If you’re working in a construction firm, chances are you’re responsible for running payroll alongside sending out invoices, paying supplier bills, answering employee questions, and handling other office work. Even as all these jobs compete for your time, payroll continues to take up a large part of the week because you’ve to manually:

• Check and verify each employee’s hours and rates, overtime, deductions, and benefits
• Withhold and pay the right taxes
• And file the necessary returns by the relevant federal, state, or local deadline

To save time and reduce the risk of human errors, many companies have switched to dedicated payroll software. In this article, I review eight of the best construction payroll software options, identifying the best use case for each to help you decide which one’s the most suitable for your firm.

Platform	Best for	G2 rating	Free trial	Starting price
Buddy Punch	Combined time tracking and payroll	4.8/5	14 days	$12.99/employee/month
Miter	Public works payroll	Not reviewed	No	Contact for pricing
Homebase Payroll	Routine payroll and off-cycle contractor payments	4.6/5	No	$6/employee/month
Everee	Payroll during tight cash flow cycles	4.6/5	No	Contact for pricing
Zoho Payroll	Linking payroll to your accounts	4.5/5	14 days	$5/employee/month
Payroll4Construction	Outsourced construction payroll for growing firms	Not reviewed	No	Contact for pricing
Justworks	Embedding health insurance in payroll	4.6/5	No	$16/employee/month
JOBPOWER	Tracking payroll costs and profitability by job	3.5/5	No	Contact for pricing

1. Buddy Punch – Best for combined time tracking and payroll

Before each payroll day, you have to wait to receive handwritten cards, scanned timesheets, and messages from managers and foremen across several job sites. At the end, you have limited time to piece them all together, spot any errors or omissions, and get the hours ready before the monthly cutoff.

Buddy Punch helps you get around this last-minute scramble by letting crew members record their own start and finish times through the app, a shared kiosk, or text message. I like how you can use geofencing to limit app punches to the right job site — handy when you’ve crews working across a number of locations. Alternatively, you can appoint a foreman to clock in their whole crew.

At any point during the week, workers can check their own timecards to spot and fix any errors before submitting them for approval. Managers also get the chance to review their crew’s hours so they can deal with any problems before approving the timecards, like returning one if any information is missing or wrong.

Buddy Punch captures attendance data and stores all updates made to it in real time, so by the time it gets to you in payroll, the hours have been checked by workers and approved by their supervisors.

You can now import the approved hours into Buddy Punch Payroll. The app works out each employee’s regular, overtime, double-time, and PTO hours and displays them separately. You can review their pay and taxes, add bonuses and reimbursements, check the total cash needed, and finalize and submit the run.

Alternatively, you can export the approved hours in the correct format for one of more than 20 supported payroll providers.

Pros

• Crew members can record their own hours in the app, so you don’t need to chase them for timesheets every week.
• Managers can approve team members’ hours so you know they’ve been checked for accuracy.

Cons

• You still need to export hours to Excel and process them manually if you don’t use Buddy Punch Payroll or an approved partner.
• The group punch feature isn’t available in the app, so managers have to log in their crews on the website. This may not always be easy when teams are out on site.

Pricing

To access the payroll function, sign up for any Buddy Punch plan, which starts at a base fee of $19 per month plus $4.99 per user per month (billed annually). The Payroll add-on is available for $49 per month plus $8 per user per month (billed monthly).

2. Miter – Best for public works payroll

Construction firms that take on covered public works projects are legally required to pay each covered worker the prevailing wage for their classification. That means you must pay the listed basic hourly rate plus any required fringe benefit amount, which can include qualifying benefits, extra cash wages, or a combination of both. You also need to submit weekly certified payroll to the contracting agency for projects covered by the Davis-Bacon rules.

Miter handles these extra requirements well. When a new public project comes in, first add the relevant wage determination and classifications your workers use. Workers or supervisors then record their hours against the relevant job and classification. The app uses those entries to apply the correct basic hourly and fringe rates.

For example, let’s say one of your plumbers works for a private client for two days in a particular week and the remaining three days as both a plumber and laborer on a public project. Miter keeps each set of hours separate and applies the correct rate before calculating pay.

Once you’ve run payroll, the app creates the federal WH-347 or a supported state-certified payroll report, populating it with each employee’s classifications, hours, rates, deductions, and payment details. You can submit these reports directly to state and compliance portals. If Miter doesn’t offer a direct submission route for the system you need, you can export the report and upload it manually.]

