WageTime is payroll for staffing agencies: $50 a month per company plus $10 per person paid that month, with unlimited runs, so weekly pay and off-cycle final checks cost nothing extra. When a temp works two assignments at two rates in one week, overtime computes on the weighted-average regular rate automatically. Taxes follow each temp’s client worksite across 11,000+ local jurisdictions. And your temps, your recruiters, and your 1099 contractors settle in one run, with W-2s and 1099s both included at year-end.
Staffing companies hired 11.2 million temporary and contract employees in 2024, and the average temp assignment runs about ten weeks (ASA). That means payroll here is not a monthly chore. It is the factory floor: weekly, high-volume, multi-jurisdiction, and running on a gross margin near 25% (SIA), where every error is margin you don’t get back.
A temp picks orders 30 hours at one client and packs 14 at another, at different rates. Federal rules say that week’s overtime computes on the weighted average of all rates (29 CFR 778.115), not whichever rate was live at hour 41. Payroll that keys overtime to one employee rate gets it wrong, and joint-employment doctrine can pull your client into the shortfall with you.
Your EIN lives in one city. Your temps work in forty. Ohio keys municipal withholding to where the employee works, per portion of a day. Pennsylvania wants employer registration at each worksite and the higher of resident versus work-location tax. Win one new client across a county line and payroll inherits a jurisdiction your system has never heard of.
ASA measured temp turnover at 416% in 2024. At ten-week average tenure, every seat is a fresh I-9, an E-Verify case, and eventually a final check, several times a year. That is a production process. Most payroll systems treat it like an occasional life event.
Your hours are approved by client supervisors, on portals and VMS timesheets you don’t control, then somebody re-keys them into payroll. Back-office coordinators burn 15-20 minutes per start moving data that already exists in the ATS. At staffing volume, the re-key is a full-time job that produces nothing but risk.
Temps expect Friday like clockwork; clients pay in 30, 45, 60 days. You carry multiple payroll cycles in receivables on a gross margin near 25% (SIA), so a payroll platform that meters every run, or fumbles a week, is spending your thinnest dollar. Weekly cadence should be the default, not a premium tier.
Illinois ties equal pay to 720 hours worked at the same client. New Jersey requires wage statements itemized by client, hours, and rate, and the Third Circuit upheld it. Massachusetts wants a written job order per assignment. Generic payroll has no idea who the client even is; here, the client relationship is the compliance object.
The answers below are sized for a branch back office, not a corporate campus.
How does overtime work when a temp covers two assignments in one week? WageTime computes it automatically on the weighted-average regular rate: total straight-time pay across every assignment divided by total hours, with the overtime premium on top, week by week, the way the federal default (29 CFR 778.115) describes it. The rest of the staffing pay zoo runs as pay codes inside the same engine: night and weekend shift differentials, day rates for day-labor crews, per-unit piece rates, on-call pay, and placement bonuses for the recruiting desk. Minimum-wage processing runs underneath every hour at federal, state, and local levels. Nobody reconstructs the week in a spreadsheet, and nobody argues with a temp about which client’s rate hour 41 belongs to.
| Line | Hours | Rate | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brookfield Distribution order picking | 30.0 hrs | $17.60 | $528.00 |
| Veltri Foods packaging line | 14.0 hrs | $19.80 | $277.20 |
| Weighted-average regular rate all hours | 44.0 hrs | $18.30 | $805.20 |
| Overtime premium 4 OT hrs at half rate | 4.0 hrs | $9.15 | $36.60 |
Replaces the Saturday spreadsheet where someone reconstructs which four hours were overtime, and at whose rate.
Which taxes apply to a temp depends on where the assignment is, and WageTime resolves that from the address itself: work and home addresses are geolocated to rooftop level across 11,000+ local jurisdictions, all 50 states plus Puerto Rico, with state reciprocity, withholding overrides, and effective-dated tax setup for mid-year moves between assignments. Win a client in a new municipality and the worksite’s locals calculate from the first check; move a temp from an Ohio warehouse to a Pennsylvania plant and the change is effective-dated instead of retroactively wrong. Every federal, state, and local filing and deposit is handled automatically, and each EIN in a group files under its own account with one login across all of them.
| Temp | Client worksite | Local rule applied | SUI state |
|---|---|---|---|
| Keisha R. | Brookfield Distribution Columbus OH | Columbus municipal, workday-based | OH |
| Dan W. | Veltri Foods Sharon Hill PA | Higher of resident vs worksite EIT | PA |
| Marisol T. | Quill Medical Group Louisville KY | Jefferson County occupational | KY |
| Trey B. | Harbor Freight Yard Nashville TN | No local income tax | TN |
Replaces the tax-notice folder that grows a new envelope every time sales wins a client across a county line.
