Contractors: Avoid Payment Holds Using the WH-347 Fillable Form Weekly

If your contract is Davis-Bacon covered, you must submit weekly certified payrolls, using Form WH-347 or an equivalent format, along with a signed Statement of Compliance. Download the official fillable and annotated versions from the Department of Labor, then confirm you have the correct wage determination for your county and construction type before you file anything. Skip either step and you’re exposed to payment holds, audit flags, or worse.

TL;DR:

• Always verify the correct wage determination number and modification date on SAM.gov before filling out payrolls to ensure rates are current for your county and construction type.
• Fringe benefits must be reported as funded contributions or cash payments, with apprentices requiring registration proof to avoid wage underpayment issues.
• The Statement of Compliance must be signed by authorized personnel and submitted weekly without full Social Security numbers to avoid penalties or disqualification from federal contracts.
• Use the official Department of Labor forms and guides, performing a weekly preflight checklist to prevent classification errors, incorrect wage rates, or missing signatures.
• Federal-R Construction Solutions offers targeted support, including payroll setup, wage determination confirmation, and staff training, to maintain compliance across multiple contracts and prevent common errors.

Table of Contents

• Where Do You Get the Official WH-347 Form?
• How Do You Fill Out Page 1 of the WH-347?
• What Does the Statement of Compliance Require?
• How Do You Find the Right Davis-Bacon Wage Determination?
• Who Receives Certified Payrolls and How Often?
• What Are the Most Common WH-347 Mistakes?
• How Does R. Construction Solutions Support WH-347 Compliance?
• What’s the One Thing Contractors Should Fix First?
• Get Help With WH-347 Compliance and Wage Determinations
• Where Can You Verify These WH-347 Rules Yourself?
• Sources
• FAQ

Where Do You Get the Official WH-347 Form?

Don’t build your own template or grab one from a random construction blog. The Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD) publishes the official WH-347 instructions and form directly, and that’s the version contracting officers expect to see.

Two versions matter here. The fillable PDF is what you actually use to submit weekly payrolls: it enforces field formats and cuts down on transcription errors. The annotated WH-347 guide is different. It walks through every box on the form with plain-language notes, which matters most on ambiguous fields like fringe benefit credits and apprentice classifications, where contractors most often get tripped up.

The WHD updated both resources specifically to streamline payroll reporting and reduce errors, so using outdated third-party versions defeats the purpose.

Beyond the form itself, bookmark these:

• Fact Sheet #66D for guidance on applying general wage determinations to Davis-Bacon projects
• SAM.gov where Davis-Bacon general wage determinations are published by state, county, and construction type
• SF-308 the form used to request a project-specific wage determination when no general WD fits your job

For background on how these obligations tie together, our overview on certified payroll requirements is a useful starting point if you’re new to Davis-Bacon compliance.

How Do You Fill Out Page 1 of the WH-347?

Page 1 is where most data-entry errors happen, mostly because contractors rush through worker rows without double-checking classifications against the wage determination. Work through it in order.

Header fields

Start at the top of the form. These fields identify the project and the pay period, and they need to match your contract documents exactly:

1. Name of Contractor or Subcontractor — use your legal business name as it appears on the contract
2. Address — your company’s business address, not the job site
3. Payroll Number — sequential, starting at 1 for your first week on this contract
4. For Week Ending — the Saturday (or your contract-defined week-end date) closing the pay period
5. Project and Location — pulled directly from the contract or solicitation
6. Project or Contract No. — the number assigned by the contracting agency

Get the contract number wrong and your payroll can bounce back for resubmission, which delays payment for everyone on the job.

Worker rows

Each employee gets a row, and each row needs:

• Name and identifying number. Use only the last four digits of the Social Security number, never the full nine digits, on the weekly transmittal.
• Work classification. This must match a classification listed on the applicable wage determination, not a generic job title from your internal payroll system.
• Hours worked each day, broken out by date, plus a weekly total.
• Rate of pay, shown separately for straight time and overtime.
• Gross amount earned, deductions, and net wages paid.