Pros

• Miter works out the correct prevailing wage and fringe amount before creating certified payroll reports.
• The app keeps private, public, and other classification hours separate when working out pay.

Cons

• You can submit payroll reports directly only to 11 portals, so you’ll need to manually upload reports to other state systems.
• If you want to use Miter’s certified reporting, you’ll also need to use Miter for payroll.

Pricing

Miter doesn’t publish prices on its website. You’ll need to request a demo and speak to its sales team for a customized quote.

3. Homebase Payroll – Best for routine payroll and off-cycle contractor payments

Onboarding employees and contractors, particularly in faster-growing construction firms, is time-consuming and laborious work. This often delays getting your new hires out onto job sites. Homebase Payroll handles onboarding well, including for companies using both W-2 employees and 1099 contractors.

First, add each new person to the system as either an employee or contractor, then enter their role and rate. To speed up the process, you can send them a link to download the Homebase Payroll app or access the website. There, employees complete their W-4 and I-9 paperwork, while contractors submit their W-9 and direct deposit information. This saves the admin team time and reduces the need to handle sensitive information sent by email or paper.

The transition to payroll is smooth. During a pay run, import each employee’s hours directly from Homebase or another system. The app applies their stored rates, along with overtime, bonuses, deductions, and reimbursements, before showing you the figures for one final check. For contractors, enter their earnings or import the hours needed for payment.

I like how Homebase lets you pay different rates for different roles and add mileage, materials, or equipment expenses. Another useful feature is the ability to make an off-cycle payment when a contractor finishes a project or reaches an agreed milestone.

Once you approve the run, employees and contractors get what’s owed to them by direct deposit, or you can print them checks if you want. Homebase will also file supported payroll taxes and prepare W-2s and 1099s, which workers can then download directly from the app.

Pros

• Employees and contractors can enter their own tax and bank details during onboarding.
• Run regular employee payroll and off-cycle contractor payments from one account.

Cons

• If job sites have different Employer Identification Numbers and pay schedules, you can’t include them in the same payroll run.
• For the first 10 runs, you’ll have to work with a three-day payment window, and only after that does it come down to a two-day window.

Pricing

You need to subscribe to a core Homebase service, starting at $24 per location per month with unlimited employees (billed annually). Payroll is an additional service that costs $39 per month on top of the core service plus $6 per employee paid per month (billed monthly).

4. Everee – Best for payroll during tight cash flow cycles

Cash flow gets tight in many construction firms while they wait for progress payments, retainage, or approved change orders to reach their bank account. This often forces companies to access their savings or working capital to pay employees as well as payroll taxes.

Everee’s Flex Credit service is especially useful in these situations. It covers any shortfall in funding from the same system you use to run payroll.

I love how this gives you much greater control over the customer relationship. You could use an invoice factor, but the problem is they often want to collect the payment themselves. That means your customer has the added hassle of dealing with a third party. Plus they may realize you’ve sold the invoice to raise cash, leading them to think you’re under financial pressure. This can affect trust.

Everee doesn’t create this problem, because it never speaks to your customer. Approval usually takes a few days when you apply for Flex Credit. You’ll hear from their underwriters the maximum amount of cash they’ll advance you plus the finance rate and repayment schedule. What they offer depends on factors like the size of your payroll, receivables cycle, customer concentration, and business history.

When you need funding, prepare the pay run in the normal way on the Everee app. Once you approve it, Everee pays employees straight away and handles the tax filings. You only pay interest on the credit you draw on. Most firms get a repayment term of 30 days, although that depends on the underwrites. If you repay early, you can also reduce the cost of interest on your advance.

Pros

• Flex Credit funds the payroll you approve in Everee without sending you to a separate finance provider.
• You pay only for the amount you draw, and repaying early reduces the financing cost.

Cons

• Everee sets your credit limit, rate, and repayment schedule so you may not get as much funding support as you need.
• Approval usually takes a few days, so you’ll have to apply before payroll is due.

Pricing

Everee doesn’t publish a base rate nor a weekly payment figure. Contact the company for a customized quote.

5. Zoho Payroll – Best for linking payroll to your accounts

As soon as you finish a pay run, you’ve got the laborious job of entering everyone’s wages, payroll taxes, benefits, and deductions manually into your accounting system. If you miss anything or enter something incorrectly, the books and the bank will not match. That could give the firm the wrong impression that money is still available to spend, when it’s actually already owed.

