings actually get put up, and this is the operating system for post-frame and barndominium builders paying them that way. Paying by the hour instead? The same surplus sits on top of an hourly wage on hourly pay with shared surplus. Or give each man a share of the labour price — the same money however fast the job goes.
Also called: pay crew by the day · finish early bonus · labour pool · incentive pay for crews · profit share with the crew
Pay the crew for the days you figured, however fast they finish
A job is figured for a number of days. The pool is those days multiplied by what a day of that crew costs — every man's tier rate plus the equipment allowance. The crew earns its day rates for the days actually worked, and whatever is left in the pool goes back to them. Finish a three-day build in two and the crew keeps the day you saved, and you are onto the next job a day sooner.
A build you priced for three days takes three days every time, because nothing about finishing on Wednesday ever reaches the men who would have to do it.
Men work harder for money they can see coming to them. The pool is fixed at the days you figured, not recalculated at the days worked, so the money a fast build frees up has somewhere to land — you are buying the empty day back instead of watching the work stretch to fill it.
One ladder of day rates, priced once, instead of a rate per man
Tiers are one list with a day rate each, edited in place on the Crews tab and retired rather than deleted so old payouts keep their arithmetic. A tier is a rate, not a rank: two men on Tier 2 earn the same day whatever their job title. That is the point of paying this way instead of negotiating with every man separately.
Every man's rate lives in a separate conversation, and nobody can tell you what one day of Crew A costs without adding five numbers off the top of their head.
A man knows exactly where he stands, and what the next step up is worth. A crew's day becomes one number you can price a job against, and raising a man is moving him up a rung — not reopening a negotiation every spring.
Every man on the crew sits on a rung
Try itThe crew card names who is on it and the tier each one is on — Tier 1 · $500, Tier 2 · $400 — so a crew's day is read off the card, not assembled in somebody's head. The pool is priced from the crew as established, not from whoever turned up. Getting a man onto the books in the first place, with his details and his record, happens on the Team Members list.
One man is off Tuesday, the pool quietly drops by his day rate, and the four who did turn up share less money for doing more work.
The four who covered for a sick man get paid for it — that is what keeps a crew loyal to each other and to you. Pricing the pool off the crew you meant to send means an empty seat lands in the surplus and goes back to the men who did the work.
What one day of that crew costs, worked out once
One of every tier working, plus what it costs to put them on the road: $1,760 of day rates and $300 of fuel and equipment is a $2,060 day. Every pool on every job that crew touches is built from that one figure.
You are still pricing labour off a day rate you worked out in the spring, and nobody has told the estimate that fuel went up in June.
The owner needs one honest number for a crew day, not five rates and a guess at fuel. Holding the day as tiers plus equipment means moving one rung re-prices every job figured after it, so no crew quietly runs at last year's cost.
Fuel, equipment and the truck are in the crew day
Try itA per-day allowance is added to the tier rates to price one crew day, so the pool is funded at what a day actually costs rather than at wages alone. It is charged per crew day, not per man, and it comes off your side of the ledger at the days actually worked. Leave it out and a job one day over reports money still sitting in the pool while you are down.
The truck, the fuel and the blades come out of your pocket all week and never once appear in the number you call the labour cost.
The truck and the fuel are real money, and the crew knows it — leaving them out makes the pool look richer than it is. The allowance belongs to the crew, so the outfit hauling a compressor is not priced like the two-man crew in a van.
What you are committing to before anyone picks up a hammer
Two days, four, seven, fourteen, thirty — the pool at each, with the labour and the road cost kept apart. The figure is set by the days you figure for, not the days it takes, which means you know the labour cost of the job on the day you sell it rather than the week you close it.
You sell the labour on a feeling, the crew takes eleven days instead of seven, and the first honest number arrives with the payroll run.
An owner sleeps better knowing the most a job's labour can cost before it starts. Showing the commitment as a table of days makes the bet readable before you take it — the row you pick is your ceiling.
