The industry standard is a percentage markup on the clinician's wage, so a raise for the traveler becomes a bigger bill for you, and nobody outside the agency ever sees the split. We flipped it: you set the clinician's wage and the recruiter's fee, we bill the payroll liability at cost, and a flat $5 an hour covers the platform. Four lines, all visible.
The industry standard is a multiplier on the clinician's wage. Raise a traveler's pay by a dollar and your bill rate goes up by a dollar and a half, because the agency's cut rides on top of the wage. So facilities hold wages down to hold costs down, clinicians see less than the market would pay them, and nobody can find out what the split actually was.
Through our travel partner, you post the role with two numbers you choose: what the clinician earns, and what the recruiter earns for filling it. Your bill is those two numbers plus the employer payroll liabilities at cost and a flat $5 an hour for the platform. Four lines, all of them visible, none of them moving with the wage.
A travel package is not all wages. Roughly half is typically paid as non-taxable per diem reimbursements: a lodging allowance and a meals and incidental expenses (M&IE) allowance, paid under an accountable plan and capped at the GSA per diem rate for that locality.
Employer FICA, FUTA, SUTA, and workers' comp only attach to the taxable half. So the real payroll liability on a travel contract runs closer to 8% of the total package than the 15% or so you would owe on a staff nurse. That saving is real money, every hour, on every contract.
Under a multiplier, that saving is invisible to you and stays with the agency. We put it on your invoice as a line item and bill it at cost.
Per diem treatment depends on the clinician maintaining a tax home and duplicating living expenses while on assignment. Where a clinician does not qualify, the full package is taxable, the liability line goes up, and your bill reflects that instead of hiding it.
Because only half the package is taxable, 16% on taxable wages lands at 8.0% of what you actually pay the clinician. These are conservative starting estimates, not quotes: markups swing with specialty and state, GSA per diem caps move by locality, and workers' comp varies by class code. Drag every slider to your own numbers. The comparison either holds up against them or it doesn't.
Give that traveler one more dollar an hour. Under a multiplier, the agency's cut rides on the package, so you pay the raise and a share of the raise on top. Under a flat fee you pay the raise and the actual payroll tax on the taxable part of it, at cost, while the recruiter fee and platform fee do not move at all. That gap is why percentage markup quietly holds clinician pay down: every facility doing the math on its own decides the raise is too expensive.
ScrubPay is the back office your facility runs on. The Staffing Company is the open market you reach into when the roster runs short.
The system of record for the people you employ. Everything that has to be true about a staff member lives here: how they were hired, what they are licensed to do, what they worked, what they were paid, and what you told CMS about it.
Our travel nursing and contingent labor partner. Not an agency with a bench, but access to the open market of independent recruiters and agencies, all working the role you posted at the two rates you set.
The traveler lands in the same record as everyone else. A clinician placed through The Staffing Company shows up on your ScrubPay schedule with licenses already verified, their contract hours flow into your PBJ file under the right job code, and your labor analytics show own staff and contract labor in one number instead of two spreadsheets that disagree.
You don't have to run everything through The Staffing Company to get the benefit of one record. ScrubPay's Travel Vendor VMS manages contract labor from any agency you already work with, so a traveler is a traveler on your record no matter who placed them.
One place to manage every travel staffing vendor you work with, instead of a spreadsheet per agency.
A traveler placed through any vendor still lands on your ScrubPay employee record: licenses verified, hours flowing into payroll, and PBJ job codes mapped, the same as staff you hired directly.
Thirty minutes, your real numbers, no slide deck. If flat fee travel nursing is not a fit for how your facility runs, we will tell you that on the call.