Crew Pay & Payroll
Each person paid the way they're actually paid — by the hour, by the day, by the job, with a share of what the crew saves, or on commission — then a pay run that works out the withholding and hands over a clean register.
The operating system for post-frame and barndominium builders.
Instead of: Straight time that pays the same whether a job took two days or three, hours guessed from memory, commissions in a spreadsheet, and a payroll rebuilt by hand every pay day.
Straight time pays the same for slow
Paid straight time with nothing else, a crew earns the same whether the job takes two days or three — or more for three. Nobody is being dishonest. The incentive simply points nowhere, on every job you run, and the day a fast crew saves you is a day it never sees. Post-frame crews are paid by the job, the day or the hour, and this is built only for post-frame builders — so it pays them the way they're really paid.
The alternative most builders are living with, whether they pay by the hour or by the day.
Every job is figured for a number of days
You price the job's labour for a number of days. Those days, times what a planned day of that crew costs — its rates plus the fuel and equipment allowance — is the labour budget. It is set before anyone picks up a hammer, and it does not move when the job does. The crew knows the target from day one, and a clear target is something to beat.
A job priced as a lump of labour, with no days against it, gives nobody anything to beat.
Pay by the hour, with no minimum day
On hourly + shared surplus, every hour is paid at each person's own rate, with no minimum day to argue about. The hours come off the crew's own phones — one tap on Clock In, one on Clock Out — and the count runs on the button to the second: three hours and twelve minutes into framing at Ray Wenger's 40×60 shop. No signal on site? It's saved on the phone and sends itself later. Nobody writes hours up at the end of the week, and men trust a clock they can see.
Hours written up from memory at the end of the week are hours nobody can check.
Or pay by the day, on your own ladder
On day rates with shared surplus, each person earns their tier's day rate for every day worked. A tier is a rate, not a rank — two people on the same tier earn the same day whatever their title, so pay is set by the ladder instead of negotiated one person at a time. A man can see the next rung, and that's something to work toward.
Day rates agreed one man at a time end up depending on who asked loudest.
Beat the days, and the crew shares what's left
Finish inside the budget and what is left after pay and equipment is the surplus, shared among the people on the job by the hours they worked. On the hourly model each person's hours carry a surplus multiplier, so the leader who carried a weak day can earn more of it than his hours alone say. Beat a four-man job by two days and that is real money, split between the people who earned it — and a crew that's earning more works like it owns the job.
Straight time gives the crew that saves you two days exactly nothing for it.
Run long, and it lands somewhere on purpose
The screen is a day-rate job that ran long: every person keeps the day rates they earned, and the overrun comes off your margin, not their pay. On hourly + shared surplus the same job books a shortfall instead, and somebody decides whose it was — the crew carries it into its next surplus, or the company absorbs it — and admins and project managers hear about it while the job is still running long, not after. Fair rules on a bad week are what keep good men.
A flat price that docks the crew for your estimating mistake loses you the crew.
Rehearse it before you commit to it
The screen is the day-rate sandbox: set the days you figured and how early or late the crew came in, and watch what every person on the ladder takes home. On the hourly model, Simulations does the same across a whole series of jobs — early, late through the crew's fault, late through yours — so you can see a carried shortfall paid down before it happens to a real crew. Both run the same arithmetic as the real payout, so what you rehearse and what you pay can never disagree.
Changing how a crew is paid without rehearsing it first means the first real payout is the test.
Hours and expenses are approved before anyone is paid
What the crews log arrives in one queue: Crew B's hours on the Wenger shop's posts and framing, $486.20 of materials from Zimmerman Supply, Dwayne's $78.40 of fuel to pay back, an equipment rental on the Stoltzfus job. The man who logs the hours isn't the man who approves them, so nothing reaches a payout that nobody looked at. The crew knows their hours were checked and their money is right.
Approving hours by glancing at a total on Friday is approving whatever was written down.
Then the pay run, worked out to the cent
Each person's W-4 and deductions sit on their record. A pay run takes the approved hours and works out every check — the crew, the office and the sales reps on one run. The two weeks to September 27: seven people, $16,253.12 gross, $13,643.89 net, $17,259.73 total cost. Open Wes Brubaker, the crew lead — 72 hours, 4 overtime, 8 paid time off, $2,028.59 net — and every line shows its working: the overtime at time and a half on his $28 rate, the federal and state withholding, the pre-tax medical premium. The reps' commission owed is paid on the same run. Then Register CSV and Hours & earnings CSV hand it to whoever files your payroll — it does the arithmetic; it doesn't file taxes or move money. A man who can see how his check was worked out doesn't have to ask, and pay day stops being the most stressful day in the office.
A payroll rebuilt from timesheets and a commission spreadsheet every pay day is two chances to get somebody's money wrong.
Run your crew's pay
on one of your jobs.
Each person paid the way they're actually paid — by the hour, by the day, by the job, with a share of what the crew saves, or on commission — then a pay run that works out the withholding and hands over a clean register. Twenty minutes, on one of your real structures — and the link we build is yours to keep whether or not you go any further.
