Certified Payroll Software -- An Easy Solution For Less Stress Week After Week!

Certified payroll software lets you automate much of the work required to complete certified payrolls. This record keeping requirement is a barrier that keeps many companies from participating in certain construction contracts. That's because there are very specific requirements for submitting payrolls in a certain form for certain federal and federally funded construction contracts. The Form WH-347 is the form that lays out the way the payroll must be done.

The Copeland Act (40 U.S.C. § 3145) requires contractors and subcontractors performing work on Federally financed or assisted construction contracts to "furnish weekly a statement with respect to the wages paid each employee during the preceding week." That statement must be signed "certifying" that the payrolls are correct and complete and that each laborer or mechanic has been paid not less than the proper Davis-Bacon prevailing wage rate for the work performed. Under the Davis-Bacon and related Acts, the contractor is required to pay not less than prevailing wage, including fringe benefits, as predetermined by the Department of Labor.

The form requires a description of all monies paid in wages and benefits. The quantities are shown as paid to each worker and each worker is listed. The tracking is by project and by worker. Wages are shown as are fringe benefits amount. This procedure documents that your company is paying the approved amount for wages and for fringe benefits to each and every worker that works on the project.

Using certified payroll software, this requirement can be quickly completed. It's important that your main accounting software is integrated with the payroll software. You certainly don't want to be entering any data twice... Many software packages will take input data from QuickBooks software and the other major accounting software packages.

The Form WH-347 isn't a complex form, but tracking the payroll data can be burdensome without the proper software. Do yourself a favor and get certified payroll software and automate most of the record-keeping for this important part of construction accounting.