Certified payroll, in plain contractor English

Win work on a federally funded or federally assisted construction project and a new Friday ritual arrives with it: the certified payroll. Here's what the requirement actually is, who it touches, and how to keep it painless.

What "certified" means

A certified payroll is a weekly wage report plus a signed statement. The report lists every laborer and mechanic on the covered project — classification, daily hours, rate, gross, deductions, net. The Statement of Compliance is where an owner or authorized officer certifies, under 29 CFR 3.3, that the report is complete and correct and that everyone was paid at least the prevailing wage for their classification. The signature is what turns a payroll into a certified payroll — and false statements carry criminal exposure (the form cites 18 U.S.C. § 1001).

Who must file

• Prime contractors and every subcontractor performing on-site work on contracts covered by the Davis-Bacon Act or one of the many "Related Acts" that attach Davis-Bacon labor standards to federally assisted work (highways, housing, water, energy programs, and more).
• Subs submit to the prime; the prime reviews and forwards everything to the contracting agency within seven days of the pay date.
• Many states run their own "little Davis-Bacon" prevailing-wage laws with their own forms (California's DIR eCPR, New York's, others). The federal WH-347 covers the federal side; check your state agency for state-funded work.

The weekly mechanics

Payrolls are numbered sequentially from your first week on the project. Weeks with no work are worth reporting as "no work performed" to keep the sequence clean. Wage rates and classifications come from the wage determination incorporated into your contract — published at sam.gov — not from your internal titles. Fringe benefits are paid either into bona fide plans (election 4(a)) or as cash on the check (4(b)); the Statement of Compliance records which.

What goes wrong

• Full Social Security numbers on the form (use the last four — payrolls can become public records);
• Classifications that don't match the wage determination;
• Overtime computed on the fringe-inclusive rate (CWHSSA overtime applies 1.5× to the basic rate);
• Unidentified "other" deductions — 29 CFR Part 3 limits what may be deducted;
• Missing weeks, out-of-sequence payroll numbers, or an unsigned statement.

Consequences scale from bounced payrolls and held payments (contract funds can be withheld until compliant payrolls arrive) up to debarment for willful violations.

Filing it in minutes instead of an evening

Our wizard collects exactly the required information and returns a completed WH-347-equivalent report plus the Statement of Compliance with verbatim federal language, ready for your officer's review and signature — DOCX and PDF, $5 per weekly report.

Start this week's certified payroll Read the field-by-field guide

Document preparation only — not legal, accounting, or payroll advice. Official resources: DOL Wage and Hour Division, sam.gov wage determinations.