Punchwell turns the hours your team actually worked into a clean, payroll-ready CSV: per-employee pay type and rate, a payout report with weekly and daily overtime, double-time, and holiday pay, plus worker classification. It does the math and the export. It does not move money — which is exactly why there’s no payment-processor or tax-custody risk on your plate.
Take the file to your payroll provider, or use the built-in SurePayroll and Gusto connectors. Self-hosted, your data on your server, one flat annual price.
Get Punchwell Pro — $99/yr → · See how the IP lock works →
Per site, not per seat. Unlimited employees. Your data stays on your server.
The honest part first: it exports data, it doesn’t pay anyone
Most “payroll” tools want to hold your money and file your taxes. Punchwell deliberately doesn’t. It reads the attendance your time clock already recorded, applies each employee’s pay rules, and hands you a payroll-ready CSV — or pushes a roster file to a connected provider.
That boundary is the point:
- No payment processing. Punchwell never touches a bank account, a card, or a direct deposit.
- No tax custody, no filing. It calculates gross-pay numbers; your payroll provider runs the actual disbursement and tax filing.
- No money-movement risk for you. Because the suite moves no money, there’s no payment-processor or tax-custody liability sitting inside your WordPress site.
You get the hard part — accurate hours and pay math from punches that can’t be faked off-site — without the regulatory weight of being a payments company. That’s a feature, not a shortcut.
Pay rules that match how you actually pay people
Set pay details per employee, once. Punchwell remembers them and applies them every period.
- Pay type — hourly or salary, per person.
- Pay rate — each employee’s own rate.
- Pay frequency — weekly, bi-weekly, semi-monthly, or monthly. Every employee can differ, and you set a company default so new hires inherit it.
Because the numbers come straight from the time clock, the hours feeding payroll are the hours your attendance rules already verified — not whatever someone typed into a spreadsheet from their couch. The same clock that refuses an off-site punch — locked to your office network by IP, with optional GPS geofence, kiosk, or mobile punch — is the clock that feeds your payout report.
A payout report that handles the messy overtime cases
Overtime math is where cheap exports fall apart. Punchwell’s payout report covers the cases real shift workforces hit:
- Weekly overtime — hours over your weekly threshold, at your multiplier.
- Daily overtime — hours over a daily threshold, computed per day so they never double-count against weekly OT.
- Double-time — the higher tier when hours cross your double-time line.
- Holiday pay — drawn from your holiday calendar, so worked holidays are paid at the right rate automatically.
For each pay period you get per-employee totals and an employer summary — total gross, headcount, hours, and a breakdown by frequency. Overtime thresholds, multipliers, and the double-time rules are configurable, not hardcoded, so they match your state’s rules and your policy.
Dollar figures stay admin/manager-only. The people who run payroll see the money; everyone else doesn’t.
Worker classification + payment method — the data your 1099s need
Payroll isn’t just hours times rate. Who someone is changes how they’re paid and reported. Punchwell carries that data alongside the numbers:
- Worker classification — 1099 contractor, full-time, part-time, temp, or intern. Tag each worker so the right people land in the right bucket.
- Overtime for 1099s, your call — 1099 contractors can be excluded from overtime with a configurable toggle (defaults to FLSA). Turn it the other way where a state or policy requires OT.
- Payment method + handle — record how each person actually gets paid (ACH, check, PayPal, Venmo, Cash App, Zelle, and more). This is a data field, not a payment rail — but it’s the field that drives whether someone’s a 1099-NEC or a 1099-K responsibility, so it’s worth having on record.
Classification and payment method ride along in the export, so your provider and your accountant get the full picture, not just a column of hours.
CSV export, plus SurePayroll and Gusto connectors
Get the numbers out the way that fits your provider:
- Generic CSV — built into the engine, so basic export works with no connector at all. Choose your delimiter, BOM, and date format. Every cell passes through a CSV-injection guard, so a name or note can’t quietly turn into a formula in your spreadsheet.
- SurePayroll connector — a dedicated add-on that formats the file for SurePayroll’s import.
