Trayd vs Miter: Which Construction Payroll Software Fits Your Team?
Choosing construction payroll software is a high-stakes decision. The wrong platform means payroll errors, compliance gaps, and hours of manual workarounds every week. The right one handles the complexity, union logic, prevailing wage, multi-state taxes, and field-to-office data flow, so your back office can keep pace with your crews.
Trayd and Miter are both cloud-based platforms built specifically for construction. Both handle payroll, HR, compliance, and field operations. But they're built with different priorities, and those differences matter depending on the type of work your team does.
What follows is a factual, category-by-category comparison to help you decide which platform fits your operation.
How Trayd and Miter Compare at a Glance
Before diving into specifics, here's a high-level view of where each platform focuses.
Platform Positioning
Trayd positions itself as the back-office operating system for construction, with a sharp focus on union contractors and trade contractors working on federal and state-funded projects. The platform unifies payroll, HR, compliance, scheduling, field tracking, and job costing into a single system. Trayd was purpose-built around union logic, prevailing wage, and certified payroll from the ground up.
Miter positions itself as a connected construction platform that combines payroll, HR, expenses, and field operations for modern contractors. Founded in the early 2020s, Miter integrates with several construction ERPs (Sage 100, Sage 300, Sage Intacct, Acumatica, Procore, QuickBooks) and emphasizes fully burdened job costing and multi-state compliance.
Both platforms are construction-specific. Neither is a generic HR tool adapted for the industry.
Payroll
Payroll is the core of both platforms, but the approach differs in a few key areas.
Union Payroll and CBA Support
Trayd handles union logic natively, meaning the system is designed to calculate and remit union benefit fund contributions based on trade, classification, and local agreement. CBA-driven wage rates, fringe benefit structures, and dues deductions are built into the payroll engine. For contractors managing multi-trade, multi-local crews on public projects, union payroll is a core use case, not a secondary feature. Trayd handles wage card management and updates wage cards when they increase every 6 and 12 months. This is a managed service for their contractors. On Miter, contractors are responsible for wage card increases.
Miter also supports union pay rates, fringe calculations, and CBA-based configurations. The platform handles prevailing wage and union fringes and can manage multi-rate pay structures across jobs and classifications. Based on publicly available information, Miter's union capabilities are functional, though the platform's marketing emphasis skews more toward general construction payroll efficiency and ERP integration. On Miter, contractors are responsible for wage card increases.
Prevailing Wage and Certified Payroll
Both platforms automate prevailing wage calculations and certified payroll reporting. Trayd enforces compliance proactively, catching classification and wage errors before payroll runs rather than flagging them after the fact. Miter generates certified payroll reports (WH-347) and handles Davis-Bacon and state-specific prevailing wage rates, with compliance reporting integrated into its payroll workflow.
Multi-State Payroll
Both platforms handle multi-state tax calculations. For contractors operating crews across state lines, both systems calculate withholdings based on work location rather than company headquarters. Miter highlights this capability prominently in its marketing and supports garnishment processing and state-specific labor rules. Trayd handles multi-state compliance as part of its core payroll engine, with tax logic tied to the project and jurisdiction where the work is performed. Trayd handles wage card management and updates wage cards when they increase every 6 and 12 months. This is a managed service for their contractors. On Miter, contractors are responsible for wage card increases.
For union contractors, multi-state payroll adds another layer: different union locals in different states may have different CBAs, fringe rates, and remittance schedules. Trayd's multi-local logic is designed to manage that overlap natively.
HR and People Management
Both platforms offer HR functionality, but the scope and emphasis differ.
Onboarding
Trayd's HR and onboarding module is mobile-first, allowing workers to complete onboarding from their phone before arriving on site. The platform supports multi-lingual onboarding flows. The Trayd platform is supported in 11+ languages, most notably English and Spanish. This is particularly relevant for contractors with Spanish-speaking crews. Benefits enrollment, compliance documentation, and employee records all live in the same system as payroll, so data flows directly without re-entry.
Miter offers onboarding, benefits administration, and HRIS functionality within its HCM module. The platform includes recruiting, learning management, and performance management tools. Based on available documentation, Miter's HR suite appears broader in scope, covering more general HCM functions beyond construction-specific needs.
Benefits Administration
Trayd centralizes benefits configuration alongside payroll, which is particularly important for union contractors managing health and welfare fund contributions, pension allocations, and apprenticeship training fund payments that vary by trade and local.
Miter also handles benefits administration within its platform, including enrollment and management of employee benefit programs.
Field Operations and Labor Tracking
Getting accurate data from the field into payroll is where many construction platforms break down.
Time Tracking
Trayd's worker and foreman apps capture clock-in/out data, daily shift reports, and crew activity directly from the job site. Hours are tagged to the correct classification, project, and cost code at the point of capture, which eliminates manual reclassification in the office. The foreman app adds crew-level oversight, letting field supervisors manage shift activity and submit daily logs without calling the office.
Miter's field operations module includes time tracking, scheduling, production monitoring, and daily reports. The platform captures time from the field and syncs it to payroll, with hours automatically associated with jobs and cost codes. Miter also supports expense tracking from the field, connecting receipts and per diems directly to payroll and job costing.