The number the crew is measured against is written on the job
Every job carries the days its labour was figured for — the number you landed on when you priced the work, off the crew, the wage and the hours the building needs. Where nobody set one, the scheduled span is used and the screen says so. The pool does not shrink when the crew comes in early — that is the entire incentive.
You sold the labour as twelve days in your head, and by the time the payout matters the argument is about whose memory to trust.
A crew will only chase a target that was set before they started. Writing the figure on the job up front makes it a deal, not a verdict handed down at the end — and the screen says when it fell back to the schedule.
A day is a day over six hours — and a long day earns no more
Try itAt or above the threshold, the full day rate is earned. Below it the day prorates, and it can never come out above the rate. Two shifts on one date collapse into one day's attendance. Both numbers are settings, because the next builder does not run a six-hour day. It is a rule anyone on the crew can state in one sentence, which is what makes it stick.
Someone leaves at two in the afternoon and you spend the drive home deciding whether that counted as a day — and you will decide differently next month.
A rule anyone can say in one sentence ends the Friday argument about part-days. The rate is neither capped at the top nor docked at the edge, and a man who stays late is not working for free — the extra hours lift his share of the surplus.
The pool only turns into money once somebody has worked it
Every figure on the payout is downstream of hours somebody actually logged. A job with nothing logged against it has no surplus at all — the pool is money you set aside, not money anyone is owed yet. The hours this splits by are not written down at the end of the week: they come off one tap in and one tap out on the crew's own phones, which is also where the job and the stage get settled.
A job set up on Monday and not begun shows a five-figure bonus against somebody's name, he sees it, and you spend a week explaining a number the software invented.
Nobody wants to see a bonus next to his name that was never real. The surplus is only what the crew earns back by working, so with nothing logged there is nothing to share — an untouched pool is money set aside, not money owed.
The surplus splits by hours worked, not by tier
The tier decides what a man earns; presence decides what he shares. Once day rates and equipment come out of the pool, the rest is divided strictly by each man's share of the crew's hours — in real figures, on the job's payout screen. The man who missed a day and worked half of another takes a visibly smaller slice than the man who was there for all of it, the fairness question that decides whether the scheme survives contact with a real crew.
One man was off Thursday and half of Friday, and the moment the bonus is split evenly the other four stop believing in the scheme.
Fair is what keeps a crew together: the man who was there all week takes more than the man who wasn't. Splitting on the hours they already clocked means nobody has to play judge, and the per-man column can be handed to the crew as the answer.
What a man takes home is two numbers stacked
The base of every column is what his tier earned him; the block on top is his slice of the surplus. The tier sets the first number and the hours set the second, which is how a Tier 4 man who was there all seven days narrows the gap on a Tier 2 man who was not. What the job sold for is nowhere near it — contracts, invoices and change orders are shut off for both field roles on roles and permissions.
One figure on a payslip is a figure to argue with, and nobody can see which half of it working differently would have moved.
A man can see which part of his pay he controls this week — and that is what makes him try. Pay drawn as two blocks can be explained at a tailgate: the rung he is on, and the share he earned by showing up and finishing early.
Every man sees what finishing early has paid him
Try itOn the Hours door of the crew app, What you have made splits everything paid to him into wages and surplus, shows his highest hourly wage with the lift above his base, and adds up what finishing ahead has paid him — with his biggest single surplus beside it. Only his own money, never anyone else's.
You pay a bonus for finishing early, but the crew never sees the sum behind it, so it is a number that turns up some weeks and not others.
People work for what they can see — a running total of what beating the days has paid him turns the bonus from a rumour into a reason. He feels he is earning more and getting better, because he is; for you that is a crew that pushes to beat the figure and stays another season.
Run long and the overrun comes out of your margin, not their pay
When the day rates and equipment come to more than the pool, there is no surplus to share, and the screen says so in those words rather than showing a negative bonus. The crew still earns its day rates. Because they are never clawed back, running long lands on your side of the ledger, and what it cost you is read on the job's profit and loss.
