Last updated: August 2026

Certified Payroll and Form WH-347: What Contractors File, and When

Contractors sign the wrong thing every Friday. The weekly submission is a sworn certification, and falsifying it is a federal criminal and False Claims Act matter. The spreadsheet behind it carries no such exposure.

Certified payroll is the weekly wage report a contractor on a federally funded construction job files, together with a signed Statement of Compliance. Optional Form WH-347 is the version nearly every contracting agency asks for. It carries a January 2025 revision, cleared by the Office of Management and Budget on 6 January 2025 under control number 1235-0008, and that clearance runs to 31 January 2028.

What follows is the rule for each field, the section of the Code of Federal Regulations it comes from, and the arithmetic, because arithmetic is where this goes wrong.

What you are actually signing

The regulated act is the certification itself. Wage data is what the certification vouches for. Under 29 CFR 5.5(a)(3)(ii)(C), every weekly submission must arrive with a signed Statement of Compliance. The signer is the contractor, the subcontractor, or the agent who pays or supervises payment.

That statement certifies three separate things. First, that the payroll for the period holds the required information and that the information and records are correct and complete. Second, that every laborer and mechanic, including helpers and apprentices, has been paid the full weekly wages earned without rebate, direct or indirect, with no deductions beyond those permitted by 29 CFR part 3. Third, that each worker was paid at least the applicable rates and fringe benefits, or cash equivalents, for the classifications of work actually performed under the determination incorporated into the contract.

Each of the three is a separate promise, and each can be false on its own. A payroll can be arithmetically perfect and still fail the second certification because of one unauthorized deduction. It can survive the second and fail the third because a worker was booked under the wrong trade.

The statement itself sits on the reverse side of Form WH-347. Under 29 CFR 5.5(a)(3)(ii)(D), submitting that certification properly executed satisfies the requirement outright, which is the whole reason the two-page form exists. Page one holds the data, page two holds the legal exposure, and the second page is the one an investigator reads first.

Filling out WH-347, field by field

Start from the fact that the form is optional and the duty is not. Under 29 CFR 5.5(a)(3)(ii)(B), the required weekly information may be submitted on Optional Form WH-347 or in any other format desired. An agency or a prime may impose its own portal, and many do. What cannot vary is the content, which part 5 fixes at 29 CFR 5.5(a)(3)(i)(B).

Where to get the form

The Department of Labor publishes the form and the WH-347 instructions on the Wage and Hour Division site, at dol.gov/agencies/whd/forms/wh347. That landing page carries the WH-347 fillable PDF, the WH-347 instructions, and the certified payroll form itself in one place, which makes it the address worth bookmarking.

Working from the CFR text alone will not get you there. The CFR text points readers to a URL ending "wh347/.pdf," with a stray slash before the file extension. Copy that string and you get nothing back. It is a small defect in a heavily cited paragraph, and it sends a certain number of people every year to a third-party copy of a government form.

What goes on a certified payroll report

Six data elements are fixed by rule:

• The worker's name.
• The worker's correct classification or classifications of work actually performed.
• Hourly rates of wages paid, including the rates of contributions or costs anticipated for bona fide fringe benefits, or the cash equivalents.
• Daily and weekly hours actually worked, both in total and on each covered contract.
• Deductions made.
• Actual wages paid.

Two of those trip people up. Hours worked in total and on each covered contract means a worker splitting a week between a federal job and private work needs both figures, since the total is what proves the deductions and the net. The plural in "classification or classifications" anticipates that one person may hold two trades in one week.

How to fill out certified payroll without leaking identifiers

The identity fields work differently on the record than on the report. Your own payroll records must hold the full Social Security number plus last known address, telephone number and email. The weekly transmittal must not. Under 29 CFR 5.5(a)(3)(ii)(B), full Social Security numbers and those contact details cannot appear on weekly transmittals, and the submission need only carry an individually identifying number for each worker, such as the last four digits. A prime may still require the full numbers from a sub for its own records without those numbers reaching the agency.

This is one place where the common advice runs backwards. Guidance that treats a blank Social Security column as an administrative defect is describing an agency portal's validation rule, and part 5 says the opposite about what belongs on the transmittal itself.

Signatures are looser than the paper suggests. Under 29 CFR 5.5(a)(3)(ii)(E), the signature may be an original handwritten one or a legally valid electronic one. An agency or a prime may also require electronic submission, provided the system takes a valid electronic signature and preserves access for three years.

The fringe math, worked

Fringe is where the money leaks, so this section is the long one. A wage determination gives two numbers per classification, a basic hourly rate and a fringe rate. Under 29 CFR 5.31(a), a contractor may discharge both by paying cash, by making payments or incurring costs for bona fide fringe benefits, or by a combination of the two.