Zoho Payroll, combined with sister app Zoho Books, connects your payroll payments with your accounting entries, and this makes the job so much simpler. 

First, choose the bank account Zoho Payroll will use to pay employees by direct deposit and send payroll taxes to federal, state, and local authorities. Then select which expense and liability accounts in Zoho Books should receive the wages, employer taxes, benefits, and deductions.

Every time you check and approve a pay run, Zoho Payroll pays your employees and sends the payroll taxes to the relevant authorities. Zoho Books then posts wages and employer costs to the expense accounts you set up, while payroll taxes and deductions withheld but not yet paid go to the relevant liability accounts.

Once the payroll entry appears in Zoho Books, compare it with the approved pay run to make sure all the figures match. If the payroll entry is missing or wrong, you can correct the accounting record without reopening payroll or changing anyone’s pay.

Pros

• Zoho Books automatically records all wages, taxes, benefits, and deductions on each payroll approval.
• Use the Payroll Journal Summary to confirm that Zoho Books recorded the same figures as the approved pay run.

Cons

• Zoho Payroll is good on its own, but to benefit from its most useful features, you need a Zoho Books subscription too.
• You can’t compare payroll spend with job budgets, because costs aren’t linked to jobs or cost codes.

Pricing

Zoho Payroll starts at $39 per month plus $6 per employee. Prices can go down to $29 per month and $5 per employee with annual billing. You can subscribe to Zoho Payroll separately, but you’ll also need a Zoho Books account to access features like posting approved payroll journals into your accounting records. Zoho Books has a free plan for businesses with no more than $50,000 in annual revenue, while its paid Standard plan starts at $20 per month billed monthly (down to $15 per month if billed annually).

6. Payroll4Construction – Best for outsourced construction payroll for growing firms

Payroll gets harder in growing construction companies for two reasons: higher staff numbers and greater job complexity. For a start, collecting everyone’s hours, rates, job codes, deductions, and other pay details takes a lot of time each week. Plus more complex work means managing additional — and often more complex — rules and reporting requirements like union, prevailing wage, and multistate payroll.

Payroll4Construction targets its service at growing contractors that no longer want to handle all of this in-house.

You’re still responsible for gathering each employee’s details, job allocations, rates, deductions, and approved hours for the pay period. When you submit the payroll information, you see a proofing report in Payroll4Construction, where you can check each worker’s hours, job, cost code, rate, trade, and union details. You can correct any errors before the app calculates their pay.

Once you approve the proofing report, Payroll4Construction handles your entire payroll process, including:

• Gross-to-net calculations
• Checks or direct deposits
• Federal, state, and local tax filings
• Union deductions
• Prevailing wage rates
• Certified payroll requirements
• Multi-jurisdictional payroll

Following the run, you get in-depth reports that cover certified payroll, unions, workers’ compensation, labor hours, and job costs. This gives you the documents you need to deal with audits, answer payroll queries, and check labor costs by job. Employees can view their own pay stubs and tax forms through the self-service app.

You can also handle new hire reporting through Payroll4Construction, but if you want them to complete their onboarding forms online, you need to subscribe to the separate hrHQ app.

A standout feature is the unlimited support you get from Payroll4Construction’s in-house construction payroll specialists. By handling the processing, the service frees up your admin team to focus on invoicing, bookkeeping, and other office work.

Pros

• You simply send over the figures, and specialists manage the pay run and tax filings for you.
• Review each worker’s hours, rate, job, trade, and union details before Payroll4Construction calculates their pay.

Cons

• Certified, union, and job cost reports are only available after payroll is processed, so any mistakes may need to be corrected after the pay run.
• You need a subscription to hrHQ if you want to let new hires onboard themselves via the app.

Pricing

Payroll4Construction doesn’t publish its prices. Contact the company and inquire about the services you want to get a customized quote.

7. Justworks – Best for embedding employee health insurance in payroll

Three-quarters of private construction workers have access to health care through their employer. If you want to offer it so you can retain your current staff and compete for new talent, Justworks Payroll lets you provide health insurance and take each employee’s share of the cost straight from their paycheck.

I was impressed by how well Justworks Payroll has embedded medical insurance within its app. Without this integration, you’ve to compare the insurer’s bill with each employee’s current coverage every month, work out the company and employee shares, and enter or update the deductions manually whenever someone enrolls, leaves, adds a dependent, or changes plans.

Justworks handles the payroll side of this automatically.

