Overview
Commercial moves often need crew members who can step into specialized roles for a single job, such as a packer who runs a forklift or a foreman who also drives. SmartMoving generates the auto-calculated hourly wage for each commercial crew member using the higher of two rates:
The crew member's role rate (the standard hourly rate for their role, e.g. Crew Member, Crew Foreman, Crew Driver).
Any per-skill compensation rate for skills the crew member was dispatched to perform on that job's dispatch slot.
If a crew member's skill rate exceeds their role rate, the generated wage uses the skill rate, and the wage line shows the skill name so payroll reviewers can see why the rate is higher. If the role rate is the same or higher, the wage stays role-driven and the skill name is not added.
This applies only to commercial (project) jobs. Residential jobs that share a dispatch slot with a commercial sibling continue to use role rates and are unaffected by skill assignments on the slot.
Before You Start
You need the admin role to configure crew skills and per-user skill compensation rates.
Available to companies with Smart Pro. Crew Skills appear under Settings only for companies with Smart Pro.
Crew skills must be created under Settings > Commercial > Crew Skills before a per-user compensation rate can be assigned.
Dispatchers need to assign skills to the crew slot on the commercial job for the rate to factor into payroll.
Note: Skill rates only influence payroll on commercial (project) jobs. They do not flow into residential job wages, even when the same crew member works both that week.
How Compensation Is Configured per Skill
Compensation rates for skills are set per crew member on their user record.
Go to Settings > Commercial > Crew Skills and create the skills your operation uses (for example, Forklift Operator, Packer Lead, CDL Driver). The order you list skills here is also the tie-break order payroll uses when two skills share the same rate.
Open Settings > User Management and select the crew member.
Open the Skill Compensation tab. You'll see one row per skill defined in Crew Skills.
Toggle the switch on for each skill the crew member is qualified to perform.
Enter the Hourly ($) rate for each enabled skill. Leave the toggle off for any skill the crew member is not paid to perform.
Click Save Changes.
đĄ SmartTip: A skill row that is toggled off, or has no hourly rate filled in, is ignored by payroll. The role rate is used instead for any job where only those skills were assigned.
If a crew member has no Skill Compensation rows enabled, their payroll behaves exactly as it always has and uses the role rate.
How Dispatch Hours Roll Up to Payroll
Per-skill rates are tied to dispatch slot skill assignments. When the dispatcher builds the commercial job, they assign one or more skills to each crew slot. That assignment is the signal that a crew member was working in that skill capacity on that job.
When SmartMoving generates the hourly wage at finalize:
It looks at every skill assigned to the dispatch slot the crew member was on.
It matches those skills against the crew member's enabled Skill Compensation rows.
It compares each matched skill rate to the crew member's role rate.
It uses the highest rate as the wage's hourly rate. Labor hours from the timecard are multiplied by that rate to produce the wage amount.
If the winning rate is a skill rate, the skill's name appears on the wage line (in the wage type description). If the role rate ties or beats every skill rate, the wage line stays a plain hourly wage with no skill name.
When two skills tie for the highest rate, SmartMoving picks the skill that appears first in the Settings > Commercial > Crew Skills list. This keeps payroll deterministic between runs.
Note: A skill that is assigned on the dispatch slot but is not enabled on the crew member's Skill Compensation tab will not produce a wage line for that skill. The role rate is used instead. Make sure crew members have the right skills toggled on before dispatch.
Running or Viewing Payroll
Crew payroll is generated when the commercial job is finalized in Accounting > Crew Payroll, the same as any other job. After the job is finalized:
Open the job's Crew Payroll page to see the auto-generated wage lines.
For each crew member on the slot, the Hourly Rate column shows the rate that was applied (role rate or skill rate, whichever was higher).
When a skill rate was used, the Type column shows the skill name alongside Hourly. This is how payroll reviewers tell at a glance which crew members got a skill-driven rate.
The Crew Payroll Summary report rolls these lines up by crew member and pay period for export to your payroll system.
If a wage line looks wrong, check three things in order:
Was the right skill assigned to the dispatch slot for that job?
Does the crew member have that skill toggled on with an hourly rate under Skill Compensation?
Is the role rate higher than the skill rate, in which case the role rate wins and is the expected result?
Best Practices
Keep your Crew Skills list short and operationally meaningful. One entry per pay-differentiated capability is plenty; over-splitting leads to mis-assignment at the dispatch step.
Set the Crew Skills list order to reflect the priority you want when rates tie. The skill at the top of the list wins ties.
Audit Skill Compensation tabs whenever you raise a role's base rate so a previously higher skill rate doesn't quietly become lower than the role rate.
Document for dispatchers which skills to assign on the slot for common commercial job types. The wage calculation can only act on what's been assigned at dispatch.
Treat the Type column on Crew Payroll as your audit signal. If a job had specialty work but the column shows no skill name, the skill probably wasn't assigned on the dispatch slot.
Review the Crew Payroll Summary before exporting to your payroll system, so any role-vs-skill rate mismatches are caught before paychecks go out.