You’ll need to enter some basic payroll data on the form, including each worker’s name, Social Security number, and tax withholding information. The form’s instructions explain the rest of the reporting requirements, including work classification, workweek, and hourly rate. Certified payroll reports, which need to be submitted every week to the agency that oversees a certain government contract, list every employee who performed work on a job.

To find out your wage determination, reach out to the Department of Labor. The payroll submission becomes technically certified once the contractor or owner of the business completing the work signs a statement of compliance included on the WH-347 form. There are instructions for completing the WH-347 form on the Department of Labor website. The proper completion and submission of the Certified Payroll Form meets that requirement. The Bureau of Labor Standards reviews the information to determine that employees have received legally required wages and fringe benefits.

Certified payroll report example

Usually, the contract administrator can give you an idea about what the DOL will finally decide. There are a few steps to filling out a certified payroll report, so let’s go over each one. Since the Davis-Bacon Act has been enacted, other acts have been passed to enforce prevailing wage laws. Several examples of these acts include law firm bookkeeping the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974, Federal-Aid Highway Acts and the Federal Water Pollution Control Act. If you knowingly violate the Davis-Bacon Act, your business could be fined or terminated as a government contractor. Knowingly submitting false payroll information could lead to criminal or civil prosecution.

If you are working on a project that is backed by both federal and California state funds, be sure to familiarize yourself with both requirements because you need to know if and when to comply with state, federal, or both. To get a solid foundation of California prevailing wage and Davis-Bacon compliance, check out our LCPtracker Academy courses on these topics. If you’re a construction business bidding on government contracts, the last few years have brought good news and the promise of opportunity. An easy solution for time tracking is to teach your employees how to track their working time with simple apps. This will help to avoid excessive control, endless paper routines, and tons of mistakes.

What Is a Labor Cost Distribution Report?

Generally speaking, California prevailing wage law is more stringent than its federal counterpart. For example, California has a lower threshold for triggering prevailing wages. Fringe benefits can be perks such as healthcare, paid time off, and other traditional workplace benefits, or they can be paid in cash. When paying cash fringe benefits, this additional hourly pay is a percentage of the prevailing wage. When working on government-related projects, employees may be paid in wages or a combination of wages and fringe benefits. Fringe benefits include anything provided in addition to basic compensation (the prevailing wage workers are paid by the hour).

This form includes information about your employees, their wages and the total number of hours worked. If your business lands a federal contract for over $2,000, you have to submit a weekly certified payroll report. The Department of Labor estimates that the report takes 55 minutes. That’s about the same amount of time it takes to perform a root canal. You can view a sample certified payroll report online in many places to determine exactly how long it would take for you to complete, but without effective software it will likely take you some time.

How to Calculate California SDI Employer Tax

Certified payroll must be filed by companies, typically contractors, who are working on government-contracted projects. While it might sound like your general payroll process, it’s actually a bit more complicated as there are specific wages that need to be paid and a weekly form submittal process you need to adhere to. This involves a statement of compliance that indicates that all the columns and lines in the payroll report are correct, fully disclosed and that each employee is paid equal to or more than the Davis-Bacon’s prevailing wage. The statement of compliance should be signed by a company owner or payroll head. First, you can fill out form WH-347 and submit it to the Department of Labor.

We’ve compiled a list of resources to help you stay up to date with state prevailing wage laws. The weekly reports, which serve as proof that you’re paying your employees the prevailing wage, must be submitted to the funding agency for the contract. If you don’t work on the contract in a particular week, you don’t have to file the report. Instead, you would just insert the correct payroll report number on the next certified payroll record submission. The process to create the certified payroll reports can be just as tedious.