To set it up, request a quote for medical, dental, or vision coverage through the Benefits section. Next, provide the company and employee information, add details of any dependents who need coverage, and choose when you want the policy to start.

Once the quote is ready, you can choose how much of the cost the company will pay and how long new employees must wait before they can enroll. Eligible employees can choose whether to join and add any dependents they want covered.

When you run payroll, Justworks automatically deducts each employee’s share and shows both the employee and company contributions on their pay stub. The company pays the full premium before the month of coverage, then recovers the employee share through payroll.

Pros

• Request quotes and choose insurance plans directly from the Benefits section of Justworks Payroll.
• Insurance contributions appear alongside wages, taxes, and deductions on your employees’ pay stubs.

Cons

• Some insurers require a minimum number or percentage of employees to enroll before you can use their service.
• You pay the employee share in advance and only collect it through payroll, which can affect your cash flow.

Pricing

Justworks Payroll costs $50 per month plus $8 per employee per month. The price includes employee payroll, payroll tax filings, W-2 filings, custom payroll periods, and payroll reporting. To access insurance, you need the Health Insurance add-on at $8 per employee per month.

8. JOBPOWER – Best for tracking payroll costs and profitability by job

Margins in the construction business can be tight, with wages being one of the biggest costs. After each pay run, it’s a good idea to check whether the labor you’ve charged to a job is within the budget you set. I like how JOBPOWER helps you catch those overruns before they affect project profitability.

Start by giving each project its own job code and, where needed, cost codes, so you can separate the labor spent on different parts of the work.

Workers enter their hours through JPMobile, or you can ask a project supervisor to record time. All this data feeds back into JOBPOWER, with the project, type of work, pay type, and hours attached to each entry. Managers can correct and approve the entries before you use them for payroll.

When you’re ready to run payroll, the app calculates each worker’s gross and net pay and deductions along with your total labor cost, including payroll taxes, workers’ compensation, paid time off, insurance, and benefits.

Now run the Payroll by JobId report to see the wages and hours that have been charged to each project. You can use the Job Budget vs Actual Cost report to compare those costs with the original budget. If you find you’re overrunning, you can get back on track by, for example, bringing work back in-house instead of using an outside contractor or reducing overtime.

The app’s low 3.5/5 G2 score did make me cautious. But I decided to include it on this list for three reasons:

• It’s user-friendly with a minimal learning curve.
• Its features are well suited to margin tracking.
• It scores a high 5/5 on Google reviews.

Pros

• Link each individual’s wages and hours to specific jobs and specific tasks within jobs.
• Run built-in reports to see how close the expected pay on a job is to the initial budget and profitability.

Cons

• JOBPOWER doesn’t e-file W-2s and 1099s, so you have to do them yourself.
• In case of errors, you can’t simply edit a completed pay run in the app and have to go through a separate payroll correction process.

Pricing

JOBPOWER offers billing, document management, and subcontractor/PO tracking as well as payroll. You need to request a customized quote for your firm based on its size and what you want the app to do.

Feature comparison

Platform	Extra or corrective pay runs	Employee pay stub and tax-form access	Payroll tax filing	Job-coded payroll records
Buddy Punch	✅	✅	✅	✅
Miter	✅	✅	✅	✅
Homebase Payroll	✅	✅	✅	❌
Everee	✅	✅	✅	❌
Zoho Payroll	✅	✅	✅	❌
Payroll4Construction	✅	✅	✅	✅
Justworks	✅	✅	✅	❌
JOBPOWER	✅	❌	❌	✅

How I chose the tools on this list

I began with over 30 payroll software platforms, looking for a mix of specialist tools and general providers suitable for different types of contractors. Many industry-specific apps cover a wide range of tasks, but smaller firms may find them too expensive and more complex than they need.

I narrowed the list to eight, split evenly between construction specialists and general payroll providers. I assessed each on the following criteria:

• Whether the tool runs payroll itself or sends approved hours and other records to another payroll provider
• How well it handles the construction payroll job it’s designed for, such as public works, fringe benefits, job costs, payroll funding, employee benefits, or workers’ compensation
• How much manual data work it removes for workers, forepersons, payroll staff, and administrators
• Whether the setup, integrations, deadlines, and limitations suit the size and type of contractor it’s meant for

I made sure not to include vendors whose software had hard-to-use controls. In my 10 years of experience reviewing software, I’ve seen that tools that staff members struggle with are less likely to be adopted, undermining the time savings and reduction in errors the software was meant to deliver.