Certified payroll for QuickBooks Online

QuickBooks Online Payroll Premium and Elite can generate a federal WH-347 report through Intuit QuickBooks Workforce, per Intuit's own articles on creating and reviewing and setting up that report. That report is federal only. No QuickBooks product, Online or Desktop, makes the California DIR eCPR XML, and the Workforce WH-347 does not by itself satisfy that separate California filing requirement. QBO runs your payroll fine. Here is exactly where the gap sits, and the short bridge across it.

What QuickBooks Online gives you

Clean payroll, and clean payroll reports. A QBO payroll export carries everything a certified payroll filing is made of: workers, hours by day, pay rates, earnings, deductions, and with job costing configured, the project split.

What it cannot do

Federal WH-347, on two plans only. QuickBooks Online Payroll Premium and Elite can generate the federal WH-347 through Intuit QuickBooks Workforce, per Intuit's own create and review and set up help articles, downloadable as a spreadsheet. QuickBooks Online Payroll Core does not have this feature. Intuit's separate QuickBooks Desktop Payroll article covers the Desktop version of the same federal report and links out to the Workforce articles as related resources, not away from them. Either way, what this produces is the federal WH-347 only.
No California eCPR XML. No QuickBooks product produces the DIR file, Online or Desktop, on any plan. Sunburst Software Solutions, the QuickBooks certified payroll specialist that has sold add-ons for this exact gap for years, puts it in bold on their own site: do not let anyone tell you that QuickBooks on its own can produce the XML file, it cannot.
No Statement of Compliance ready for the DIR portal. The Workforce WH-347 report has you review and sign a Statement of Compliance for the federal filing, but that is a different document from California's own certification. Labor Code section 1776 requires a written declaration made under penalty of perjury, and QBO does not produce that California declaration on any plan.

So a QBO sub on a non-exempt public works project owes a weekly federal WH-347 and a DIR eCPR filing, our full comparison of the two is in WH-347 vs eCPR. On Premium or Elite, Workforce covers the federal half. The California half has no native support on any QBO plan and no bolt-on inside QBO to buy. The usual result, for the California side, is hand-typing into the DIR portal every week.

Does your QBO Payroll plan tier matter

Somewhat, and now for one of the two filings. QuickBooks Online Payroll Core does not track payroll by project and does not have the Workforce certified payroll report. Premium and Elite do both: Intuit confirms allocating payroll to classes and projects is available in Premium and Elite, not Core, and Intuit's certified payroll help articles list the same two plans for generating the federal WH-347 through Workforce. On Premium or Elite with job costing set up, your export already carries the worker-to-project split we need, and our mapping goes faster. On Core, we usually work from timesheets or a project note on the export instead. Either way, no tier adds the California DIR eCPR export. That gap is the same on every QBO plan.

How our mapping works with QBO

You run the payroll report you already use and send us the export. During the one time $995 setup we map your exact QBO layout: how your columns land, how overtime shows up, how your fringes and deductions are labeled, which crews belong to which DIR project. From then on, every pay period, that same export comes back as a finished WH-347 with the Statement of Compliance staged for your signature and a DIR eCPR XML run through our validation checks, first by software and then by a person, before it reaches you. We also prepare your DAS 140 and DAS 142 apprenticeship filings from the same export when your project needs them.

Nothing about your QBO setup changes. We never log into your books, never touch wages or taxes, and the last click, the signature the law requires to be yours, stays yours. It only takes your signature.

QuickBooks Online vs a Desktop add-on vs WellStanding

	QuickBooks Online, native	Desktop add-on (Sunburst)	WellStanding
Federal WH-347	Generated, Premium/Elite only	Generated, you drive it	Done, staged for signature
CA DIR eCPR XML	Not produced	Generated, you drive it	Prepared and checked
Statement of Compliance	Federal only, Premium/Elite	Generated, you sign	Staged, you sign
Runs on QuickBooks Online	Yes, for payroll itself	No, Windows Desktop only, not compatible with QuickBooks Online or Mac	Yes, any QBO plan
Cost	Your hours	About $799 one time company license, plus your hours every week	$995 setup, $249 or $449 per month flat

Pricing, published

$995 one time setup for the mapping. $249 per month flat for crews up to 25 workers, every project included. Crews of 26 to 50: $449 per month. That flat fee covers the federal WH-347, due weekly under 29 CFR 5.5(a)(3)(ii)(A), and the California DIR eCPR filing, due at least monthly and more often only if your contract with the awarding body requires it, under Labor Code section 1771.4(a)(3)(A)(i). Your first filing is free, done on your own live project before you pay anything.

Questions

Does QuickBooks Online do certified payroll for California public works?

For California, no. No QuickBooks product, on any plan, produces the DIR eCPR XML file California public works requires. QuickBooks Online Payroll Premium and Elite can generate a federal WH-347 through Intuit QuickBooks Workforce, per Intuit's create and review and set up help articles, but that report is federal only: it is not a DIR eCPR XML and does not include California's Statement of Compliance declaration. QuickBooks Online Payroll Core does not have this feature at all.

Can QuickBooks Desktop make the California DIR eCPR XML file?

Not on its own. Desktop's certified payroll report targets the federal WH-347 side. The eCPR XML needs a separate add-on, such as Sunburst's Certified Payroll Solution at about $799 for a one time company license, and that add-on runs on Windows Desktop only, not QuickBooks Online and not Mac. See our QuickBooks Desktop page for the full breakdown.

Does the QuickBooks Online Payroll plan tier, Core, Premium, or Elite, matter for certified payroll?

It matters for job costing, and for one of the two filings. Core does not track payroll by project and does not have the Workforce certified payroll report. Premium and Elite do both, per Intuit's own documentation. None of the three tiers adds a California eCPR export.

What is Intuit QuickBooks Workforce, and does it help with certified payroll?

It is Intuit's payroll and workforce platform, and workers use it to view pay stubs and W-2s. It also does help with certified payroll, on the federal side: on QuickBooks Online Payroll Premium and Elite, Workforce is where you generate the WH-347 report, per Intuit's create and review and set up help articles. What Workforce does not do, on any plan, is the California DIR eCPR filing or California's Statement of Compliance declaration.

What are my options for certified payroll if I run QuickBooks Online?

Type each filing into the DIR iForm by hand, which does not scale past a small crew, switch payroll platforms entirely, add a Windows-only Desktop tool if you also run Desktop, or keep QBO and send your export to a done-for-you service that builds both filings from it. Our full walkthrough of all four is in this guide.

If WellStanding files my eCPR, do I still sign anything?

Yes. We prepare the WH-347 and the DIR eCPR filing from your export and a person checks each one, but you review the parsed payroll and sign the Statement of Compliance yourself. The certification stays yours.