Service Titan Knowledge Base

Enter payroll settingsLast updated on 09/09/2022

Set hourly labor rates, overtime settings, commission, bonus pay, and more. Payroll settings can be managed for technicians, pricebook items, and business units (BUs).


Things to know


Find payroll settings

Here is a quick breakdown of where you can find different payroll settings:

Technician profiles
(Settings > People > Technicians)
  • Commission rate

  • Sold by commission rate (sales commission)

  • Hourly rate

  • Overtime setting

  • First drive settings

  • Range bonuses (spiff based on revenue volume for the week/pay period)

  • And more

Pricebook payroll settings
(Pricebook)
  • Sold hours for a service or equipment install.

  • Spiffs (flat dollar amount)

  • Spiffs (percentage based)

  • Is commission paid out for this Pricebook item (Pays Commission)?

  • Are material costs & other job costs deducted before calculating the technician's commission?

  • And more

Business Unit payroll settings
(Settings > Operations > Business Units)
  • Business Unit fees - Fees charged to the technician, deducted from the technician's commission.

  • Markup on job costs (charged to the technician, not to the customer)


Manage technician payroll settings

  1. Go to the navigation bar and click Settings image1.

  2. In the side panel, go to People > Technicians.

  3. Click Edit for the technician you want to set payroll for.

    The Edit Technician screen opens.

  4. Click the Payroll tab.

  5. Select the Include in Payroll option for this technician. This allows the technician to be included in your payroll. New technicians are excluded by default from payroll. Enable this option to include them in payroll. Note: This field may not be present depending on your account configuration. Please contact Technical Support for details. 

  6. Enter General Pay details:

    1. Type 

      1. Hourly—Technician is strictly an hourly employee

      2. Commission—Technician is paid commission Note: If a technician is paid hourly and is eligible for performance pay, select Commission.

    2. Pay Type—Select if the technician’s payroll is timesheet, performance, or both. 

    3. Default Labor Type—Select the labor type associated with all this technician’s timesheet activities. Note: You can change the Labor Type of individual timesheet events from the timesheet edit pages.

    4. Payroll Profile—Version of report that will be used for saving snapshots in every period

    5. Payroll ID—Unique identifier for the technician that can be used for the Master Pay File, which is useful in filtering reports.

    6. Role—Use the dropdown to select the technician’s role. 

    7. Start Date—Enter the employment start date for the technician. Note: You can also enter a Termination Date if the technician no longer works for your company.

  7. Enter Hourly Pay details:

    1. Hourly Rate—Include rates for hourly employees and for technicians paid an hourly base pay on top of commissions Note: To set custom rates for specific tasks, use paid non-job event codes. For example, you can use codes to set an hourly rate for training sessions that applies to all technicians.

    2. Overtime—How you pay for technician overtime

    3. First Drive Settings—Select from the following options:

      1. Always Pay First Drive—Technician always accrues paid hours between dispatch and arrival to the first job of the day

      2. Pay first drive if the technician is clocked in—Technician will not be paid for the first drive by default. The technician must do one of the following to begin accruing paid hours for the day:

        1. Clock into a paid timesheet code

        2. Begin a paid non-job appointment

        3. Arrive at the first job

    4. Deduct commute time from first drive—Select if the technician is paid for the drive time only if it exceeds the technician’s normal commute time to work

    5. Commute Time (minutes)—Enter the number of minutes for the technician’s commute time.

  8. Enter Performance Pay details:

    1. Commission Rate—If the technician earns commission on completed jobs, the technician's commission percentage for eligible invoice items Note: Commission is calculated based on technician splits and invoice items that have Pays commission selected in your pricebook.

    2. Sold By Rate—Percentage of estimate totals sold by the technician, typically used by comfort advisors, sales technicians, or any other role that pays sales commission Note: Commission is paid to the technician assigned Sold By credit on the job invoice. When a sold estimate is booked into a job, Sold By credit is assigned on the job invoice to the technician who sold the estimate.

    3. Default Adjustment Rate—Percentage of the price of invoice items where Pay tech-specific bonus is selected in your pricebook Note: This setting’s functionality depends on your payroll configuration. Contact your success or implementation manager for details.

    4. Range Bonuses—Bonuses paid to the technician for meeting revenue goals for a given pay period Note: Commissions and bonuses count towards the range bonus. If the technician earned a range bonus for the pay period, the range bonus is included in the technician's net commission. Range bonuses are not in the Bonus section of the Payroll (Detail) Report. The Bonus section of the Payroll (Detail) Report shows job commissions only.

