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 — a raise path everyone can see, then a pay run that works out the withholding and hands over a clean register.
The operating system built exclusively 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, raises promised at the truck and forgotten, commissions in a spreadsheet, and a payroll rebuilt by hand every pay day.
How should a post frame crew pay system work?
Pay each person the way they're really paid, by the hour, the day or the job, then set the labor budget before the job starts and share what the crew saves under it. A good post frame crew pay system splits that surplus by hours worked, puts day rates on a ladder everyone can see, takes hours from the crew's own phones, and still pays the overtime the law requires.
- Team pay lifts output when the team can move the number. When a garment plant moved to team piece rates, productivity rose 14%, high performers joined teams first, and mixed-ability teams did better. Hamilton, Nickerson & Owan, 2003 ↗
- A day rate doesn't switch off overtime. Under federal law, overtime is based on the regular rate however pay is figured, piece rate, salary or otherwise, and a lump sum paid without regard to hours doesn't count as overtime pay. That is why hours still get recorded on a day-rate crew. US DOL, Fact Sheet #23 ↗
- Pay gaps hurt when nobody can see why. In a field experiment, unequal pay among coworkers cut output by 0.24 standard deviations and attendance by 12%, but had no effect when the productivity differences were visible. A tier ladder and a surplus multiplier with a stated reason are visible. Breza, Kaur & Shamdasani, 2018 ↗
- Across 78 studies, people work less in groups, and loaf less when their own output can be evaluated. Hours per person and filed reports keep each share of the crew's surplus tied to what each man did. Karau & Williams, 1993 ↗
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 exclusively for post-frame and barndominium 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. Before clocking in he picks Job, Drive or Office / Shop, and switching mid-day keeps the hours already worked where they were — so the drive to the site gets paid and a morning in the shop never lands in a job's cost. 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 Crew A's own simulator: each person at their own rate an hour, each with a surplus multiplier — Caleb, who leads, at 1.4, Eli and Josh at 1, Sam at 0.85, and Aaron, the newest hand, at 0.2 — on days that ran anywhere from 2 to 11 hours. Figured for 7 days and done in 6, $1,367 is left, and the multiplier is why Caleb's share is $486 and Aaron's is $35. Step the job a day late and watch it turn into a shortfall; on Simulations, run a whole series of jobs and see a carried shortfall paid down before it happens to a real crew. It runs 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.
A raise path everybody can see — and nobody waits on a slow yes
Each position gets its own raise paths, and every checkpoint on one can count something different and pay out something different. A crew member: 50 cents an hour at 30 days; after five jobs finished, a bigger surplus multiplier — a bigger share of every job's surplus; after $15,000 of crew surplus, a dollar an hour and a bigger share again; a $500 bonus at 1,000 hours. A rep: his commission rate goes up after the ramp, then on commission brought in, then on sales closed. When someone reaches a step, whoever approves raises is told it's due. Give raise backdates a raise to the day the step was reached, and the back pay for work already paid at the old rate goes on the next pay run; a bigger multiplier counts from the next job settled. Decline needs a reason. A report a manager files counts as a strike, and the path says what a strike does — pause it for a set number of days, restart the climb to the next step, or take away the next step's bonus or PTO. Each person sees where they stand on their own Home screen or in the crew app. A man who can see the next raise works toward it, and a late answer never costs him a dollar.
A raise promised at the truck in spring is an argument by fall, because nobody wrote down what it took.
The right lever for the problem you actually have
Every reward drives something different, so the step editor starts from the problem. A raise buys staying and does little for pace. A bigger surplus multiplier gives the man who sets the crew's pace a bigger stake in every job's surplus, paid from the rest of the crew's share. Turned down, the same multiplier is the fair answer to the man the crew is carrying: people ease off when a capable partner free-rides, and a cut from filed reports hands his share to the men who carried him. A few small bonuses at 30, 60 and 90 days beat one cliff at six months. A title costs nothing and doesn't fade. Strikes stall progress for conduct, whether or not the job made a surplus. And because pay for speed pulls effort off what nobody checks, every crew on speed pay gets photo checkpoints on the stages that get covered up, so a corner cut on the Wenger shop is found, and checked for on every job after. Every line cites its study. An owner who knows why he picked a reward can tell his crew.
One lever, the raise, handed out when someone asks: it rewards whoever asks and fixes nothing about pace, slackers or shortcuts.
A career path anyone can see, and what it really took
Raise paths cover the raises inside a position. Career paths cover the positions: crew member, then crew lead at 2,000 hours, 20 jobs, 90 days without a strike and a sign-off that he can read a plan set and lay out the posts, then project manager. Sales rep to sales manager, with a coaching sign-off, because the best seller isn't always the best manager. Each position says what it pays. Everyone on a path sees how close they are, and Promote records the day. Because every promotion is recorded, the tab shows what it actually took the people who made it: Ridgeline's four crew leads took a median of about 18 months and 2,980 hours, against the 2,000 the path asks. People promoted from inside outperform outside hires and stay longer, and a man who can see the next position has a reason to stay for it.
"Keep working hard and we'll see" is not a goal, and a PM hired from outside doesn't know how you build.
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 — and with Credit the rep when the customer signs switched on in Sales payouts, a signed contract puts the sale on the ledger for the rep on the card at his default rate, once, with nobody keying it in. Each check splits the hours into job, drive and office / shop, as both downloads do. 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 — a raise path everyone can see, then a pay run that works out the withholding and hands over a clean register. Thirty minutes with Keith, on one of your real structures — and the link we build is yours to keep whether or not you go any further.