Fringe benefits: the part contractors get wrong most

Fringe benefits can be paid two ways: as cash added to the hourly wage, or as contributions to a bona fide plan (health insurance, pension, apprenticeship training). If you’re paying fringes as a funded benefit, you enter the plan name, the hourly contribution rate, and where applicable a plan number. If you’re paying fringes unfunded, meaning as cash in the paycheck, that amount gets added directly into the worker’s hourly rate on the form rather than broken out separately.

Apprentices need extra documentation. Note their registration with an Apprenticeship Agency (OA or SAA) directly on the form, and keep the registration paperwork on file. Without it, WHD treats the apprentice as a full journeyman for wage purposes, which usually means you owe back wages.

Worked example: Say a laborer works 8 hours a day, Monday through Friday, plus 4 hours of overtime on Saturday. The wage determination sets a base rate of $28.50/hour with a $6.00/hour fringe credit paid as cash. On the WH-347, you’d show 44 total hours, straight-time rate of $34.50/hour (base plus fringe), overtime rate of $47.25/hour (time-and-a-half on the base, plus the flat fringe credit), and gross pay reflecting both. That fringe credit line is exactly where WHD reviewers look first when something doesn’t reconcile.

Pro Tip: Keep a running spreadsheet that maps each wage determination classification to your internal job titles before payroll week one. Reconciling that mapping after three weeks of submissions is far more painful than building it up front.

What Does the Statement of Compliance Require?

Page 2 of the WH-347 is the Statement of Compliance, and it’s not a formality. Signing it means you’re certifying, under penalty of law, that the payroll is accurate and that every worker was paid at least the applicable Davis-Bacon prevailing wage, including fringe benefits.

Each certified payroll submission must include this signed statement attesting to accuracy and completeness. The form itself walks through several specific certifications:

• That the payroll information is correct and complete
• That each worker has been paid the full weekly wages earned, with no rebates or kickbacks
• That deductions taken are either required by law or properly authorized
• That workers were compensated at rates not less than the applicable wage determination, including fringe benefits paid as cash or contributed to bona fide plans

Who can sign it? The contractor, a subcontractor’s authorized officer, or a payroll supervisor with signing authority, typically someone who can personally attest to the payroll’s accuracy. A handwritten signature works, and so does a legally valid electronic signature, as long as your process meets the same authentication standard you’d use for other binding business documents.

On privacy: weekly transmittals sent to the contracting agency or prime contractor must never include full Social Security numbers. Regulatory text under 29 C.F.R. § 5.5 requires weekly certified payrolls and permits the optional use of Form WH-347, and current guidance directs contractors to use an individually identifying number, typically the last four digits of the SSN, on the copy that goes out weekly. Your internal records can retain full SSNs; the weekly submission cannot.

The consequences for cutting corners here are real. Falsifying a Statement of Compliance can carry civil or criminal penalties and possible debarment from future federal contracts. That’s not boilerplate language at the bottom of the form. WHD has pursued contractors on exactly this basis, and a debarment finding can shut down your ability to bid federal work for years.

How Do You Find the Right Davis-Bacon Wage Determination?

The contracting agency is generally responsible for including the applicable wage determination directly in the solicitation. If you’re a subcontractor and nobody handed you a wage determination, request it from the prime contractor rather than guessing which one applies. Guessing wrong here cascades into every payroll you file for the life of the project.

To search independently:

• Go to SAM.gov and locate the wage determinations section
• Filter by state, then by county, since Davis-Bacon rates are set county by county
• Match the construction type: building, heavy, highway, or residential all carry different rate schedules, and using the wrong category is one of the most common WH-347 errors
• Note the wage determination number and its modification date

That last point matters more than most contractors realize. General wage determinations are typically issued annually and can be modified during the year, so the WD active when your contract was awarded may not be the current version six months into the job. Confirm the modification number against what’s currently posted on SAM.gov before you certify a new payroll cycle.

On projects spanning multiple counties or blending construction types (a highway project with a building component, for example), you may need more than one wage determination. When no general WD fits the scope of work, agencies use the SF-308 project wage determination request to obtain a project-specific rate directly from WHD.