  9. When you have made your selections, click Save Changes.

Note: Depending on your account configuration, you may have additional fields for payroll setup.


Set performance pay for individual pricebook items

You can also offer performance pay for chargeable materials. These are material items added as separate line items to an invoice. This feature requires account configuration. Contact your success or implementation manager for details.

To set performance pay, edit the individual item:

  1. Go to the navigation bar and click Pricebook.

  2. In the side menu, click Services, Materials, or Equipment, depending on the pricebook item you want to edit.

  3. Browse the table or use the search field to find the item you want to edit. You can search by code, name, or description. Tip: To filter the list of items, click Filters. You can filter based on category, sold hours, price, items with or without images, and other details. After setting your filters, click Apply.

  4. For the item you want to edit, click Actionsicon-more.png and select the View/Edit option. The Edit screen opens.

  5. Click the Commission tab.

  6. Enter bonus and commission details:

    • $ Bonus—Flat dollar amount paid to technicians on the job invoice

    • % Bonus—Percentage of the item price paid to technicians on the job invoice

    • Pay tech-specific bonus—Bonus paid to the technicians on the job invoice based on the rate set at Settings > People > Technicians > Payroll > Default Adjustment Rate. Note: Account configuration is required to use this feature. Please contact Technical Support for details.

    • Pays Commission—When selected, pays commission to the technicians on the job invoice based on the rate set at Settings > People > Technicians > Payroll > Commission Rate.

  7. When you're done, click Save.


Enter payroll settings for pricebook items in bulk

You can enter payroll settings for multiple pricebook items using the pricebook XLSX template.

  1. Export your pricebook (Pricebook > Import/Export).

  2. When the export is complete, open the XLSX document and go to the Services, Equipment, or Materials sheet.

  3. Locate the columns that correspond to the payroll settings you want to enter. For example, if you wanted to enter a flat rate bonus / spiff ($ Bonus), or a percentage based bonus / spiff (% Bonus), you would locate the column for $ Bonus or % Bonus. Then you could enter the appropriate bonus amount for each pricebook item.

    Note: If you want to enable a checkbox (for example, the Pays Commission checkbox) enter a 1. A 1 means the checkbox is selected. A 0 means the checkbox is deselected.

  4. Repeat this process for all payroll settings (Services, Equipment, Materials).

  5. When you’re done, save the Pricebook and import it back into ServiceTitan (Pricebook > Import/Export). Click here to learn more about importing and exporting your Pricebook.


Set business unit payroll settings

  1. Go to Settings > Business Units. Click the Edit icon-pencil.png for the BU you want to edit.

  2. Click the Payroll tab.

  3. Enter payroll settings as desired. When you're done, click Save.

Seller % Fee

[Account configuration required]

  • When active, the technician assigned to the job gets docked for having another technician as the “Sold by” (sales technician).

  • Note: The Seller % Fee is enabled if you're using ServiceTitan Payroll Version 3. If your account is configured for tech specific bonuses, the Seller % Fee feature is also enabled (see Default Adjustment Rate under technician payroll settings, for information on tech specific bonuses). If you are interested in these features, contact your success or implementation manager to configure your account.

Flat Fee

  • Business unit fee (entered as a flat dollar amount).

  • This is a standard fee charged to the technician off the top of every invoice item. When you run payroll, this amount is deducted from the technician’s commission base (the fee is not charged directly to the technician).

  • Note: Business unit fees apply both to commissionable and non-commissionable invoice items.

Minimum Flat Fee

Minimum invoice amount for the Flat Fee to kick in. This is useful if you only want to charge fees for big-ticket items.

% Fee

Same as the Flat Fee, but entered as a percentage of the invoice subtotal (rather than a flat dollar amount).

Minimum % Fee

Same as minimum flat fee. Important: Do not enter a percentage here. The Minimum % Fee should be the minimum invoice amount (invoice subtotal) for the % Fee to kick in.

Cost Markup

  • This setting applies to you only if you deduct material costs before calculating commission. This allows you to mark up material costs when calculating the technician’s commission.

  • Note: This setting is used to charge technicians a markup on job costs, before calculating their commission. This cost markup is charged to technicians only; it is not charged to customers. What this means: This cost markup impacts technician payroll only (there is no impact on customer invoices or in your pricebook).




Important note: Some features may not be currently included in your account and additional configuration may be required. Please contact technical support for details.