California Certified Payroll: DIR Rules, PWC-100, and the eCPR Portal Explained

What DIR Certified Payroll Means in California

California's Department of Industrial Relations (DIR) administers its own certified payroll reporting system for public works projects under the state's prevailing wage law, separate from the federal Davis-Bacon framework. Any contractor or subcontractor performing labor on a California public works project above the statutory threshold has to submit weekly certified payroll records to the DIR, not just to the awarding body, and the records have to follow the state's own format rather than a generic template.

This matters because a contractor coming from federal Davis-Bacon work often assumes the WH-347 form itself is what gets filed. In California it isn't. The WH-347 layout is a federal Department of Labor form; California's public works program runs on its own electronic system, and the data has to be submitted in the format that system requires, described below.

PWC-100: Registering the Project Before Payroll Starts

Before certified payroll can be submitted for a California public works project, the awarding body is required to file a PWC-100 form with the DIR, registering the project in the state's system. This happens at the project level, not per contractor, and it has to occur before work begins so the DIR has a record of the project against which contractor payroll submissions get matched.

A contractor showing up to do certified payroll on a project that was never registered with a PWC-100 will run into rejected or unmatched submissions in eCPR, since the system checks incoming payroll against a registered project ID. Confirming PWC-100 registration status is a first step worth checking with the awarding agency before assuming a certified payroll workflow is even ready to receive data.

eCPR: California's Mandatory Electronic Submission Portal

eCPR (electronic Certified Payroll Reporting) is the DIR's online system, and electronic submission through it is mandatory for public works certified payroll in California — a paper form or a standalone PDF is not an accepted substitute. Contractors either enter payroll data directly into the eCPR web interface or upload a file in the required format generated by their payroll or compliance software.

This is the single most important structural difference from federal Davis-Bacon reporting for a contractor used to producing a WH-347 PDF and emailing or mailing it to a contracting officer. California expects data in its system, matched to the registered project, not a document handed over for someone else to re-key.

The eCPR XML Format vs the Federal WH-347 Layout

The data format eCPR accepts for file uploads is based on the DIR published eCPR XML schema, which structures payroll data as machine-readable fields — worker classification, hours, rates, deductions — rather than as a formatted page meant to be read visually like the WH-347. The federal WH-347 is a form layout designed to be printed, signed, and read; the eCPR XML schema is a data format designed to be ingested by the eCPR system.

This is why a WH-347-style Excel template, however accurate its calculations, does not by itself satisfy California's electronic filing requirement. It can be a useful internal record of hours, rates, and gross-to-net math, and many contractors keep one for that purpose, but it does not produce the eCPR XML file the system expects and does not submit data into the state system on its own.

Submission Frequency and Deadlines

Certified payroll on California public works jobs is submitted weekly, following the standard prevailing wage reporting cycle used across most public works programs: each week worked on the project generates its own certified payroll record, submitted for that pay period rather than batched at project milestones or month-end.

Awarding bodies and the DIR generally expect the submission close to the end of each payroll period, and a contractor running several public works jobs at once needs a process that tracks which project-week combinations are outstanding, since a missed week on one job doesn't pause submissions on another.

Penalties for Late or Incorrect Certified Payroll in California

California's prevailing wage law allows for penalties tied to certified payroll noncompliance, including for records that are late, incomplete, or that don't match the wage determination for the classification and location of work. Beyond a direct penalty, unresolved certified payroll issues can hold up progress payments on a public works contract, since payment is frequently conditioned on compliant reporting being current.

This is a state-specific enforcement layer on top of whatever federal Davis-Bacon exposure applies if the same project also carries federal funding — the two systems don't replace each other, and a project subject to both can require separate compliant submissions to each.

What a WH-347-Style Spreadsheet Does and Doesn't Do for California Jobs

Being direct about this, since it's the most common point of confusion: a WH-347-style Excel template — including the free and paid templates on this site — reproduces the federal form's layout and calculates gross pay, deductions, and net pay from hours and rates you enter. It does not file into California's eCPR system, does not generate the eCPR XML file, and does not register a project through PWC-100.

What it's useful for on a California job is exactly what it's useful for anywhere: a clean, calculating internal record of hours, classifications, and rates that you or your compliance staff can use as a source document when entering data into eCPR, or as a backup record alongside whatever eCPR-compatible software or manual entry method you use for the actual state filing.

If a contractor's workflow requires direct eCPR file generation, that's a job for payroll or compliance software built specifically to output the eCPR XML format — not a general-purpose spreadsheet template, however accurate its math is.