What Form WH-347 is

Contractors and subcontractors on covered construction submit a certified payroll for each week they perform covered work. Optional Form WH-347 (OMB No. 1235-0008) is one accepted way to present that information. The Wage and Hour Division publishes it. A prime contractor is responsible for seeing that subcontractor payrolls are submitted too.

Some agencies want a portal upload. Some still want a PDF. The contract decides the delivery path. The current DOL contract clause says the required weekly information may be submitted on Optional Form WH-347 or in any other format. The blank form is on the Wage and Hour Division forms page.

Coverage depends on the contract. The Davis-Bacon Act itself applies to certain federal construction contracts over $2,000, and Related Acts extend similar rules to many federally assisted projects. If the labor-standards clauses are in your subcontract, this filing is part of the job.

The obligation is weekly, not monthly, and it applies to each week in which covered work was performed. Workers on the job are paid at least once a week. The certified payroll follows that pay week. It is not a substitute for running payroll.

Controllers commonly plan on a cutoff of seven days after payday. That is the window many agency instructions and prime-contractor schedules still use. A portal cutoff on Thursday is a real deadline even when the regulation only says the payroll is submitted each week. Confirm the date in the contract.

The clause is in 29 CFR 5.5. Read the version incorporated into your contract, not a blog summary, before you argue a due date with a prime.

A complete weekly certified payroll identifies the job and the pay for each worker that week. The PayCert review copy follows that WH-347 field layout:

• Contractor or subcontractor name and address, and whether this is the final payroll
• Payroll number, project name, project or contract number, location, and week ending
• The wage determination number you are paying against. You type it in. The form does not look it up.
• Each worker's name and an identifying number
• Work classification actually performed, with a journeyman or registered-apprentice marker
• Daily straight-time and overtime hours, plus total hours
• Hourly rates, fringe credit or cash in lieu of fringe, and gross wages
• Itemized deductions and net wages paid
• A Statement of Compliance signed by the person who pays or supervises payment

The statement certifies that the payroll is correct and complete, that wages were paid without impermissible rebates or deductions, and that each worker received at least the applicable wage and fringe rates for the classification of work performed. The signature has to be handwritten or a legally valid electronic signature. A photocopied signature does not meet the form instructions.

Full Social Security numbers, home addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses belong in your payroll records. Those records are kept for at least three years after the prime contract is finished. They do not belong on the weekly copy sent to the agency. Use an identifying number, such as the last four digits of the SSN or another stable worker ID.

The PayCert sample file uses demo employee IDs for that reason. Do not paste full SSNs into the CSV. The column map shows which headers the importer accepts.

PayCert is a WH-347 copilot for specialty contractors who still run payroll in Excel, QuickBooks, or Gusto and then rebuild the federal grid by hand. A typical week looks like this:

• Enter the job once: project, contract number, location, wage determination, contractor, and the official who will sign.
• Upload a CSV whose headers match the PayCert template. Reformat a QuickBooks or Gusto export first. There is no direct connection and no automatic column mapping.
• PayCert checks internal consistency: daily hours against weekly totals, rates and cash fringe as entered, itemized deductions, and net pay.
• Print a review copy of the payroll grid and the Statement of Compliance, then save a PDF from the browser.

Start from the empty template or the sample payroll, then load the sample in the app. The sample is fictional. The pre-submit checklist is the review you still do before anyone signs.

Keep these limits in view when you decide whether it fits the shop:

• It does not look up or verify prevailing-wage rates on a wage determination.
• It does not certify the payroll for the Department of Labor. You remain the certifier.
• It does not connect to QuickBooks, Gusto, or any other payroll provider.
• It does not model a full fringe-benefit plan. The current version handles cash in lieu of fringe. Plan-credit math stays with you.
• It does not file with the agency or the prime.

You still compare rates and classifications to the wage determination, confirm deductions are permitted, and sign. For how a controller should split that work, see Davis-Bacon certified payroll for controllers.