What Is Certified Payroll and Which Companies Must Use It?

Certified payroll is a weekly wage report that every contractor and subcontractor on a federally funded construction project has to submit to prove workers are being paid the required prevailing wage. The obligation attaches to any federal or federally assisted construction contract worth more than $2,000, a threshold set by the Davis-Bacon Act and unchanged since 1931.¹ If your company holds that kind of contract, or works under someone who does, you file. The report is called “certified” because a responsible company official signs it under penalty of federal false-statement law.

What the Report Actually Contains

A certified payroll is a weekly snapshot of what every covered worker earned on the project. The Department of Labor publishes Form WH-347 as a convenience, but using that exact form is optional. Any format works as long as it captures the required data.² In practice, most agencies expect the WH-347 or its electronic equivalent, and departing from it draws scrutiny.

For each worker on the covered project, the report lists:

Full name and the trade classification matching the wage determination for the work actually performed that week.
A unique identifying number, typically the last four digits of the Social Security Number. Full SSNs stay off the form itself but must be kept on file and produced on request.
Daily and weekly hours, broken out between straight time and overtime.
The hourly rate paid for straight time and overtime, plus gross earnings for the week on the covered project.
How the fringe benefit obligation was met, whether through plan contributions, cash paid directly to the worker, or a combination.
Itemized deductions and net pay.

These data points come from the federal contract clause at FAR 52.222-8.³ The piece that makes the payroll “certified” is the Statement of Compliance on page two of the WH-347. A responsible company official signs it, confirming the payroll is accurate, each worker received the full prevailing wage without unauthorized deductions, and no portion of wages was kicked back to the employer or anyone else.² The statement does not need to be notarized, but falsifying it is a federal crime under 18 U.S.C. § 1001, punishable by a fine and up to five years in prison.⁴

Each weekly payroll is numbered in sequence, starting with “1” for the first week of work. If no work happens in a given week, you still submit a report marked “no work performed” so the numbering stays unbroken.⁵ The final submission on the project should be marked as such. Gaps in the sequence are a reliable way to attract an auditor’s attention.

Which Companies Have to File

The $2,000 Davis-Bacon threshold covers every federal or District of Columbia construction contract for construction, alteration, or repair of public buildings or public works, including painting and decorating.¹ That floor is so low that virtually every federal construction contract triggers the requirement. Dozens of “Related Acts” extend the same prevailing-wage and reporting obligations to projects that receive federal assistance, including highway construction funded through the Federal-Aid Highway Act, public housing projects, and work financed by federal grants or loans.⁶

The duty flows down the contracting chain. The prime contractor files its own certified payroll and is responsible for collecting and submitting payrolls from every subcontractor on the project.³ A subcontractor three tiers below the prime has the same filing obligation as the general contractor holding the federal contract. There is no small-sub exemption.

A boundary worth knowing: roughly half the states have their own prevailing wage statutes for state- and locally funded construction, sometimes called “Little Davis-Bacon” laws. These impose similar certified payroll duties but often use different contract-value thresholds and longer retention periods. When a project draws both federal and state funding, both regimes apply, and the stricter requirement controls. Federal certified payroll rules do not reach a privately funded project, even a large one, unless federal money or federal assistance is in the mix.

Which Workers Go on the Report

The requirement applies to every “laborer or mechanic” on the project, and the term is broader than many contractors expect. It covers any worker whose duties are manual or physical in nature, including those who use tools or perform trade work. Apprentices and helpers are included. Watchpersons and guards are covered on contracts subject to the Contract Work Hours and Safety Standards Act.⁷

Workers whose duties are primarily administrative, executive, or clerical are not covered. The line blurs with working forepersons. A foreperson who spends more than 20 percent of their workweek doing hands-on laborer or mechanic duties has to be reported on the certified payroll for those hours.⁷ Business owners who pick up a tool on the jobsite fall under the same rule. If you perform covered work, you appear on the report regardless of your title.

Coverage also depends on where the work happens. Davis-Bacon generally applies to work at the “site of the work,” which includes the primary construction site, any secondary site where a significant portion of the project is built specifically for that contract, and adjacent support facilities like batch plants or tool yards dedicated to the project.⁸ A remote factory producing standard products sold to the general public is not a “site of the work,” even if those products end up on a Davis-Bacon project.

One more worker category trips contractors up constantly: registered apprentices. An apprentice can be paid less than the full journeyworker rate only if they are individually registered in a program approved by the DOL Office of Apprenticeship or a recognized State Apprenticeship Agency, paid the percentage specified in that program, and kept within the program’s apprentice-to-journeyworker ratio on a daily basis.⁹ On the report, apprentices are identified as “RA” rather than “J.” Listing a worker as an apprentice without current certification papers is treated the same as underpaying a journeyworker.

