Paying your crew

Meridian sends your crew direct-deposit payouts to their own bank. It does NOT withhold or file taxes — that stays with your payroll provider. What Meridian does is turn tracked work into a balance and move that money on your say-so.

Each crew member sets up direct deposit once — from the mobile app under Earnings → “Set up direct deposit,” which opens a secure Stripe flow (their bank details never touch Meridian). You can also email them the setup link from their page under Crew. Until a crew member finishes this, a payout to them is safely skipped, not lost.

Want it to happen automatically? Turn on “Invite them to set up payouts” in Settings → Documents, right beside the ICA/W-9 auto-send toggle (off by default) — Meridian emails the setup link the moment you add a new crew member, no manual click needed.

If a crew member’s bank ever rejects an already-sent payout, you’ll get a notification — the money stays safely in their Stripe balance the whole time, so nothing is lost; the notification tells you to have them double-check their bank details.

Every crew member’s page has an Onboarding card showing four things: ICA signed, W-9 signed, pay rate set, and payout account connected (W-2 crew show ICA/W-9 as not applicable — those are contractor-specific documents). Each unfinished item links straight to where you finish it.

The crew list itself has a Setup column with the same information as small pips, so you can spot who still needs attention without opening every profile.

When a job is completed, each assigned crew member’s balance grows by what they earned on it — automatically, once per shift. Nobody has to remember to queue anything: completing the job is what queues the pay.

How much they earned depends on how that assignment is paid. Hourly crew earn their tracked hours times their pay rate (set on their crew record), using the same hours ladder your job-costing uses. Flat-fee crew earn the flat amount for that job, however long it actually ran.

Need to add a bonus or fix a mistake? Adjust a balance by hand from the balance ledger with a reason on the record. A debit can never push a balance below zero.

Pay is set per assignment, not per person — so a single shift can carry a flat-rate lead and hourly helpers, and each is credited correctly off the same completed job.

Open the job, edit the shift, and next to any assigned crew member choose Hourly (hours × their rate) or Flat fee, entering the amount. Leave everyone on Hourly and nothing changes from how Meridian has always worked — Hourly is the default for every assignment.

If you pick Flat fee and leave the amount blank, that crew member is skipped rather than credited $0 — an unknown amount is never guessed at. The shift editor shows “Flat fee — not set” so you can spot it before the job completes.

Once a crew member has been credited for an assignment, its pay locks and shows “already credited.” The balance ledger only ever adds entries — it is never rewritten behind your back — so a late pay change could never reach money that was already recorded. Correct it with a balance adjustment instead.

Flat-fee labor counts toward that job’s cost in Profitability exactly like hourly labor, so your margins stay right either way.

From Payroll, start a run, review each crew member’s owed balance (computed fresh, never guessed), and process it — the money moves straight to their connected bank. Payouts are safe by construction: a run can’t double-pay the same balance, and a transfer that doesn’t get a clear answer from the bank is retried with the same reference so it can never be duplicated.

If a payout gets stuck, a “Needs attention” strip on the Payroll page lets you retry it in one click, and a daily background sweep heals stuck transfers on its own.

For anything outside the normal payroll accrual — a referral bonus, a pay correction, a one-off vendor bill for a truck rental — open Payroll → Special payments and record it. Pick a crew member or a vendor (vendors are free-text; Meridian doesn’t need a full vendor record for this), the amount, a description, and an optional linked job.

A crew member’s special payment raises their balance and rides the very next payout run, same as any other earning. A vendor payment has no bank connection to move money through — mark it paid once you’ve settled it outside Meridian, so it stops showing as outstanding.

Tag a payment “1099-tracked” to count it toward a contractor’s self-employment earnings — it shows up in Payroll → Tax center at year end, alongside everything they were paid.

Crew submit their own out-of-pocket expenses — gas, parking, supplies — right from the mobile app, with a photo of the receipt if they have one. You’ll see every request on Payroll → Reimbursements.

Approve one and it posts straight to that crew member’s balance for the next payout; if the expense was tied to a job, it also lands on that job’s cost so your margin stays accurate. Decline one with a reason so the crew member knows why.

A permanent hourly-rate change goes through a request, not a silent edit. From a crew member’s page, anyone who can view the roster can propose a new rate with a reason; an owner or admin then approves or declines it (a request can’t be approved by the person who filed it).

Approving updates the crew member’s rate immediately and applies it to their upcoming, not-yet-completed shifts — a shift that’s already been paid out is never touched retroactively.