Certified Payroll and Form WH-347, Explained
Every contractor on a federally funded construction job files a certified payroll each week, and most of them learned how by getting one sent back. The form itself is two pages. The rules behind it are spread across the Davis-Bacon Act, the Copeland Act, the Contract Work Hours and Safety Standards Act and 29 CFR parts 3 and 5, and they decide what goes in each column.
These guides take the form one facet at a time: what it is and who files it, how each column is filled, what the Statement of Compliance commits you to, how prevailing wage and fringe are met, how overtime is figured, how apprentices are shown, which deductions are allowed, what gets a payroll rejected, and what records to keep. Each one ends with the same question: how do you get this right every week without an audit finding it first.
On a federal service contract rather than construction? Those come under the Service Contract Act, with their own wage determinations and fringe rules and no weekly certified payroll: Service Contract Act vs. Davis-Bacon sets out which law applies and what changes.
What Form WH-347 is
Who has to file it, how often, to whom, and why the optional form is the one everyone uses
How to fill out WH-347
Column by column, from the worker entry number to net wages, on the January 2025 revision
The Statement of Compliance
What page 2’s six certifications assert, the fringe credit table, who signs, and what a false statement risks
Prevailing wage and fringe
Basic rate plus fringe, paid to a plan or in cash, what counts and what never does
Overtime on certified payroll
Time and a half over 40 hours, the rate it is figured on, and why fringe is not multiplied
Apprentices and trainees
Registration, the ratio, the percentage of the journeyworker rate, and column 2
Deductions
What the Copeland Act allows without approval, what needs consent in advance, and column 8
Mistakes that get a payroll rejected
The ten errors reviewers see most, and what each one looks like on the form
Certified payroll in Excel
What a spreadsheet has to get right before it is safe to sign what it prints
The DOL web form or a workbook
What you type again every week, and what a workbook carries forward for you
Records to keep
What the certified payroll leaves out, what the regulations require, and for how long
The workbook that does this
EG Certified Payroll fills the form from the hours you enter, checks it against the wage determination, and shows you every finding before you approve
All of these guides describe the same rules the workbook checks. Try it on the sample project: two mistakes are built in for Check to find.
See EG Certified Payroll (WH-347)