Pro Tip: Before your first payroll on any new contract, print the wage determination and highlight every classification your crew will actually use. It takes fifteen minutes and it eliminates the single most common source of certified payroll disputes.

For more background on how these rates get set, see our breakdown of prevailing wage requirements for contractors.

Who Receives Certified Payrolls and How Often?

Weekly means weekly. Certified payrolls are due on a fixed schedule tied to your pay period, and there’s no informal buffer built in.

1. Identify your recipient. Most contracts route certified payrolls through the prime contractor, who compiles subcontractor submissions before forwarding the package to the contracting agency or funding sponsor. Confirm this chain during contract kickoff rather than assuming.
2. Number payrolls sequentially. Start at 1 and never skip a number, even for a week with no covered work; file a “no work performed” statement instead so the numbering stays intact for auditors.
3. Use a consistent naming convention. Something like ProjectNumber_ContractorName_PayrollNo_WeekEnding makes it easy for a prime managing a dozen subcontractors to track who’s submitted and who hasn’t.
4. Retain full records internally. While transmittals stay redacted, your internal files should keep full names, complete SSNs, addresses, and hours for the retention period your contract specifies, generally three years after project completion under standard Davis-Bacon clauses.
5. Standardize your file format. PDF submissions with consistent naming reduce back-and-forth with primes chasing down missing weeks.

A document-control tool, such as My Safety Solution’s construction compliance software, can help larger crews keep certified payroll files organized alongside safety documentation, which matters once you’re juggling submissions across several active contracts. If you’re a subcontractor working under a prime, review our prequalification checklist for what primes typically expect alongside your weekly payrolls.

What Are the Most Common WH-347 Mistakes?

Reviewers see the same errors repeatedly, and most are fixable in minutes once you know where to look.

• Wrong wage determination applied. Usually caused by using a WD from the wrong county or an outdated modification.
• Misclassified workers. Job titles from internal payroll systems don’t map cleanly to WD classification language, so someone gets underpaid on paper even when the actual wage was correct.
• Fringe credits entered inconsistently. Mixing funded and unfunded treatment on the same worker across different weeks is a frequent audit trigger.
• Full SSNs left on transmittals. An easy privacy violation to avoid, and an easy one to miss if you’re copying from an internal spreadsheet.
• Missing or improperly authorized signatures. The Statement of Compliance without a valid signature is functionally an incomplete submission.

Run a short preflight checklist every week before you send anything out: confirm the WD number and date, check every classification against the WD’s job definitions, verify fringe credit entries match your chosen funding method, and confirm the Statement of Compliance is signed. This five-minute habit catches the majority of errors before they ever reach a reviewer’s desk.

If you discover an error after submission, don’t bury it. Submit a corrected payroll for that specific week, clearly marked as a correction, and keep a written note explaining what changed and why, in case WHD or the contracting agency asks later. Repeated errors, inconsistent classifications, or unexplained wage variances are exactly what prompts a closer WHD review, so documenting your corrections proactively works in your favor. For a deeper look at how these errors translate into financial exposure, see our piece on certified payroll penalties.

How Does R. Construction Solutions Support WH-347 Compliance?

Filling out one WH-347 correctly is manageable. Doing it every week across multiple contracts, multiple wage determinations, and a rotating crew of subcontractors is where firms lose control. That’s the gap Federal-R Construction Solutions was built to close.

The compliance support offered through DOT and federal contract services includes hands-on help with certified payroll setup, wage determination confirmation, and staff training so your office team can run the weekly preflight process without a consultant standing over their shoulder every time. That support draws on Federal-R Construction Solutions’s stated 90% compliance success rate across bid submissions, along with more than 30 years of combined industry experience navigating FAR and Davis-Bacon requirements.

For contractors who also need help getting registered or staying current on SAM.gov, where wage determinations live, that’s a service Federal-R Construction Solutions handles directly as well, rather than something you have to sort out on your own between payroll cycles.

What’s the One Thing Contractors Should Fix First?

Get the annotated WH-347 open on one screen and your current wage determination open on another before you fill out a single row. That’s the one habit that prevents the most expensive mistakes.

