How to Simplify 1099 Contractor Variable Pay Rate Management

Leanna Michniuk

Updated: December 19, 2023
November 22, 2022
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How to Simplify 1099 Contractor Variable Pay Rate Management
Variable Cost Rates for 1099 Contractors

There’s no reason why managing and reconciling pay rates for 1099 contractors needs to be a routine pain. If you’re a professional services firm that works with multiple independent contractors or contractors with different rates, you’ve come to the right place.

Manually tracking time using ERP or PSA software for multiple independent 1099 contractors can make it very difficult to quickly, easily, and accurately reconcile payment. What’s more, not having accurate insight into this information can negatively affect your firm’s project profitability

Whether you’ve been on the hunt for a better way of doing things or maybe you’ve just begun searching for a solution to this problem, we’re here to help make things a little easier for your firm and team. Keep reading to learn about 3 reasons why BigTime can be your best friend when it comes to managing and reconciling pay rates for 1099 contractors.

1. We’re built for variable cost rates

Designed and built specifically for professional services firms, BigTime is the only Professional Services Automation (PSA) software on the market that can handle variable cost rates for all your 1099 contractors — and we’ve made it extremely easy to do so. 

With BigTime, you can:

  • Establish different cost rates for each contractor
  • Set different rates for the same contractor
  • Store and reuse rates
  • Transfer rates between different projects

When time tracking is this simple, contractors are going to love working with you. No one likes tracking their time so why not make it as painless as possible for them? When it’s easy and quick to do, it’ll be done more frequently and more accurately so you know nothing is falling through the cracks. In turn, this makes it easy for your financial admins to manage contractor payments.

In BigTime, this is called vendor bills for time, which is based on cost rate.PSA Software Vendor Bill Feature

Using our PSA software, your firm will also have the ability to post vendor bills for time straight to QuickBooks via our seamless QuickBooks integration (see very bottom of screenshot below).

PSA Software Vendor Bill Details

2. It’s fast and accurate to pay 1099 contractors

BigTime helps you expedite the process of getting independent contractors paid at different cost rates (or the same 1099 contractor paid at different rates) while ensuring you avoid missing any zeros along the way. 

How do we do it?

Approvals
BigTime allows you to build automated spot checks to make sure contractor timesheets are always accurate. You can build a thorough, multi-level approval process into your workflow before you post to your accounting system. Approvals for vendor bills can also be set up for even more accuracy (these are called multi-level approvals in BigTime).

No payment reconciliation
BigTime helps to speed up cash flow and positively impacts profitability by eliminating the need for payment reconciliation. As a refresher, manual payment reconciliation means you would typically get an invoice from the 1099 contractor and cross-check it against your internal records. This process can take a long time and possibly lead to data loss due to human error.

We also eliminate the waiting game of getting invoices from contractors by allowing you to pull accurate time entries from the contractor directly from your BigTime account to create a vendor bill yourself. 

Real-time visibility 
Overall, BigTime’s platform provides centralized, firm-wide visibility that eliminates delays caused by manual processes, as well as redundancies and inaccuracies. With immediate access to real-time data, BigTime can help you set and store variable cost rates for multiple (or the same) 1099 contractor(s), track their time, get them paid, and generally manage all contractors throughout an entire project lifecycle. 

What a standard cost rate looks like in BigTime.

1099 Contractor Cost Rate Standard

What a custom cost rate looks like in BigTime. 

Cost Rate, Custom-1

3. We’re PSA software that’s always here to help.

BigTime will be there to support you because we’ve been there too. We know the complexity involved in managing the rates of 1099 contractors and have the experts to help you set best practices. Rated the highest in quality support in the PSA software industry (according to real user reviews), we’ll work with you to get BigTime set up and make sure you feel confident using the platform (we also have the fastest implementation time of PSA software). We’ll be there for any questions along the way so you’ll have a handle on rate management for all your 1099 contractors before you know it.

Have questions now or want to take BigTime for a test drive? 

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