Certified Payroll Services vs Software: Which Fits Your Crew?

How We Compared Certified Payroll Services vs Software

"Services" and "software" describe two different jobs here. A certified payroll service runs your payroll and hands back a finished, filed report — you're paying someone else to do the work. Self-service software gives you a tool to enter hours and rates yourself and produce the report, while your own payroll provider keeps running pay separately. Neither is universally right; it depends on whether you want the report done for you or just done accurately by you.

Pricing follows the same split, mostly. Managed services (Atlas, Payroll4Construction, eBacon) don't publish rates on the pages we checked — cost depends on crew size, project volume, and what else you're bundling in. Self-service platforms are a mixed bag: LCPtracker publishes tiered pricing by project count, Points North is quote-based, and LeaveSheet publishes one flat rate.

Project volume is the other filter. A contractor running certified payroll on a handful of projects a year usually gets more value from a flat-priced self-service tool than from a managed service billed around ongoing volume; a contractor running certified payroll across many projects and crews continuously may find a managed service's per-report or per-project cost worth it to remove the work entirely.

The Options, Compared Honestly

Atlas Certified Payroll (certifiedpayroll.com) and Payroll4Construction are managed certified payroll services — Payroll4Construction explicitly markets free certified reports as part of its broader construction payroll service, meaning the report itself isn't billed separately once you're a payroll customer. Neither publishes pricing on the pages we checked; both require a quote or demo.

eBacon sits in the same managed-service category from a different angle: it's a full construction payroll processor (pay runs, tax filing, fringe management) that generates certified payroll reports from its own payroll data. No public pricing is listed on the page we checked; see our full LeaveSheet vs eBacon comparison for the detailed feature breakdown.

PayrollPayroll.com lists certified payroll as one of its payroll bureau services for contractors, similarly quote-based with no pricing published on the page we checked.

Points North and LCPtracker are the self-service side: Points North connects to an existing payroll system (ADP Workforce Now, UKG, QuickBooks named specifically) and generates reports from that data, quote-based. LCPtracker is priced per active project, from $145/month for up to 5 projects to $7,400/year for unlimited projects, verified July 16, 2026 — a self-service compliance platform rather than a managed service.

LeaveSheet Certified Payroll is the flat-priced self-service option: $19/month or $190/year per organization, with worker classifications, up to four fringe plans, weekly hours entry, and a WH-347-style PDF export with 6B fringe math reconciled automatically. You enter the data and run payroll elsewhere; nothing here is done for you.

What LeaveSheet doesn't do

LeaveSheet is not a certified payroll service — nobody at LeaveSheet enters your hours, reviews your report, or files anything on your behalf the way Atlas or Payroll4Construction's managed service would. You do the data entry and you submit the finished report yourself.

It also doesn't process payroll, file payroll taxes, or handle direct deposit like eBacon does, and it doesn't integrate with an existing payroll system to pull data automatically the way Points North's materials describe. It's a narrow, self-service reporting tool, not a service or a payroll-connected platform.

When to Pay for a Managed Service vs Do It Yourself

Pay for a managed service (Atlas, Payroll4Construction, eBacon, or PayrollPayroll.com) when you'd rather hand off the whole certified payroll process, you're running enough projects that the admin time genuinely competes with billable work, or you want certified payroll bundled into a payroll provider you're switching to anyway.

Do it yourself with self-service software when you already have hours and rates well organized, you're running a small enough number of projects that data entry takes minutes rather than hours, and you'd rather pay a flat, published price than a quote that depends on volume you can't easily estimate in advance.

Our Pick by Use Case

Want certified payroll handled for you as part of your payroll service: Payroll4Construction or eBacon, since certified reporting comes out of payroll they're already running.

Already on ADP Workforce Now, UKG, or QuickBooks and want reports pulled from that data automatically: Points North.

Running certified payroll across many projects and want a portal for oversight: LCPtracker.

Small subcontractor who wants to keep the current payroll provider and just needs an accurate report a few times a year, at a published price: LeaveSheet's $19/month add-on, or the free Excel WH-347 template if software isn't worth it yet.