What does onboarding look like at 400% turnover? Batches, not events. WageTime runs bulk onboarding for Monday start lists, self-onboarding with e-signatures from the temp’s own phone, and rehire onboarding that retains prior records, so the temp who came back for a third assignment doesn’t fill everything out a third time. The I-9 is electronic with List A/B/C front-and-back document capture, and the E-Verify case is created once I-9 requirements are met, with status tracked on the employee record. When the assignment wave ends, the bulk termination wizard closes it out, and off-cycle final-pay runs cost nothing extra. Starts become a checklist someone clears before coffee, not a folder that eats the morning.
| New hire | Client worksite | I-9 | E-Verify |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alvarez, Nina | Brookfield Distribution | Complete | Case created |
| Okafor, Sam | Veltri Foods | Complete | Case created |
| Reyes, Marco rehire | Quill Medical Group | Rehire | Case created |
| Pruitt, Casey | Harbor Freight Yard | Pending | Awaiting I-9 |
Replaces the Monday folder of half-signed PDFs, and the start that slipped a week because one document never came back.
Staffing hours are approved by client supervisors on timesheets and portals you don’t control, so WageTime’s job is to take them in cleanly and keep the story straight. Time tracking flows into payroll, and we import clock hours so there’s no double entry; tell us your ATS or VMS on the demo and we’ll confirm the exact flow for your setup. Hours and pay are coded to jobs and cost codes, with codes up to 40 alphanumeric characters adjustable to your client and assignment numbering, so labor cost reports by client and crew instead of one company-wide blob. Timesheet attestation, audit-ready change logs, and timesheet locking keep a defensible record for the hour disputes that staffing inherits, and the finished run posts to QuickBooks mapped by department, with a configurable GL export for everything else.
| Client / cost code | Temps | Approved hrs | Labor cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brookfield Distribution BRKFLD-WHSE | 14 | 512.5 | $9,215.75 |
| Veltri Foods VELTRI-PKG | 9 | 322.0 | $6,270.90 |
| Quill Medical Group QUILL-ADMIN | 6 | 228.0 | $4,868.40 |
| Harbor Freight Yard HARBOR-YARD | 5 | 187.5 | $3,384.38 |
Replaces the CSV shuffle between the ATS export and the payroll import, and the 15 minutes per start it quietly bills you.
Who has to offer a temp health coverage? Usually the agency, as the employer, and staffing is the textbook variable-hour case. WageTime tracks ACA eligibility, hours of service, affordability, and look-back measurement periods for variable-hour staff continuously: measurement periods accumulate hours across assignments, stability periods hold status once it’s earned, and the math updates as timesheets land instead of in a January panic. Year-end 1094-C and 1095-C forms are generated and e-filed from the same records. Combined with weekly W-2 payroll under your own EIN, that keeps the employer-of-record obligations you sell to clients backed by data you can actually produce on request.
| Employee | Avg hrs/wk | Measurement window | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Keisha R. | 33.4 | Month 8 of 12 | Review |
| Dan W. | 21.2 | Month 5 of 12 | Below threshold |
| Marisol T. | 30.8 | Complete | Offered |
| Trey B. | 12.6 | Month 2 of 12 | Below threshold |
Replaces the January spreadsheet that tries to reconstruct a year of variable hours the week 1095-Cs are due.
The agency is the employer of record for its temps: it pays wages, withholds and files payroll taxes, and issues the W-2s, while the client directs the day-to-day work. WageTime runs that model natively, weekly runs at no extra cost, taxes filed automatically for every worksite jurisdiction, and your internal recruiters in the same payroll.
Hours from all assignments in a workweek add together, and under the federal default the overtime rate is the weighted average of all rates worked that week (29 CFR 778.115). WageTime computes weighted-average overtime automatically whenever someone works two or more rates in a week, so multi-assignment weeks come out right without spreadsheet forensics.
The staffing agency does, as the employer. WageTime files every federal, state, and local tax automatically, including deposits, and resolves local taxes from each temp’s geolocated work and home addresses across 11,000+ jurisdictions, so a new client worksite starts calculating correctly from its first check.
Temps on your assignments are almost always W-2 employees of the agency; misclassifying them as 1099 is an expensive mistake. Classification is a decision for you and your attorney. In WageTime, W-2 temps, W-2 internal staff, and legitimate 1099 contractors run in the same payroll, with W-2s and 1099s both included at year-end.
You can until a temp works two rates in one week, a client opens in a new municipality, or Monday brings 20 starts. Those are the breaking points: multi-rate overtime, worksite-based local taxes, and onboarding volume. WageTime is built around exactly those three. For front-office recruiting and client invoicing you’ll still use your ATS; bring it to the demo and we’ll confirm the exact flow for your setup.
$50 a month for the company plus $10 for each person actually paid that month, with unlimited runs. Weekly pay costs the same as biweekly, off-cycle final checks cost nothing extra, and a quiet month costs less because you only pay for people actually paid. An agency paying 40 temps and 4 recruiters in a month is $490, whether that month had four Fridays or five.
Last week’s approved-hours export, your worksite list, and one temp who worked two assignments. Twenty minutes with a payroll specialist on a live demo company: you’ll see the weighted-average overtime math on a real multi-rate week, worksite tax setup, the Monday start queue, and the ACA look-back dashboard.
Book a 20-minute demo