A job that runs two days long is the moment a pay scheme either holds or quietly becomes the crew covering your estimate.
Your crew should never pay for your bad guess at the days — and they will trust the scheme because they don't. Day rates are never clawed back, so an overrun lands on the estimate and becomes a lesson in how you price labour, not a payroll fight.
A man with no tier is named, not silently paid nothing
Anyone on the crew without a pay tier still appears on the payout, labelled No tier, with no day rate — and the panel names him and says where to fix it. The crew cost table flags the same gap and says the crew's day rate is understated because of it. A hole in the setup that quietly pays somebody nothing is the worst way to find out about a hole in the setup.
A man added to the crew on Monday and forgotten in the setup turns up on payday owed nothing, and you hear about it from him.
Nobody should find out on payday that he was set up wrong. The gap is raised twice — beside his name on the payout and again on the crew's day rate — so an unfinished setup shows as a warning, not a wrong cheque.
- 1Set up a ladder of tiers, each with a day rate, and put every man on one.
- 2Switch a crew to day rates with shared surplus, with its own equipment allowance.
- 3Write on the job how many days its labour was figured for.
- 4The crew clocks in and out on their field links — that is where the hours come from.
- 5The pool is days figured times what a crew day costs. The crew earns its day rates for the days worked.
- 6Whatever is left is the surplus, split strictly by each man's share of the hours.
- 7Every man sees what finishing early has paid him on his own phone.
Labour is sold into a job as one price, and a crew's daily cost is known — so a build figured for three days carries a fixed pot of labour money. If the crew finishes in two, you are on the next job a day sooner and the saving is real. But keeping it teaches the crew that working faster is worth nothing to them. The pool pays out whether the crew takes three days or two, and the surplus from finishing early goes back to the men who created it. What a man earns is set by his tier; what he takes out of the surplus is set by the hours he actually worked — so the man who missed a day takes a visibly smaller slice than the man who was there throughout.
- Straight time that pays the same whether a job took two days or three.
- Builders capturing all the upside of a fast build and crews having no stake in it.
- Splitting a bonus fairly across men on different rates and different attendance.
The pay ladder
A tier is a rate, not a rank in the company. Two men on the same tier earn the same day whatever their job title. The ladder is yours and open-ended — five tiers suits one builder, the next runs three or seven — and it sits on the Crews tab beside the people it prices.
What this man's day is worth
The picker sits in the crew member row, next to the Leader control, and lists each tier with its rate. It only appears for crews on day rates. Leave a man untiered and he earns no day rate — which is said on screen, not applied quietly.
Surplus split by hours, not by tier
Once day rates and equipment come out, the rest splits on hours worked. Leftover cents go to whoever worked the most, so the shares always add up to exactly the surplus. With no hours logged there is nothing to split.
A day is a day over six hours
Each crew carries its own threshold and its own standard day. Six hours or more earns the whole day rate — a long day earns no more, and a nearly-full day is not docked. Two shifts on the same date count as one day's attendance.
Fuel, equipment and the truck
The allowance is added to the crew's tier rates to price one crew day. It funds the pool at the days you figured, and comes off your side at the days actually worked. One builder runs $300 a day.
Days this job was figured for
Write the figured days on the job. Where nobody has set one, the scheduled span is used and the payout says so rather than hiding the assumption.
When the crew runs long
When the day rates and equipment come to more than the pool, the screen says the job ran long and why there is nothing to split. It never shows a negative bonus, and it never charges the overrun back against the crew.
Nobody quietly earns nothing
He still appears on the payout, labelled No tier, with no day rate. The panel names him and says where to fix it. The crew cost table flags how many people have no tier and says the day rate is understated.
Nobody has worked it, nobody has earned it
The surplus only exists once somebody has actually worked. A job that has not started cannot pay anybody, and the pool sitting there is money you have set aside.