- Gusto connector — uses Gusto’s Smart Import hours CSV, which auto-matches the columns on Gusto’s side.
You can also import from a provider — upload a SurePayroll employee CSV, match your Punchwell users by email, optionally create missing employees, and review a dry-run preview before anything is written. No surprises, no half-finished imports.
Let employees check their own pay — without seeing anyone else’s
Turn on the opt-in “My Pay” self-service screen and each employee sees only their own rate, hours, estimated gross, payment method, and key dates. No back-and-forth, no exposing the whole payroll. It’s off by default — flip it on when you’re ready.
It’s part of the same front-end self-service set as My Time Off and the employee portal widgets.
Where it fits in the suite
Payroll export reads from the same data the rest of Punchwell records — so the numbers are only as good as the punches. That’s the whole reason the office-IP clock-in lock is the flagship: it blocks buddy punching at the source, so the hours feeding payroll are real.
- Office-IP clock-in lock — the hard control that refuses off-site punches, per employee.
- Time clock & attendance — punch in/out, shift policies, rounding, auto clock-out, overnight shifts.
- Leave & PTO accrual — leave types, approval, and accrual that draws against balances.
- Employee self-service — My Pay, My Time Off, leave requests, and portal widgets.
- How migration works — bring your existing employees, attendance, and leave over from the abandoned original.
FAQ
Does Punchwell actually run payroll?
It does the calculation and the export — per-employee pay type and rate, a payout report with weekly and daily overtime, double-time and holiday pay, worker classification, and CSV export (plus SurePayroll and Gusto connectors). It does not move money. That’s deliberate: keeping money movement out means no payment-processor or tax-custody risk for you. You take the payroll-ready CSV to your payroll provider.
What payroll providers does it connect to?
The Generic CSV export is built in, so basic export works with any provider that accepts a CSV — no connector needed. For a tailored file, there are dedicated connectors for SurePayroll and Gusto (Gusto’s Smart Import auto-matches the columns on its side). You can also import a provider’s employee CSV to map or create employees, with a dry-run preview first.
How does it handle overtime?
The payout report computes weekly overtime, daily overtime, double-time, and holiday pay. Daily and weekly OT are calculated so they never double-count. Thresholds and multipliers are configurable to match your state’s rules and your policy — nothing is hardcoded. 1099 contractors can be excluded from overtime with a toggle (defaults to FLSA), which you can flip where a state requires OT.
Can my employees see their pay without seeing everyone else’s?
Yes. The opt-in “My Pay” self-service screen shows each employee only their own rate, hours, estimated gross, payment method, and key dates. Dollar figures in the admin payout report stay admin/manager-only.
Is my pay data sent to a cloud or a vendor?
No. Punchwell is self-hosted — the calculations run in your own WordPress database and the CSV is generated on your server. There’s no data call-home: the free version makes no outbound calls at all (verified), and the only outbound call Pro makes is validating your license key against our own billing server — never your data. The only thing that leaves is the CSV you choose to download or hand to your payroll provider.
Where do the hours come from — can they be faked?
The hours come straight from the time clock’s attendance records, which are protected by the flagship office-IP clock-in lock and your shift policies. An on-site employee can’t punch from home or have a coworker cover for them, so the hours feeding payroll are the hours that were actually worked.
Stop guessing at hours. Export numbers you can trust.
Punchwell calculates payroll-ready pay from punches that can’t be faked off-site, then hands you a clean CSV — or pushes to SurePayroll or Gusto. No money movement, no processor risk, no per-seat fee. Self-hosted, unlimited employees, $99/year flat.
Get Punchwell Pro — $99/yr → · Download the free version →
Per site, not per seat. Unlimited employees. GPL, self-hosted, your data stays on your server.
Punchwell is an independent, third-party maintained fork of the GPL-licensed “WP Human Resource Management” plugin. Sturdyhaus is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by wpspear, weDevs, or the original author. Product names are referenced descriptively only. Punchwell, by Sturdyhaus.