Both platforms aim to eliminate the gap between field data and back-office processing. The practical difference often comes down to how each platform handles the specific workflows your field supervisors already use.
Scheduling and Dispatch
Trayd includes a dedicated scheduling and dispatch console for managing shifts, crews, and equipment allocations. Foremen and office staff can see real-time jobsite allocations and modify schedules in seconds.
Miter includes scheduling functionality within its field operations module. The platform supports crew scheduling and production tracking.
Job Costing
Accurate job costing depends on clean labor data flowing from the field to accounting.
Approach to Job Costing
Trayd provides real-time job costing with day-level cost control, spend-to-date tracking, and burn/pacing analysis. The platform breaks down jobsite burden across labor, equipment, materials, and reimbursements, with cost data derived directly from payroll and field tracking — giving project managers a complete financial picture without waiting for accounting to close the books. Trayd offers accounting integrations to all major platforms, including Sage, QuickBooks, NetSuite, and Vista.
Miter offers fully burdened job costing that allocates payroll taxes, workers' comp, and benefits to jobs, phases, and cost codes. The platform syncs to several ERPs, including Sage 100, Sage 300, Sage Intacct, Acumatica, QuickBooks, and NetSuite. However, Miter's job costing is primarily payroll-derived it doesn't capture the full jobsite burden the way Trayd does by pulling in equipment, materials, and reimbursements alongside labor. For contractors who need cost visibility that extends beyond payroll line items, Trayd delivers a broader, more operationally complete view of project spend.
Integrations
Integration strategy is one area where the two platforms diverge most.
Trayd's Approach
Trayd operates as a unified system where payroll, HR, compliance, scheduling, field tracking, and job costing all live on one platform. The emphasis is on eliminating the need for multiple disconnected tools rather than integrating with a large ecosystem of third-party software. That said, Trayd offers accounting integrations to all major construction ERPs, including Sage, Quickbooks, NetSuite, and Vista.
Miter's Approach
Miter takes an integration-forward approach, connecting with Sage 100, Sage 300 CRE, Sage Intacct, Acumatica, Procore, QuickBooks, NetSuite, ServiceTitan, BuildOps, HCSS, and BambooHR. For contractors who have already invested in a construction ERP and need payroll to sync cleanly with their accounting system, Miter's integration library is a notable strength.
Who Is Trayd Best For?
Trayd is purpose-built for specialty and trade contractors, particularly union contractors working on federal and state-funded projects with heavy compliance requirements. Contractors who need union logic, prevailing wage, and certified payroll handled natively, with field-to-payroll data flowing through a single system and bilingual support for diverse crews, will find Trayd's platform the closer fit. The platform's strength is depth in the areas that matter most to union trade contractors: proactive compliance enforcement, CBA-driven payroll calculations, and a unified system where onboarding, scheduling, field tracking, and payroll all connect without manual handoffs.
The Right Fit Depends on Your Operation
Both Trayd and Miter are serious construction payroll platforms, and both represent a significant upgrade over generic payroll tools or manual spreadsheet processes. The deciding factor isn't which platform has more features on paper. What matters is which one aligns with how your team actually works, the types of projects you run, and where your biggest compliance and operational risks sit.
If your operation centers on union work, prevailing wage projects, and certified payroll reporting, Trayd was built around exactly that complexity. Schedule a demo to see how the platform handles your specific payroll workflow.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Trayd handle certified payroll reporting?
Yes. Trayd generates certified payroll reports, including WH-347 forms, directly from payroll data. Compliance checks run proactively before payroll is processed, so errors are caught before they become audit issues rather than corrected after the fact.
How does Trayd handle multi-state compliance?
Trayd is built for contractors operating across state lines. The platform applies the correct tax rules, wage requirements, and reporting obligations based on where the work is performed, reducing the manual burden of tracking state-by-state labor law variations.
What does onboarding look like on Trayd?
Workers onboard in minutes through a bilingual mobile experience. New hires complete forms, tax documents, and compliance paperwork digitally, eliminating paper-based intake and getting crews field-ready faster.
Can Trayd handle multiple pay schedules and union locals on the same project?
Yes. Trayd supports flexible pay schedules and can manage multiple CBAs, trade classifications, and local union rules within a single project. This is critical for large job sites with mixed-trade crews working under different agreements.
Does Trayd offer a mobile app for field workers?
Yes. Trayd provides both a Worker App and a Foreman App. Field crews can clock in and out, view schedules, and complete daily shift reports directly from the jobsite. Foremen get real-time visibility into crew assignments and shift activity.
How does Trayd help with fringe benefit fund remittances?
Trayd calculates fringe benefit obligations based on CBA terms and tracks them at the payroll level. This reduces the manual work involved in reconciling what's owed to each benefit fund and helps contractors avoid underpayment penalties.
Does Trayd integrate with accounting software?
Yes. Trayd integrates with major accounting platforms including Sage, QuickBooks, NetSuite, and Vista, so payroll and job costing data flows into your financial system without manual re-entry.
Is Trayd built specifically for construction?
Yes. Trayd was designed from the ground up for trade contractors, not adapted from generic payroll or HR software. Every feature, from union logic to job costing to certified payroll, reflects how construction companies actually operate in the field.
