Certified Payroll Forms: Which Ones You Actually Need

The short answer

For federally funded construction work under Davis-Bacon, you need:

• A weekly payroll report covering every worker on the project
• A signed Statement of Compliance certifying that report is accurate

The WH-347 covers both, payroll on page one, Statement of Compliance on page two. If your project is federal only, that single form is the whole requirement. It's also sometimes called the Davis-Bacon certified payroll form or the federal certified payroll form, since it's issued under the Davis-Bacon Act, but it's the same document either way.

That weekly cycle is all certified payroll reporting means in practice: one report per week for as long as the project runs, showing that everyone on it was paid at least the prevailing wage the contract requires.

If it's easier to see than read about, there's a no-signup demo that fills out the real form on your own numbers.

The federal forms, and when each one applies

Two of those four are the agency's job or a rare exception. In practice, most contractors touch one form, every week. The SF-1444 conformance process only comes up when the work genuinely isn't covered by an existing classification.

What information the form actually asks for

Before the worker rows begin, the certified payroll form has a header block that people routinely leave half-finished. It identifies the contractor and the job:

• Contractor or subcontractor name and address
• Payroll number, counted in sequence from the first week you worked on that project
• Week ending date
• Project name and location
• Project or contract number, plus the wage determination number the contract names

Then, for every laborer and mechanic on the project that week:

• Worker name and an identifying number (last four of the SSN, or a company employee ID)
• Work classification, matching the wage determination, for the work actually performed
• Hours worked each day and total hours for the week, with straight time and overtime kept apart
• Rate of pay, gross amount earned, deductions, and net wages paid

The piece most often filled in wrong is fringe benefits. The form asks whether fringe is paid into approved plans, funds or programs, or paid in cash to the worker instead. Both are allowed, the combination of base rate plus fringe benefits just has to meet the wage determination, and whichever you chose gets certified again on page two. A worker paid the correct base rate with no fringe at all is still underpaid.

The WH-347 fillable form, in detail walks through the nine worker columns one by one. You can check the rates any of this has to meet with the free wage determination lookup.

The WH-347 format is optional. The information is not.

This surprises people: under 29 CFR 5.5(a)(3)(ii)(B), you may submit the required payroll information in any format, as long as it comes with a signed Statement of Compliance. The DOL provides the WH-347 for convenience, it does not mandate that exact sheet.

State forms are a separate stack, not a substitute

A federal WH-347 does not satisfy a state prevailing wage requirement, and a state form does not satisfy the federal one. On a job with both, you file both reports.

• California requires electronic submission through the DIR eCPR system. The Labor Commissioner's suggested paper format is the Public Works Payroll Reporting Form, A-1-131.
• New York City uses its own Certified Payroll Report through the Comptroller's office, not the WH-347.
• Roughly 30 states have their own prevailing wage law with its own form, threshold, and filing cadence.

Which state rules apply to you is worth checking before the first payroll, not at the first audit. Our state compliance overview covers whether a given state has its own law on top of Davis-Bacon.

Where to get the real forms

The current WH-347 (Rev. January 2025, OMB No. 1235-0008) comes directly from the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division at dol.gov/agencies/whd/forms/wh347. Free, fillable, no account. It is the same form whether the construction work is a highway job, a federal building, or a water treatment plant.

• Copies on third-party sites are sometimes outdated revisions, and an outdated revision can be rejected even when every number on it is correct
• The official PDF is fillable, and prints cleanly if you'd rather fill it by hand
• It does no math, checks no rates, and totals nothing for you

The blank PDF also behaves better in Adobe Acrobat Reader than in a browser's built-in viewer, which sometimes drops field values on save. The technical quirks of the fillable PDF are worth knowing before you fill a whole crew's week into one.

Frequently asked