It runs the real payout against the hours the crew actually clocked on their field links, and shows its working before the per-man table. Nothing is typed into this screen. It sits in the job's Labor & costs card — the money with the money — and hides itself on any job whose crew is paid another way. One system for the whole post-frame business, so the hours from the field and the pay in the office are the same numbers.
Also called: crew payout screen · what do I pay them · job payout · settle up with the crew
The settle-up happens in front of the arithmetic
Pool, day rates earned, fuel and equipment, surplus shared — then a line for every man: tier, hours, days, day rates, surplus, owed, and Total to the crew at the foot. It lives in the job's Labor & costs card, whose closed header already says labour against budget, what has been spent and the margin. A payout screen that prints one number per man is asking to be argued with. One that shows how it got there settles the argument before it starts.
Payday is a crew standing at the tailgate while you read numbers off a spreadsheet nobody else can see.
A man who can see the sum believes the total — and a crew that trusts its pay stays. Showing the working first means the conversation is about the job, not about whether you are being straight with them.
The hours are the ones they clocked, not the ones somebody re-keyed
Every entry the crew logged on their field links for this job is collapsed to one row per man per day and priced. Nothing is typed into this screen. The man sees the same week on his own phone — approved days and the ones still waiting — so the hours being paid are the hours he already looked at.
Somebody re-keys Friday's timesheet from a text message, a 9 becomes a 6, and the man notices before you do.
When the man and the office are looking at the same hours, there is nothing to argue about. The Friday spreadsheet, the phone call to the crew leader and the typo in the middle of it all disappear at once.
Hourly crews get the same screen, rate and multiplier on every line
A crew on hourly + shared surplus gets the same panel: every hour paid at the man's rate, the budget the days were figured at, and the surplus split by hours × multiplier. The Tier column reads $28/hr × 1.2, so each man can see both the rate he is paid and the weight his hours carry in the share.
The hourly crew gets a bonus worked out on the back of an envelope, and the leader can't see why his share is bigger than the new man's.
Seeing the multiplier on his own line tells a leader his extra effort counts — in writing. The same screen for every pay model means the office learns one way to settle up, whatever the crew is on.
It refuses to answer rather than invent a total
No crew assigned, no tiers set up, a crew paid by plain hourly, nobody on the crew, shares that add up to more than 100% — each comes back as a stated reason instead of a number. And with no hours logged there is no surplus at all: an untouched pool is money you have set aside, never money somebody is owed. This is what people get paid from, so a plausible-looking invented figure is the worst thing it could produce.
A job set up on Monday and not started shows a four-figure bonus against one man's name, and you spend a week explaining a number the software made up.
Nothing loses a crew's trust faster than a number that turns out to be wrong. A plain "here is what's missing" costs you a minute; a confident wrong total costs you the scheme.
A man off sick does not shrink what the others share
The pool is priced from the crew as established — every active man's tier plus the equipment allowance — not from whoever happened to turn up. Attendance moves what each man earns and shares. It does not quietly re-price the job underneath them mid-build.
One man is off sick, the pool quietly shrinks by his day, and the four who covered share less for doing more.
The men who cover for a missing man should be the ones who gain, not lose. Pricing the pool from the crew as set up keeps the job's labour figure fixed while attendance moves who gets what.
One calculation behind every screen that mentions this job's pay
The job's panel, the man's own record, and the company-wide labour rollup all run the same arithmetic. Two versions of what did this job pay is two answers — and the one on the employee's own record is the one he would argue with you about.
The job screen says the crew made $4,495, the yearly report says $4,210, and nobody can say which is right.
A man who sees one number in the office and another on his phone stops believing both. One calculation behind every screen means the totals agree without anyone checking them.
Rounding never invents or loses a cent
Shares are worked out precisely, and the leftover cents go to whoever worked the most hours, so the per-man lines always add up exactly to the surplus. A payout sheet whose parts do not add up to the total is a payout sheet nobody trusts twice.
The shares add up to $899.99 against a $900 surplus, and the crew asks where the penny went — then where everything else went.
Pay that adds up to the cent is pay nobody questions. The leftover cents go to whoever carried the most hours, so the per-man lines always add up exactly to the surplus.
- 1Open the job's Labor & costs card and find Crew payout. It appears for crews on day rates + shared surplus, hourly + shared surplus, or a share of the labor price.
- 2The header reads Pool · Day rates earned · Fuel & equipment · Surplus shared.
- 3Underneath, a line per man: who, tier, hours, days, day rates, surplus, owed — and a Total to the crew. The Tier column carries the model: a tier and its rate, $28/hr × 1.2, or 35% of labor.
- 4The hours are the ones they clocked, collapsed to one row per man per day.
- 5The pool is priced from the crew as established, so a man off sick does not shrink what the others share.
- 6If it cannot work something out, it names what is missing instead of showing a number.
Handing a crew one number per man is asking to be argued with, and the argument happens in a yard with nothing there to settle it. The payout screen shows how it got there — the pool, each man's tier and day rate, hours worked, the surplus and every share — so the arithmetic is visible before anyone questions it. When something it needs is missing, such as an untiered man or a job with no figured days, it refuses and names what is missing, because a plausible invented total on the screen people are paid from is the worst thing it could produce. The same arithmetic drives each man's own record, so a job's payout and an employee's record can never quote different money.
- Manual payout arithmetic per job.
- Payout disputes with no visible working.
- Two screens quoting different money for the same job.