Form WH-347, line by line

The federal certified payroll form explained field by field, including the Statement of Compliance on the back, which is the part that carries the legal weight. Get the form itself and the official instructions from the U.S. Department of Labor.

Form WH-347 is the federal government's certified payroll report for Davis-Bacon work: construction projects funded or assisted by federal money. It is due every week you have workers on a covered project. Strictly speaking the form itself is optional, and the underlying weekly payroll statement and signed certification are what the law requires. In practice nearly everyone uses the WH-347 because it puts the required facts in the layout every reviewing agency expects.

One California note before the fields: on state and local public works, the WH-347 is only half your paperwork. California requires its own electronic certified payroll filing, the eCPR, submitted directly to DIR. A flawless WH-347 does nothing for the state side. That split is covered in our California certified payroll guide.

The header block

• Contractor or subcontractor. Check the box that matches your role on this project. Subs file their own WH-347s. Your prime's filings do not cover your crew.
• Address. Your business address, matching your registrations.
• Payroll number. Sequential, starting at 1 for your first week on the project. Gaps invite questions: if you had a week with no work, many agencies expect a payroll marked as non performance rather than silence.
• For week ending. The last day of your workweek. Consistency matters, because the daily hour columns key off this date.
• Project and location, and project or contract number. As they appear in your contract documents. On state work, keep your DIR project ID handy too, because the state filing needs it.

The worker columns, 1 through 9

• Column 1: name and individual identifying number. Full name plus the last four digits of the Social Security number. Never put a full SSN on a WH-347. The state's electronic filing carries full numbers inside DIR's own system, and that difference between the two filings has burned more than one bookkeeper.
• Column 2: number of withholding exemptions. Optional on the federal form. Fill it if your payroll data has it, leave it blank if not.
• Column 3: work classification. The craft under the applicable wage determination, not your internal job title. A worker who splits the week across crafts appears on multiple lines, with hours split accordingly. Classification is where wage compliance and paperwork meet: the rate in column 6 must match the determination for this classification.
• Column 4: day and date, hours worked each day. Two rows per worker: O for overtime hours, S for straight time. The dates run across the top, ending on your week ending date.
• Column 5: total hours. The arithmetic must hold. Reviewers add these up, and so does software.
• Column 6: rate of pay, including fringe benefits. For straight time, the base rate plus any fringe paid in cash to the worker. Overtime rows show at least time and a half on the base rate. When you pay fringes to bona fide plans instead of in cash, the cash rate here can be lower, and the Statement of Compliance on the back explains how, in section 4(a).
• Column 7: gross amount earned. Two figures when a worker also worked other jobs that week: gross on this project over gross for the week.
• Column 8: deductions. FICA, withholding tax, and other deductions, itemized, with a total. If deductions run more than the columns hold, the instructions have you attach a breakdown. "Other" deductions need to be describable, because unexplained deductions are a classic records request trigger.
• Column 9: net wages paid for week. What the worker actually received. On a split week, this is weekly net, which is why it may not equal column 7 minus column 8 on this project alone.

The Statement of Compliance: the page that makes it certified

The second page of the WH-347 is a signed declaration, and it is the whole point of the exercise. Whoever signs is stating, on penalty of federal prosecution, that the payroll is correct and complete, that every worker was paid the full weekly wage with no illegal rebates or kickbacks, and that rates conform to the wage determination. Three parts get contractors:

• 4(a): fringes paid to approved plans. Check this when fringes go to bona fide benefit plans, funds, or programs.
• 4(b): fringes paid in cash. Check this when fringe amounts are paid directly in wages. Then column 6 rates must reflect it.
• 4(c): exceptions. The mixed case. List each craft where the fringe treatment differs from the boxes above, with an explanation. Most real crews with a mix of union and open shop arrangements live here, and leaving it blank while paying mixed fringes is a certification error, not a formatting one.

The signer should genuinely supervise payroll. The form asks for name and title, and the declaration is personal. This is why our service never signs for you: we prepare, validate, and stage everything, and the signature stays where the law puts it, with you. It takes about two minutes.

The mistakes that actually get filings kicked back

1. Arithmetic that does not reconcile: daily hours vs column 5, hours times rate vs column 7, deductions vs net.
2. Classifications that do not appear in the project's wage determination, or rates below the determination for the classification listed.
3. Full SSNs on the federal form, or missing last four digits.
4. Missing or unsigned Statements of Compliance. An unsigned WH-347 is not a certified payroll, it is a spreadsheet.
5. Skipped weeks with no non performance payroll to account for them.
6. Fringe treatment in 4(a), 4(b), and 4(c) that contradicts column 6 rates.

Doing this every week, without doing it yourself

A WH-347 for a working crew is not hard once. It is hard every Friday, forever, in parallel with California's eCPR filing, which has its own format and its own failure modes. Our service takes the payroll export you already run and produces both filings, checked by software and verified by a person, with the Statement of Compliance filled and staged for your signature. The first weekly filing is free, so you can see the finished form on your own project before paying anything.