Why We Launched Employee Payroll

Today, Wingspan is launching Employee Payroll in beta for U.S. employers. Businesses can now manage W-2 employees alongside domestic and international contractors in one platform.

The launch is a natural extension of why we started Wingspan: to make flexible work simpler for the people doing it and the businesses making it possible.

One workforce. Multiple ways to work.

The modern workforce doesn't fit neatly into a single classification. A business may have full-time employees at headquarters, seasonal or part-time teams, a large contractor network, and contractors operating through their own S corporations. That mix can change from one engagement to the next.

Most payroll platforms technically support contractors, but in a way disconnected from the employee experience and the platform’s core onboarding, compliance, and reporting workflows. Wingspan is different: it’s the only platform built to give every type of worker first-class support, bringing employees, contractors, and S-corporation owners into one connected system while respecting what makes each model distinct.

Flexibility isn't a synonym for contracting. It means choosing the right working relationship for each role, and being able to change that relationship as the work changes. A worker might begin as a contractor, become a W-2 employee for a seasonal engagement, and later return to independent work. The infrastructure should support that movement, not turn each change into a new operational problem.

We started with the hardest part

When Wingspan began, independent contractors had the clearest unmet needs. Running a business of one meant managing contracts, W-9s, invoices, payments, estimated taxes, deductions, benefits, and sometimes an S corporation. Traditional payroll systems were designed around employees. Accounts-payable systems were designed around vendors. Independent workers lived in the gap.

But truly supporting those workers required helping the businesses that engage them. We built tools for onboarding, payments, tax compliance, and the rest of the contractor lifecycle. As customers began running increasingly complex workforces on Wingspan, the next gap became obvious: employee payroll couldn't stay separate when the workforce itself wasn't separate.

Employee Payroll, native to Wingspan

We didn't want to ship payroll as a bolt-on or a second-class feature. Payroll is too critical, and mixed workforces are too dynamic, for that approach.

With Employee Payroll, businesses can run W-2 payroll and manage 1099 contractors from the same platform. Finance and operations teams get a consolidated view of administration and reporting, while businesses can support workers across the full lifecycle without stitching together separate systems for every classification.

For current Wingspan customers, that removes a false choice: stand up a second payroll provider for a small employee population, or turn down work that requires a different employment model.

Our customers were already showing us the need

Last year, a staffing company running about 1,000 contractors on Wingspan needed to reclassify part of its workforce as W-2 employees while keeping the rest as 1099 contractors. The company wanted both groups in one place. Consolidating administration and reporting in Wingspan saved its team hundreds of hours of manual work each year.

Another client already pays roughly 30,000 nurses as 1099 contractors through Wingspan. When a new engagement required W-2 nurses, the options seemed to be standing up a separate payroll provider for a handful of employees or walking away from the work. Instead, the client added a W-2 entity in Wingspan.

This is what flexible work looks like in practice: the mix of workers changes, but the business still needs one reliable way to run it.

What happens next

Employee Payroll is available now in beta for U.S. employers. S-corporation payroll enters beta on September 9, 2026, with general availability planned for September 24, 2026.

If your workforce spans W-2 employees and 1099 contractors, talk to us about bringing it all together in Wingspan.

Employee Payroll builds on our contractor roots rather than breaking from them. Flexible work means giving businesses and workers more choices, not prescribing a single model, and making every one of those choices easier to operate.

Wherever someone sits on the spectrum of work, Wingspan should make it easier to get started, get paid, and build what comes next.