Certified payroll checklist before you submit

The top of the WH-347 is where primes reject a file before they read a single hour. Match it to the award, not to a copy from the previous week.

• Project name, location (county and state at minimum), and contract number match the award.
• Week-ending date matches the payroll week you are filing.
• Payroll number is the next number for this contractor on this project.
• Prime or subcontractor is marked correctly.
• Final payroll is marked only when this contractor's work on the project is done.
• The wage determination number is the one in the contract, including the revision you are actually paying.

• Every person who performed covered work that week is listed, including apprentices.
• Names match the payroll register.
• Identifying numbers are stable worker IDs, not full Social Security numbers.
• Classification is the work actually performed, not a generic shop title.
• Someone who worked two classifications is split so the hours sit on the right rate.
• Apprentices are registered in a bona fide program. If they are not registered, they are paid the wage-determination rate for the work performed.

What an apprentice program requires, including ratios, lives in that program and in the contract clauses. PayCert can mark a row as a registered apprentice. It does not check the registration or the ratio.

• Daily straight-time and overtime hours add up to the weekly totals.
• Overtime hours are overtime, not straight time relabeled to make the grid easier.
• Straight-time and overtime rates match what was paid.
• Gross on this project and gross for all work are distinguishable when the worker had other jobs that week.
• Hours times rates land on gross, within ordinary rounding.

This is the part PayCert actually checks. Daily hours versus weekly totals, rates and cash fringe as entered, deductions, and net pay. A file can be internally consistent and still be the wrong classification or the wrong wage determination. Both reviews matter.

• You know whether fringe was paid in cash, to a bona fide plan, or both.
• Cash in lieu is the hourly fringe, or the unpaid remainder, that was actually paid.
• If you are taking credit for a plan, you can support the hourly credit. PayCert does not calculate that credit.

The current PayCert review copy is built for cash in lieu of fringe. When fringe is paid in cash, the fringe-credit column stays unused on purpose. Do not treat a blank credit column as a finding that no fringe was due.

• Each deduction is itemized: tax withholding, FICA, and anything else.
• Other deductions are ones you are allowed to take. The Statement of Compliance points at the Copeland Act rules in 29 CFR part 3.
• Total deductions and net wages match what left the account.
• Nothing on the form is a rebate of wages.

PayCert adds the deduction columns you provide and compares them to net pay. It does not decide whether a deduction is legal. A tool deduction, a uniform deduction, or a loan repayment needs a basis you can explain. Illustrative numbers in the sample CSV are not a model for a real week.

• The signer pays wages or supervises payment.
• The statement names this project and this payroll period.
• Apprenticeship program and agency are filled in when apprentices are on the payroll.
• The signature will be original or a legally valid electronic signature, not a photocopy.
• You have read it. The words certify rates, fringe, and deductions. Software cannot certify them for you.

Falsifying that certification can bring civil or criminal exposure under federal law. That is why the review copy is labeled as a review copy, and why the product does not certify payroll for the Department of Labor.

• The file format matches what the agency or prime asked for: their portal, their PDF, or WH-347.
• If you are the prime, subcontractor payrolls for the week are in the package too.
• Underlying payroll records, full SSNs, and addresses stay in your own files, off the weekly transmittal.
• You can still produce those records for at least three years after the prime contract is complete.

If you are laying the grid out from a spreadsheet, start with what Form WH-347 is and the CSV field map. Then run the week through PayCert and walk this list against the printout. The wage-determination side of the same review is in Davis-Bacon certified payroll for controllers.