A worked certified payroll example, using the regulation's own numbers

Part 5 runs its own illustration, and it is worth using because the figures are the government's. For the classification "Laborer: common or general," 29 CFR 5.31 uses a basic hourly rate of $21.93 and a fringe rate of $6.27. The combined obligation is therefore $28.20 an hour.

Note the discrepancy before relying on the published text. Paragraphs (b)(2) and (b)(3) both print the combined figure as "$28.60 ($21.93 basic hourly rate plus $6.27 for fringe benefits)." Those two components sum to $28.20. The wage table they point to, Figure 1 to 29 CFR 5.30(c), is published as an image, so the text never discloses which of the three numbers carries the typo. The arithmetic below uses the two component rates, since those are the ones a wage determination actually gives you.

Route one, under 29 CFR 5.31(b)(1): pay the $21.93 in cash and make contributions of at least $6.27 an hour to bona fide plans. Over a 40-hour week that is $877.20 in cash wages and $250.80 in contributions, $1,128.00 in total.

Route two, under 29 CFR 5.31(b)(2): pay the whole thing in cash, at $28.20 an hour. Over 40 hours it comes to the same $1,128.00, all of it wages.

Route three, under 29 CFR 5.31(b)(3), is any mix reaching that total. Contribute $4.00 an hour to a plan and the remaining $2.27 has to go to the worker in cash, because $21.93 plus $4.00 plus $2.27 is $28.20. What matters is the total. The proportions are yours to choose.

Where the money actually leaks

A contractor takes the plan credit of $6.27 an hour on the report, but the plan actually costs $4.10 an hour per worker. The gap is $2.17 for every hour worked. On one laborer that is $86.80 a week, which nobody notices. On a crew of eight it is $694.40 a week. Across a 30-week project it is $20,832 in underpaid wages, every dollar of it certified as paid.

That figure is why the annualization question matters. A credit has to reflect what the benefit actually costs per hour of covered work. A plan whose cost is spread across a worker's whole year, private jobs included, does not deliver $6.27 of value to a Davis-Bacon hour merely because the plan document says so. Contractors running union trust contributions face the same arithmetic with more moving parts, since each collective bargaining agreement sets its own contribution rates and reporting cadence. The union payroll guide covers how those allocations behave across trades.

The reporting consequence is straightforward. Whichever route you take, the report has to show the rate of contributions or anticipated costs alongside the cash rate, because 29 CFR 5.5(a)(3)(i)(B) treats the fringe figure as part of the hourly rates of wages paid. A form showing a single combined number with no breakdown does not tell a reviewer which route was used, and the follow-up question tends to arrive as a records request.

Classification follows the work performed

Job titles have no standing under the determination. Under 29 CFR 5.5(a)(1)(i), workers must be paid for the classifications of work actually performed, without regard to skill. A company can call someone a foreman, a helper, or a technician, and the rate will still be set by what the hands did.

Splitting a week between trades is allowed, with one condition attached. The same section lets a worker in more than one classification be paid each classification's rate for the time actually worked in it, provided the employer's payroll records accurately set forth the time spent in each. The permission and the record-keeping duty arrive in a single sentence, joined by that proviso. Without the time split in the records, the whole week defaults to the higher-rated classification, and the difference becomes back wages.

The cost of getting this wrong compounds, because a misclassification repeats on every report until someone catches it. A worker booked one classification low for six months generates twenty-six defective certifications. The prevailing wage guide covers how the Department of Labor sets those rates by trade and county in the first place.

Classification is a separate question from permission

Correct classification settles what an hour is worth. Whether a given worker may perform that hour at all is a different question with a different regulator. Some construction scopes carry their own credential. Removing or closing a regulated underground storage tank is one. The determination prices a laborer or an equipment operator on that site, and the state decides separately whether the firm may touch the tank at all.

A published state-by-state survey of which states require a credentialed contractor for underground tank work shows the requirement varying by jurisdiction, with several states applying narrower rules. A certified report showing correct rates for an uncredentialed crew documents that problem and settles nothing.

The determination and the Davis-Bacon poster, WH-1321, also have to be posted at the site at all times under 29 CFR 5.5(a)(1)(i), somewhere prominent enough that workers can read them. Investigators check for the poster during a site visit, and its absence tends to set the tone for everything that follows.

Certified payroll for subcontractors

Subcontractors carry the same duty and the prime carries the consequences. Under 29 CFR 5.5(a)(3)(ii)(A), the prime contractor is responsible for the submission of all certified payrolls by every subcontractor. A sub that files late has not created a problem for itself alone.

