Certified Payroll Reports: A Prevailing Wage Compliance Checklist
Certified payroll is the weekly report every contractor on a federally funded or state-prevailing-wage project must file, attesting under penalty of perjury that every worker on the project was paid at least the applicable prevailing wage plus fringe benefits. It is both a compliance document and an evidentiary record — federal and state wage-and-hour enforcement agencies use certified payrolls as the primary source for investigating wage theft, misclassification, and fringe benefit violations.
The stakes are significant. The federal Davis-Bacon Act and equivalent state statutes impose civil penalties for under-payment, back-wage liability that runs to every affected worker, withholding of contract funds during investigations, and in severe cases debarment from future public work. For contractors whose revenue mix includes meaningful public work, certified payroll discipline is not administrative overhead — it is a precondition to continuing to bid.
Federal Form WH-347 is the Department of Labor's certified payroll form, required on all Davis-Bacon covered projects and used as the template for many state prevailing-wage filings. The form captures every worker, every week, every classification, every hour, and every deduction. It is not optional detail — each cell is part of the sworn record.
WH-347 required fields per worker per week
- Name, address, and Social Security Number (last four only in public-facing copies)
- Work classification per the applicable wage determination
- Day-by-day hours: total, straight-time, and overtime
- Rate of pay for straight time and overtime
- Gross wages earned
- Itemized deductions — FICA, federal tax, state tax, other voluntary deductions
- Net wages paid for the week
- Fringe benefit status — cash-equivalent payment or contribution to approved plans
The back of the WH-347 is the Statement of Compliance — the signed attestation by an officer of the company that the payroll information is accurate and complete. The signature has legal weight. False statements on a certified payroll are federal felonies under 18 U.S.C. §1001, and the Department of Labor takes misclassification and underpayment referrals seriously.
Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division investigators and state prevailing-wage auditors look for specific patterns when they review certified payroll. Understanding what they audit lets you self-audit on the same rubric.
Workers must be classified according to the work they actually perform, not a cheaper classification that would reduce the required rate. A worker performing electrician work classified as a general laborer is the single most common compliance failure. Auditors cross-reference classifications against time-card descriptions, jobsite observations, and union scope-of-work agreements.
Apprentices may be paid below the journeyman rate only if they are registered in a bona fide apprenticeship program and only up to the ratio of apprentices to journeymen specified in that program. A contractor with 4 apprentices and 1 journeyman on site when the ratio is 1:1 is paying three of those apprentices at the apprentice rate in violation, owing back wages to the journeyman level.
Prevailing wage is the sum of a basic hourly rate and a fringe benefit amount. Fringe can be paid in cash to the worker, contributed to bona fide fringe benefit plans (health insurance, pension, apprenticeship training, vacation, etc.), or a combination. Audit focus: fringe contributions must be to plans that are 'bona fide' (generally meaning funded, communicated, and non-discretionary) and must not exceed what the law allows to be credited.
The single most common fringe benefit audit finding is contractors taking fringe credits for plans that do not qualify as bona fide — self-funded 'programs' with no actual third-party administrator, discretionary year-end bonuses treated as fringe, or contributions that exceed what plan terms actually cost per worker.
Overtime under Davis-Bacon is paid at 1.5x the basic hourly rate (not the full prevailing wage including fringe) for hours over 40 in a workweek. State prevailing wage laws may impose different overtime rules — California's Public Works Overtime Rules differ substantively from federal. The form must show straight-time and overtime hours separately, with the overtime rate correctly calculated.
Certified payroll covers the entire workweek, not just the hours worked on the prevailing-wage project. If a worker splits time between a public and a private project in the same week, both must appear on the payroll with project-specific hour breakdowns. Omitting the private-project hours to simplify the form is a misclassification that auditors routinely catch.
Principals who work on the project with tools in hand are still workers for Davis-Bacon purposes. Sole proprietors, partners, and working shareholders performing covered work must be reported on certified payroll at prevailing wage rates for the classifications they perform. This is one of the most commonly overlooked requirements on small-contractor public work.
Get AP insights in your inbox
Get our weekly roundup of AP automation tips and industry news. No spam, ever.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
The back-of-form Statement of Compliance must be signed by an officer of the company with authority to make the attestation. In audit practice, investigators examine whether the signatory actually knew the payroll details — a controller signing a statement that a project manager prepared without review is technically signing under penalty of perjury without personal knowledge, a documentation practice that breaks down under audit scrutiny.
About half of US states have their own prevailing-wage statutes (often called 'little Davis-Bacon') that apply to state-funded projects regardless of federal funding. These laws range from near-identical to federal (Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland) to substantially more complex with additional fringe, apprentice, and reporting requirements (California, New York, Washington).
States with substantial prevailing wage programs that require certified payroll
- California — DIR/DLSE certified payroll with electronic submission via eCPR system
- New York — PW-200 form plus wage determinations for state-funded work
- New Jersey — strict certified payroll with Public Works Contractor Registration
- Illinois — state-specific certified payroll with apprentice reporting rules
- Washington — prevailing wage certified payroll with quarterly benefit-rate filings
- Massachusetts — weekly payroll with annual wage decisions
- Minnesota — state certified payroll aligning with federal Davis-Bacon
- Oregon — BOLI prevailing wage certified payroll with apprentice utilization reports
Certified payroll is weekly. The DOL expects the report covering a given workweek to be submitted within 7 days of the payroll date. Contractors working on prevailing-wage projects need a weekly rhythm that survives holidays, year-end breaks, and staff turnover.
A functional weekly workflow
- Monday — time cards collected for prior week, classification codes confirmed
- Tuesday — payroll run, gross/net/deduction detail captured per worker per project
- Wednesday — fringe benefit allocation finalized per worker per project
- Thursday — WH-347 forms generated per project, reviewed by compliance officer
- Friday — Statement of Compliance signed by authorized officer; submissions filed through agency portal or contracting officer
- Saturday — exception follow-up (misclassifications, rate discrepancies, missing signatures)
- Sunday — pre-staging for next Monday's cycle
Federal Davis-Bacon requires certified payroll records to be retained for three years from the project completion. Most state statutes require three to five years. In practice, the retention should extend to the longer of (a) the statutory period, (b) any outstanding audit or investigation, and (c) any bonded completion period.
The retention requirement is for the source records as well as the reports — time cards, payroll registers, fringe benefit plan documents, apprentice program registrations, and classification decisions. 'We have the WH-347 on file' is insufficient if an auditor asks for the underlying time cards.
Certified payroll is highly structured and highly recurring — ideal candidates for automation. A well-implemented platform ingests weekly time data, applies project-specific wage determinations, calculates classifications, calculates overtime and fringe, generates the WH-347 (or state equivalent), and routes it for signature through an authorized officer. The same platform can integrate with state submission portals where available (California eCPR, for example).
The operational benefit is compliance velocity. The audit benefit is arguably more important: automated platforms maintain the full audit trail — wage determinations referenced, classifications applied, fringe calculations performed, approvals captured — so that when an auditor shows up, the records are defensible without a scramble.
Certified payroll is a weekly compliance discipline with annual-scale consequences if it fails. The contractors who consistently win public-work bids and survive audits are not the ones with the cheapest labor — they are the ones with the most reliable compliance infrastructure. Automating the weekly rhythm, integrating with time capture, and standardizing the officer-level sign-off is how that infrastructure actually gets built.
Written by
Jordan Patel
Compliance & Legal
Former corporate counsel specializing in construction contracts and tax compliance. Writes about the documentation layer — COIs, W-8/W-9, certified payroll, notice-to-owner deadlines — and the legal backbone behind audit-ready AP.
View all posts