Certified payroll comes with a long list of requirements, including the weekly submission of certified payroll reports. These reports must contain specific information for each worker, including which projects they worked on, which work classifications they worked under, wages and fringe benefits, and how many hours they worked each day.
Certified payroll reports are intended to show the DOL and federal agencies that may review them that workers have received the correct wages and fringe benefits. Additionally, these reports must be numbered and submitted weekly even if no work was done. These two requirements, numbering certified payroll reports and how to handle no-work weeks, are common areas of confusion.
Today we’re going to talk about how to number certified payroll reports and when to submit non-performance reports.
Certified payroll numbering
You have to submit certified payroll reports starting from the first week your company performs work on a prevailing wage project. Even if the project started months prior, your first week on site is week number one. Every week after this is numbered in sequence until your last week on the job. You must also date the report with the last day of the week accounted for within the report. This makes it easy to see the period of time the report covers.
Certified payroll report form WH-347 has a box for the payroll number and a “For Week Ending” box. So if your first week of work ended on March 8, your first submission would be numbered one and March 8 would be the end of the week your report covers.
Every week after that until you are completely done on the project is numbered in sequence and dated with the end of the work week from the period covered in the report. Once you start submitting certified payroll reports, you must continue to do so each week until you have no work left to perform on the project.
When your work is completely finished on the project, you will submit your last certified payroll report. This report should be labeled “Final Payroll” to signify that no more reports are needed for this particular project.
No-work weeks
A “no-work week” means that you did not perform any work during the week but are not done working on the project. There are many reasons you may have a no-work week over the course of a project. The weather might prohibit work, you may be waiting for other contractors to finish tasks that must be done before you can continue, or maybe you are waiting on supplies.
In this situation you still need to submit a report, but instead of a certified payroll report you need to submit a “Statement of Non-Performance.” This statement is submitted in place of the weekly certified payroll report. It must include your company’s name, the name of the project and the start and end of the time period it covers. It also must have a payroll number, which should be the next number in the sequence of your payroll submissions.
For example, if you work for five weeks on a project and have a no-work week on week six, your Statement of Non-Performance will be payroll number six. Continue submitting these until you start work again, at which time you’ll go back to certified payroll reports. By the end of the project, you’ll have continuous, sequentially numbered reports, either payroll or non-performance. These will cover the entirety of your time on the project from the first week through the last week.
Similar to your certified payroll reports, your Statement of Non-Performance must be signed and include the full name and title of the person submitting the report. This signature verifies that the submission is true and accurate, exactly like your certified payroll signature. While you don’t need either type of report notarized, they are considered official and binding documents under the law.
Your payroll software may not be set up to help with the submission of either type of report. In this instance, you can use the final section of form WH-347 to help you create a Statement of Non-Performance. It may look something like this:
Date:
Payroll number:
I (Name of Signatory Party) (Title), do hereby state that I pay or supervise the payment of the persons employed by (Contractor or Subcontractor name) on the (Project name).
During the payroll period commencing on (Start date) and ending on (End date), no work was performed on the construction site of (Project name).
(Signature of authorized person and title)
(Date)
Just remember to keep a detailed record of all reports you submit, including non-performance statements. This can be crucial in supporting your compliance claims if you find yourself being audited You may also want to consider switching to a certified payroll software platform that helps with compliance requirements like this. This will make compliance easier, less risky and reduce the amount of time needed to handle certified payroll requirements.
Resources:
Statement of Non-Performance Video
DOL Prevailing Wage Employment Law Guide
DOL Davis-Bacon Fact Sheet
The material presented here is educational in nature and is not intended to be, nor should be relied upon, as legal or financial advice. Please consult with an attorney or financial professional for advice.