That allocation moves the prime's work to Monday morning, weeks before closeout. A sub's missing week is a gap in the prime's submission history, and gaps are what an investigator sorts by first. A prime running several subs on one job is effectively operating a collection process with a seven-day clock on it, and the practical answer is a standing internal deadline set earlier than the regulatory one.

Retention makes the asymmetry worse. Records must be kept for three years after all work on the prime contract is completed, under 29 CFR 5.5(a)(3)(i)(A) and 29 CFR 3.4(b). The clock ignores both the sub's last day and the pay date. A drywall sub who demobilizes in month three of a thirty-month job is still holding records at month sixty-six, long after that project has left everyone's active file. Subs bidding federal work should price that storage obligation into overhead before discovering it during a document request.

Subs should also know what they can decline to hand over. A prime may require full Social Security numbers and contact details for its own records under 29 CFR 5.5(a)(3)(ii)(B). Nothing in that section makes those details part of the agency submission, and the same paragraph keeps them off weekly transmittals. A sub asked to put full numbers on the transmittal itself is being asked for the wrong thing, and complying creates an exposure that sits with whoever transmitted the file.

Certified payroll requirements: deadlines, retention, and the weeks you do not file

Seven days, and the clock starts at a date that is easy to get wrong. Under 29 CFR 3.4(a), each report must be delivered within seven days after the regular payment date of the payroll period. The trigger is the date the workers were paid, and not the date the pay period closed. A firm running a five-day lag between period end and payday has twelve days from period end, and a firm paying on the following Friday has fourteen. Guidance counting from the end of the payroll period describes a stricter deadline than the regulation sets, which stays harmless until someone builds a process on the wrong anchor and then moves pay dates.

Retention runs three years from completion of the prime contract, under 29 CFR 5.5(a)(3)(ii)(G) for the reports and 29 CFR 3.4(b) for the underlying payroll records. Contracting agencies keep their own copies for the same three years under 29 CFR 3.4(a). Nothing ties the period to the calendar year, the tax year, or the worker's last day on site.

Does a week with no work need a report?

The no-work week is the question most summaries answer badly. Under 29 CFR 5.5(a)(3)(ii)(A), submission is required weekly for each week in which any covered work is performed. The trigger is a week containing covered work. A week with none does not meet the condition, and no report is owed for it.

Contracting agencies routinely ask for one anyway, as a no-work notice or a zero-hour report, and that request is worth honoring. It comes from the agency's own contract administration and not from part 3 or part 5. Keeping the two sources straight matters when a portal rejects a filing or an auditor asks why a week is blank, because the answer differs depending on which rule is being enforced. Ask the contracting officer what the contract requires and get the answer in writing before the first payroll runs.

Overtime sits on a separate track from all of this, governed by its own statute and its own weekly threshold, and a report can be correct on classification and rate while the overtime premium underneath it is wrong. The overtime guide covers how the regular rate is built.

What happens when the certification is wrong

There is no flat civil penalty for a defective report, and the figures circulating to the contrary do not survive a look at the source. According to the Department of Labor's 2025 civil penalty schedule, the amounts run from Family and Medical Leave Act notices at $216 up to H-2A willful safety violations at $144,329. That schedule lists every Wage and Hour Division penalty against its CFR citation. Davis-Bacon appears nowhere on it.

What exists instead is worse. Under 29 CFR 5.5(a)(3)(ii)(F), falsification of any of those certifications may subject a contractor or subcontractor to civil or criminal prosecution under 18 U.S.C. 1001 and 31 U.S.C. 3729, the False Claims Act. The statutory hook is 40 U.S.C. 3145(b), a provision one sentence long: Section 1001 of title 18 applies to the statements.

The weekly cadence makes that arithmetic unpleasant. Each submission is a separate certification, so a recurring error produces a series of them.

Alongside that sit the ordinary contract remedies: back wages with no ceiling, withholding of contract funds, termination, and debarment from future federal work. Overtime violations carry their own liquidated damages under 29 CFR 5.5(b)(2) and 29 CFR 5.8(a), which are an overtime remedy and not a paperwork fine, a distinction most summaries blur.

Set against all of that, the $20,832 fringe gap from the crew of eight is the cheap version of this problem. It is a wage underpayment, and wage underpayments get repaid. The expensive version is the same gap certified as correct for thirty consecutive weeks, which converts one payroll error into thirty statements the government can characterize as false.

