Labour hire
On-hire crews captured like your own, invoiced like a supplier.
15 minutes, your EBA, no sales script.
Why this is normally painful
Agency invoices get paid as issued because nobody has the time
The invoice arrives as a PDF. Somebody is supposed to check it against a pile of paper dockets. On a busy job in a busy month, that check does not happen.
The invoice is a PDF
It arrives by email with a total and a list of names. It is not a data feed, it is a document, and nothing in your system knows whether the hours on it are real.
The dockets are paper
Somebody digs out the signed dockets, matches names to days, and squints at handwriting. It works if the pile is small and the week was quiet.
Nobody has the time
So the invoice gets approved as issued. Over a year on a busy job, the gap between hours claimed and hours worked is not a rounding error.
Agency hours leak into payroll
When on-hire workers are captured in the same timesheet as employees with nothing distinguishing them, someone has to strip them out manually before the pay run.
How it works
From the punch to the RCTI, in one chain
01
Same site, same day, same app
On-hire workers stand next to your own employees on the same job. So they clock on the same way: the CrewTime punch on a phone, or the shed kiosk with a PIN. Same jobs, same cost codes, same condition flags, same foreman approval at the end of the day.
02
Supplier assigned per worker
Every on-hire worker carries the agency they came from. Assign it once when they start on site and every hour they record from then on is tagged to that supplier, across whichever jobs they move between.
03
Excluded from the payroll send automatically
The agency invoices those hours, not you, so they never enter your pay run. The worker type handles it. Nobody has to remember to pull them out on a Monday morning, and nobody accidentally pays a labour hire worker twice.
04
Invoice reconciled before you pay it
When the agency invoice arrives, the hours it claims are compared with the hours the foreman actually approved. Differences are shown line by line, by worker and by day, so the conversation with the agency is about a specific Tuesday rather than a total.
05
Recipient created tax invoices
Where you have an RCTI arrangement with the agency, the invoice is generated from the hours worked and approved, not from what somebody typed. The document and the record behind it are the same thing.
06
Reporting by supplier
Hours and cost by agency across jobs, and by job across agencies. You can see which supplier your labour actually came from this month and what that labour cost against the cost codes it landed on.
Synced, not uploaded
The hours you pay the agency for are the hours you hold
Mixed crews are normal in construction. Your own employees, a couple of on-hire carpenters and a labourer from a second agency, all on the same job on the same Tuesday. The problem has never been capturing that, it has been keeping the two money flows straight afterwards: wages for your people, invoices for theirs.
Capturing both in the one place with the worker type and the supplier attached is what makes that straightforward. Employee hours go to the pay engine and get priced under your award or enterprise agreement. On-hire hours go to supplier reconciliation and, where the arrangement calls for it, to an RCTI. Neither has to be sorted out by hand.
Read how the capture side works in CrewTime, how the labour lands on cost codes in job costing and what it costs on pricing.
Labour hire questions
Can labour hire workers use the same app as our own crew?
Yes. On-hire workers clock on in CrewTime or at the shed kiosk exactly like your employees, against the same jobs and cost codes, and the foreman approves the day the same way. The only difference is the worker type and the supplier recorded against them.
How do we stop labour hire hours going into a pay run?
The labour hire worker type is excluded from the payroll send automatically, because the agency invoices those hours. There is no manual step to remember and no risk of paying an on-hire worker who is already being invoiced to you.
What is an RCTI and when do we use one?
A recipient created tax invoice is an invoice the recipient of the supply issues instead of the supplier, under a written agreement between the parties that meets the ATO requirements. In labour hire it is common because you hold the hours. We generate it from the hours actually worked and approved.
Can we see cost by supplier by job?
Yes. Hours and cost roll up by agency across jobs and by job across agencies, against the cost codes the hours were captured on.
Does this replace our agreement with the agency?
No. Your commercial terms with the agency stand as they are. What this does is evidence them: it gives you the approved hours those terms are meant to be applied to, before you pay the invoice.
Reviewed August 2026. General information, not tax advice.
Get started
Send us last month's agency invoices and we will show you the reconciliation.
Tell us which agencies you use, how the hours are captured now and who checks the invoice. We will run the same month through Project Payroll end to end.
15 minutes, your EBA, no sales script.
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