What Is Certified Payroll? Definition, WH-347 and a Worked Example

Certified Payroll, Defined

Certified payroll is a weekly payroll report, signed under penalty of perjury, that contractors and subcontractors submit to prove they paid the required prevailing wage and fringe benefits to every worker on a covered project. "Certified" refers to the signed Statement of Compliance attached to the report, not to any credential the contractor holds - it is the contractor's sworn certification that the numbers on the payroll are accurate.

The requirement comes from the Davis-Bacon Act, which applies to federal construction contracts over $2,000, and from the many state and local "little Davis-Bacon" laws that impose similar prevailing-wage and reporting rules on state-funded or state-assisted construction work. The federal version of the report is the WH-347 form, published by the U.S. Department of Labor; several states require their own form or an equivalent electronic submission instead of, or alongside, WH-347.

Certified payroll is not a payroll processing system and it does not replace a contractor's normal payroll run. It is a compliance report generated from that payroll data - hours, rates, and deductions the contractor already tracks - reformatted into the columns a contracting agency needs to verify prevailing-wage compliance. A contractor still runs its normal payroll through whatever provider it uses; certified payroll is the extra, project-specific report layered on top of that for covered work.

Who Has to Submit It

Every contractor and subcontractor performing work on a covered contract must submit certified payroll for its own employees - a general contractor's certified payroll does not cover its subcontractors' workers, and each entity on the job is independently responsible for its own weekly report and statement of compliance.

Coverage generally follows the contract, not the company: a contractor that normally has nothing to do with prevailing wages still owes certified payroll for the portion of its workforce billing hours to a covered federal or federally assisted job once that job crosses the applicable dollar threshold. A contractor might run entirely private work most of the year and only trigger certified payroll obligations for the few weeks a crew is assigned to one covered project.

Owners, bona fide supervisors who don't perform manual labor, and clerical staff are typically outside the reporting requirement, but working foremen who spend part of their time doing the trade's manual work usually are not automatically exempt for those hours - the exemption tracks the type of work actually performed, not the job title on a business card. A separate guide on who is exempt from certified payroll covers these edge cases, and the roles state agencies most often push back on, in more depth.

What the WH-347 Form Captures

The WH-347 form runs one worker per row, one week per form, and captures: the worker's name and an identifying number, their trade classification, the day-by-day hours worked split into straight time and overtime, the base hourly rate and any fringe benefit rate, gross wages earned, an itemization of deductions, and net wages paid. A second page, the Statement of Compliance, is where the contractor signs off on the whole week's report and discloses how fringe benefits were paid - into bona fide plans, in cash, or a mix of both.

The form exists so a contracting agency's auditor can reconstruct, for any worker on any day, whether the total hourly compensation (cash wage plus fringe) met or exceeded the prevailing wage determination for that worker's classification on that project - without needing access to the contractor's full payroll system.

Several states require a different form entirely, or an electronic submission through a state portal instead of a paper or PDF WH-347 - California's DIR eCPR system and New York's electronic certified payroll process are two well-known examples. A contractor working both federal and state-funded jobs, or jobs in more than one state, has to know which format each specific contract requires rather than assuming WH-347 always applies.

Worked Example: One Carpenter, One Week

Take a carpenter with a prevailing wage determination of $30.00/hour base rate plus $6.00/hour in required fringe benefits, split $4.00/hour to a health and welfare plan and $2.00/hour to a pension plan. In one week the carpenter works 40 hours of straight time and 4 hours of overtime.

Gross wages: 40 hours x $30.00 = $1,200.00 straight-time pay, plus 4 hours x $30.00 x 1.5 = $180.00 overtime pay, for total gross wages of $1,380.00. Overtime here is calculated on the base cash rate, which is the common approach under the Contract Work Hours and Safety Standards Act for hours over 40 in a week.

Fringe credit: the contractor owes $6.00/hour in fringe benefits for every hour worked, straight time and overtime alike, so 44 hours x $6.00 = $264.00. This $264.00 is paid into the health and welfare plan and pension plan directly - it is not cash handed to the worker, and it does not appear in gross or net wages on the WH-347 form; it is tracked and reconciled separately in the fringe benefit section (box 6B) of the form.

Net wages: from the $1,380.00 gross wages, the contractor withholds $310.00 in taxes and other authorized deductions, leaving net wages of $1,070.00 paid to the carpenter. The fringe amount never enters this calculation - confusing the two is the single most common arithmetic mistake on a certified payroll report.

To check the math end to end: 40 x 30 = 1,200; 4 x 30 x 1.5 = 180; 1,200 + 180 = 1,380 gross wages. Separately, 44 x 6 = 264 in fringe, credited to the plans. Then 1,380 - 310 = 1,070 net wages paid to the worker. Three numbers, three separate purposes - gross wages for the WH-347's column 7, the fringe credit for column 6B, and net wages for column 9.

Where Certified Payroll Gets Submitted

For federal contracts, certified payroll is submitted to the contracting agency overseeing the project (or to the general contractor, who compiles and forwards subcontractor payrolls up the chain), typically on a weekly basis for every week work is performed, including a payroll marked "no work performed" for any week with zero covered hours so the submission record has no gaps.

Many states with their own prevailing-wage laws require submission through a dedicated electronic portal rather than a mailed or emailed WH-347 - California's DIR eCPR system and New York's electronic certified payroll system are two well-known examples. Contractors working across multiple states or on both federal and state-funded jobs often have to track more than one submission format and cadence at once.

A Weekly Submission Checklist

Before submitting a week's certified payroll: confirm every worker's classification matches the wage determination for the project (misclassification is the most cited violation); confirm hours worked, split correctly between straight time and overtime; confirm the fringe benefit rate is included and reconciled, whether paid to plans or as cash in lieu where allowed; confirm deductions are itemized, not lumped into one number; and confirm the Statement of Compliance is signed for that specific week, indicating how fringes were paid.

Submit a payroll for every week of the project, even weeks with no covered work, to avoid gaps that read as missing records during an audit. Falsifying a certified payroll report is a federal crime under 18 U.S.C. Section 1001, separate from any Davis-Bacon wage-restitution penalty, which is why the signed statement of compliance is treated as a serious legal document rather than a formality.

Tools That Help

A blank WH-347-style Excel template is available as a free download for contractors who just need the form's layout (tabletemplates.com/free/wh-347-form-excel-download/). LeaveSheet's Certified Payroll add-on ($19/month or $190/year per organization, 14-day trial) tracks each worker's classification and fringe plans, takes weekly straight-time and overtime entries, reconciles the fringe math automatically, and exports a WH-347-style PDF with Statement of Compliance plus an Excel copy. It does not process payroll, taxes, or direct deposits, and it does not submit to state e-filing portals like eCPR or DIR - those steps stay with your payroll provider and the agency's own system.