California, New York, and State Prevailing Wage Rules

Federal Davis-Bacon covers federally funded projects. Most states, though not all, have their own prevailing wage laws covering state and locally funded construction. Coverage thresholds and reporting formats differ from the federal rules, and on projects with mixed funding you may need to satisfy both at once.

California's prevailing wage program, administered by the Department of Industrial Relations, is the strictest in the country. California requires electronic submission through its DIR eCPR system. The state maintains its own wage determinations that frequently exceed federal rates. California also requires contractors to register with the DIR before bidding on public works projects.

New York prevailing wage rates, set by the Bureau of Public Work, often exceed federal Davis-Bacon rates for the same classification in the same county. New York enforces a "supplements" system where fringe benefit contributions must meet specific minimums for health, pension, vacation, and training funds separately. Paying the total fringe amount without satisfying each individual supplement category still counts as a violation.

In states without a prevailing wage law, only federal requirements apply when federal funds are involved. Assuming your state law matches federal rules, in either direction, is a reliable way to create a certified payroll compliance gap. Contractors working across state lines on government projects need to check the specific prevailing wage statute for each project location, not assume one set of rules covers everything.

Why Government Contract Reporting Costs More Than Contractors Expect

Under 40 U.S.C. 3142(a), the Davis-Bacon contract clauses go into every covered construction contract in excess of $2,000, and the Department of Labor's Prevailing Wage Resource Book quotes that threshold against the same citation. The Davis-Bacon certified payroll reporting requirement extends to every subcontractor on the project, regardless of their individual contract size. A framing crew with three workers on a major highway job files the same weekly report as the general contractor.

The real cost is time, not paperwork. Each weekly report requires line-by-line wage data for every worker: hours by day, pay rate, fringe benefits, deductions, and net pay. For a contractor running two government jobs, that is a separate worker-line entry for every worker on every site, every week, for the life of the project. The weekly time commitment scales with crew size and with the number of concurrent government jobs, and it draws on project management time rather than clerical time.

The tradeoff of skipping or delaying reports is severe. The Department of Labor can withhold contract payments, debar your company from future federal work for up to three years, and refer willful violations for criminal prosecution.

Late reports cost more than late concrete.

Government contract payroll runs on a tighter compliance clock than any private job. Contractors who treat the weekly filing like a back-office task instead of a project deliverable learn this the hard way, usually when the contracting officer freezes a progress payment.

Reporting Software vs Doing It by Hand

You can complete the WH-347 by hand or in a spreadsheet. For a contractor with five workers on one government project, that approach works. The form is straightforward, and at that scale the weekly entry is short enough to handle without building a process around it.

The math changes with crew size. As headcount rises and projects with different wage determinations run concurrently, manual entry becomes a source of errors, not savings. Prevailing wage compliance software like Payroll4Construction, LCPtracker, and Elation Systems automates wage determination lookups, calculates fringe benefit splits, flags underpayments before you sign the Statement of Compliance, and generates submission-ready reports.

Compliance reporting software is priced as a monthly subscription that scales with employee count and project volume. Payroll4Construction bundles the reporting into its construction payroll platform, handling both regular payroll processing and prevailing wage compliance in one system.

Software calculates. It does not verify.

If you enter the wrong classification code, the software will calculate wages perfectly at the wrong rate. Every report still needs human review before the Statement of Compliance is signed. For contractors who handle fewer than two government projects per year, a well-built spreadsheet template with the correct wage determination rates entered manually handles the occasional government contract at zero software cost. The tradeoff is that spreadsheets do not flag errors, and you carry the full audit risk yourself.

Your Next Steps for Government Contract Payroll

Pull the wage determination for your project from the federal wage determination search at SAM.gov before the first worker sets foot on the job site. Verify every classification and fringe benefit rate against the contract documents.

Set up your weekly reporting schedule on day one. Anchor that schedule to your regular payment date, not to the close of the payroll period, and block standing time to compile each week's data once payday clears. Falling behind by even two weeks creates a backlog that takes three times as long to clear, and some agencies start withholding payments at that point.

If you run more than one government project or employ more than 10 workers on prevailing wage jobs, evaluate whether a dedicated construction payroll platform saves enough time to justify the monthly cost. For most contractors above that threshold, it does.

Review your worker classifications against the wage determination quarterly. Rates update, and a classification that was correct in January may fall short by summer.

For questions beyond prevailing wage reporting, the construction payroll hub covers union payroll processing, workers comp, and contractor classification. If your workers earn overtime on government projects, prevailing wage overtime calculations differ from standard FLSA rules. The payroll provider directory lists platforms that handle construction-specific compliance alongside standard payroll.

This is not legal or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional for your specific situation.