Most certified payroll problems don’t come from complicated fraud or dishonest reporting. They come from rushing: a classification pulled from memory instead of checked against the wage determination, a fringe credit carried over from last week without verifying it still applies, a payroll number that skips because nobody tracked the sequence. None of that is malicious. All of it is preventable with a five-minute weekly checklist run before you hit submit.

I’d push back a little on the common advice to “just use whatever payroll software you already have.” Generic payroll software wasn’t built with Davis-Bacon classifications or fringe-credit logic in mind, and retrofitting it usually creates more reconciliation work than starting from the DOL’s own annotated form. The official resources exist because WHD reviewers know exactly what they look like. Use them as your baseline, then layer in whatever internal tracking system helps you stay organized around them, not the other way around.

Weekly discipline beats quarterly clean up every time in this line of work.

— Rowena

Get Help With WH-347 Compliance and Wage Determinations

Federal-rconstructionsolutions gives contractors a direct alternative to guessing your way through wage determinations or hiring a generalist bookkeeper unfamiliar with Davis-Bacon rules. A typical engagement might include building a payroll checklist customized to your active contracts, confirming the correct wage determination for a specific county and construction type on SAM.gov, or running a short training session so your office staff can handle weekly submissions independently going forward.

That kind of targeted support draws on a track record that includes securing contracts for public water projects and a stated 90% compliance success rate on bid submissions, built over more than 30 years in federal construction procurement. If your team needs registration or renewal help specifically for SAM.gov, where every applicable wage determination is published, visit the SAM.gov registration and compliance support page to see what an engagement looks like. For broader compliance support tied to federal contract work, the DOT and federal contracting services page outlines what’s available and how to get started. Reach out to schedule a conversation about your current contract load and where the biggest compliance risk actually sits.

Where Can You Verify These WH-347 Rules Yourself?

Don’t take anyone’s summary as the final word, including this one. Go straight to the source documents:

• The WHD WH-347 instructions and form page, for the fillable PDF and full instructions
• The annotated WH-347 guide, for field-by-field explanations
• Fact Sheet #66D, for wage determination selection rules
• 29 C.F.R. Part 5, for the underlying regulatory requirements

Sources

• Instructions For Completing Davis-Bacon and Related Acts Weekly Certified Payroll Form, WH-347
• WH-347 annotated guide (U.S. Department of Labor)
• Fact Sheet #66D: Application of General Wage Determinations to Davis-Bacon and Related Act Projects
• 29 C.F.R. Part 5 — Labor Standards Provisions Applicable to Contracts Covering Federally Financed and Assisted Construction

FAQ

What All Needs to Be Filed With a WH-347 Form?

A complete submission includes the payroll data on page 1 (worker classifications, hours, rates, fringe entries) and the signed Statement of Compliance on page 2. Both pages travel together as a single weekly package to the prime contractor or contracting agency, following the official WHD instructions.

How Do I Fill Out a Certified Payroll Form?

Start with the annotated WH-347 guide to understand each field, then complete the header information, list each worker with their classification and hours, calculate fringe benefit credits based on whether they’re funded or paid as cash, and finish by signing the Statement of Compliance. Run a preflight check against your wage determination before submitting.

How Do You Apply for a Prevailing Wage Determination?

If a general wage determination on SAM.gov doesn’t fit your project’s scope, the contracting agency requests a project-specific determination using the SF-308 form. Subcontractors don’t file this directly; you’d request the wage determination information from the prime contractor or contracting agency instead.

What Are the Requirements for Certified Payroll?

Federally funded or assisted construction contracts exceeding $2,000 require weekly certified payrolls with a signed Statement of Compliance, using either Form WH-347 or an equivalent format containing the same information. Weekly transmittals must exclude full Social Security numbers, using an identifying number like the last four digits instead.

Can Federal-rconstructionsolutions Help With WH-347 and Wage Determinations?

Yes. Federal-rconstructionsolutions provides compliance support that includes certified payroll checklist templates, wage determination confirmation on SAM.gov, and staff training for federal contract work, detailed on its compliance support page. Pricing depends on the scope of the engagement and is available on request.

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