How Often You Submit and How Long You Keep Records

Certified payrolls are due weekly, within seven calendar days after the regular pay date for the payroll period.¹⁰ They go to a representative of the contracting agency at the jobsite, or if none is on site, to the agency office by mail or electronic delivery. Many agencies now require electronic submission through platforms like LCPtracker or Elation Systems, and the specific method should be confirmed with the contracting officer before the first payroll is due.

Late or incomplete submissions can lead the agency to suspend progress payments on the entire contract, not just the piece tied to the missing payroll, and that authority lasts until the violation is corrected.¹¹

All certified payroll records and supporting documentation, including time cards, canceled checks, and fringe benefit payment receipts, must be kept for at least three years after the prime contract is completed.¹⁰ Some state prevailing wage laws stretch that to four years or more. The records must be available for inspection by the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division on request.

What Happens If You Get It Wrong

The enforcement tools are layered, and they work in combination. The contracting agency can withhold accrued payments to cover back wages, interest, and monetary relief, acting on its own or at the DOL’s written request.¹¹ For a company with more than one federal project, the government can cross-withhold funds from any other federal or federally assisted contract held by the same prime contractor, even for violations that happened on a different job.¹² The DOL’s claim to withheld funds takes priority over sureties, bankruptcy trustees, and assignees.

Beyond withholding, contractors and subcontractors who show a disregard of their obligations to workers can be barred from all federal and federally assisted construction contracts for three years.¹³ Debarment is not reserved for egregious fraud. A pattern of paying the wrong rates or repeated payroll reporting failures can get a company there. The ban also reaches any firm, corporation, partnership, or association in which the debarred contractor holds a substantial interest.

Overtime obligations add another layer. The Contract Work Hours and Safety Standards Act requires time-and-a-half for every hour a laborer or mechanic works beyond 40 in a single week on a covered contract, and violations draw liquidated damages of $33 per worker per calendar day of non-compliance on top of back wages.¹¹

Then there is the criminal exposure. Signing a false Statement of Compliance violates 18 U.S.C. § 1001, which carries a fine and up to five years in prison.⁴ The Copeland Act separately prohibits inducing any worker to kick back any part of their required compensation. Criminal referrals are uncommon for first-time paperwork errors, but intentional underpayment schemes involving falsified payrolls do get prosecuted.

Mistakes That Most Often Trigger Trouble

Most certified payroll problems are not fraud. They come from sloppy processes and misunderstandings. A few errors show up far more often than others:

Listing a worker under a cheaper trade classification than the work they actually performed. Auditors compare the classification on the payroll to the scope of work, and a mismatch is the fastest route to a back-wage finding.
Paying a worker at an apprentice rate without current certification from the Office of Apprenticeship or a recognized state agency. Without the paperwork, the worker is owed the full journeyworker rate and the difference becomes back wages.
Missing the gap between the fringe benefit credit earned through a plan and the fringe rate on the wage determination. Any shortfall has to be paid in cash.
Skipping the no-work report for weeks when no work was performed, breaking the sequential numbering.
Misclassifying employees as independent contractors. Workers who perform laborer or mechanic duties on a covered project belong on the certified payroll regardless of how the contractor labels them for tax purposes. The DOL looks at the economic reality of the relationship, not the label on the contract.

If you are new to federal work, build certified payroll into project setup rather than leaving it to the back office. Assign someone to own it from day one, verify wage determinations before you bid, and treat the weekly deadline the same way you treat a concrete pour schedule. The contractors who get into trouble are almost always the ones who treated payroll reporting as paperwork instead of a core project function.

1
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 66 – The Davis-Bacon and Related Acts
2
U.S. Department of Labor. Instructions for Completing Davis-Bacon and Related Acts Weekly Certified Payroll Form WH-347
3
Acquisition.GOV. 52.222-8 Payrolls and Basic Records
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 1001 – Statements or Entries Generally
5
U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division. How to Correctly Fill Out the Davis-Bacon and Related Acts Weekly Certified Payroll WH-347 Form
6
U.S. Department of Labor. Davis-Bacon and Related Acts
7
eCFR. 29 CFR 5.2 – Definitions
8
U.S. Department of Labor. Davis-Bacon and Related Acts Coverage
9
U.S. Department of Labor. Davis-Bacon Compliance Principles
10
eCFR. 29 CFR 3.4 – Submission of Certified Payroll and the Preservation and Inspection of Weekly Payroll Records
11
eCFR. 29 CFR Part 5 – Labor Standards Provisions Applicable to Contracts Covering Federally Financed and Assisted Construction
12
U.S. Department of Labor. Updating the Davis-Bacon and Related Acts Regulations Final Rule
13
U.S. Department of Labor. What Is Debarment and Why Does It Happen