Certified payroll compliance
Check your weekly certified payroll before the agency does
Government Construction Expert is a weekly certified-payroll preflight for contractors and subcontractors on Davis-Bacon work. Enter one week of payroll and we check it against the DOL WH-347 statement and the annotated instructions, flag the completeness and formatting problems agencies reject for, and give you a corrected export. It also stops the one mistake the regulation prohibits outright: a full Social Security number on the weekly transmittal, which 29 CFR 5.5(a)(3)(ii)(B) says must never be included.
Run a free preflight Read the guides
Owned and operated by GCExperts LLC. The preflight is free; the Filing Desk is $39 one-time.
What the preflight checks
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Full Social Security numbers
A nine-digit number is a hard error citing 29 CFR 5.5(a)(3)(ii)(B). The weekly transmittal needs an individually identifying number, such as the last four digits — never the full SSN, and never a home address, phone number or personal email.
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The WH-347 fields
Worker identifying number, work classification, base rate, hours worked and overtime are checked line by line against the DOL WH-347 statement and its annotated instructions.
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The statement of compliance
We record the statement-of-compliance declarations you sign, so a submittal is not missing the part the agency checks first.
How it works
Enter one week
Paste the week's payroll lines — identifier (last four), classification, base rate, hours and overtime. No names, addresses, phones or full SSNs.
Get the preflight
We return a corrected export and a plain list of anything that needs fixing before you file.
File on time
The Filing Desk adds corrected-lines CSV exports and a saved history you can download.
Also on this site: which EM 385-1-1 edition governs your contract
Certified payroll is one federal construction duty; the safety and occupational health manual is the other. USACE EM 385-1-1 is contract-specific and date-specific: the edition that applies is the one in effect on the date of solicitation, and a contract already under way keeps the edition it was solicited under until completion. The current edition is the 15 March 2024 revision, which supersedes the 30 November 2014 edition.
The edition check is free: enter a solicitation date and it tells you which edition applies and which USACE ENG Forms are involved. It is a dates-and-records check only and makes no statement about whether any hazard is adequately controlled.
Why certified payroll, not a wage lookup
There are plenty of places that tell you what wage you must pay. This site answers the other half of the job: how do you prove, every week, that you paid it, so the agency or prime does not reject the submission? That is a weekly workflow with a deadline, which is why it belongs on its own site.
Every guide page links the government source it is built from. The preflight shows the WH-347 form it was checked against — its current OMB control number and expiry — and the date of the last check. If the check ever stops, the site says so rather than presenting old rules as current.
Frequently asked questions
What is a certified-payroll preflight?
It is a check of one week's certified payroll against the requirements of the DOL WH-347 statement and its instructions before you file it. You enter the week's lines, we run the field and formatting checks, and we return a corrected export and a list of anything that would need fixing.
Why is a full Social Security number rejected?
Because the regulation prohibits it on the weekly transmittal. 29 CFR 5.5(a)(3)(ii)(B) requires the transmittal to include an individually identifying number for each worker, such as the last four digits of the Social Security number, and states that full Social Security numbers, last known addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses must not be included. A nine-digit number is treated as an error, with the correction being the last four digits.
Do you store my workers' full Social Security numbers?
No. A nine-digit number anywhere in a submission is rejected before anything is stored, and it is never written to the database, a log or an email. We also do not collect worker names, home addresses, telephone numbers or personal email addresses. See the Privacy Policy for exactly what is kept and for how long.
Where does the WH-347 information come from?
From the U.S. Department of Labor's own WH-347 certified payroll form and instructions, and the annotated WH-347 guide published by the Wage and Hour Division, together with the obligation in 29 CFR 5.5(a)(3) and the Copeland Act (40 U.S.C. 3145). The sources are linked on every guide page and re-checked on a schedule.
Does a preflight guarantee the agency will accept my payroll?
No. A preflight catches the completeness, identifier and formatting problems we can check mechanically. The prime contractor and the contracting agency make the final decision, and some require submission through a specific electronic system. The export is built to move into those systems.
Can an agency require me to use a portal instead of filing directly?
It can, but 29 CFR 5.5(a)(3)(ii)(A) also requires that the agency or prime permit other methods of submission where a contractor is unable to use or access the electronic system. So the workflow is never fully closed, and a corrected export is never wasted.
How do I reset my password?
Use the “Forgot your password?” link on the sign-in page. We email a single-use reset link that expires in 60 minutes.
Who runs Government Construction Expert?
Government Construction Expert is owned and operated by GCExperts LLC. It is an independent service and is not affiliated with the Department of Labor or any other government agency.