Your first certified payroll, step by step
About an hour for the first job, most of it confirming the wage determination and entering the crew. After that, a week takes minutes.
1. Company details
Under Company, check the legal name and business address exactly as they should print on the WH-347, and add your FEIN. California and New Jersey filings require it, and auditors ask for it. New York jobs also need your contractor registration number.
2. Connect Claude (optional, recommended)
Under Connectors, paste your own Anthropic API key. Every wage determination you upload is then also checked by Claude against the PDF, including which trade each rate belongs to, and subcontractors' PDF payrolls are read for you. You pay Anthropic directly; a determination check typically costs 5 to 25 cents. Without a key, every rate is still checked against the document line by line.
3. People
Under Users, add your payroll or compliance person and project managers. Each gets an email to choose their own password. Tick Signer for whoever signs the Statement of Compliance, and give them the title that should print beside their name. Two-factor sign-in is strongly recommended for signers.
4. Your first job
Click + Add a job. Enter the contract number, the awarding agency, the state and the week-ending day your payrolls use. If you have already filed payrolls on this job by hand, open Job settings and enter the last payroll number and week you filed; the app continues from the next one.
5. The wage determination
On the job, tab 1: upload the Davis-Bacon determination from the contract (PDF). Every trade, base rate and fringe is read out and matched against the document; the banner tells you how many lines match. Spot-check the trades you use, then confirm. Rates printed to a fraction of a cent are rounded up, never down. Every night the app checks SAM.gov for a newer modification and tells you if one applies.
6. Your crew
Under Workers, add people one at a time or Import crew (CSV) with first name, last name, last four of the ID number, payroll ID and trade. The payroll ID should match the employee ID in your payroll system's export, so pay lines find the right person.
7. A week of hours
Tab 2, Crew hours. Foremen can log hours from a phone, or the office clicks Enter the week and types it in one grid: worker, trade, straight time and overtime by day. Hours already logged are filled in, so you edit rather than double up. By worker shows the week at a glance for checking against timesheets.
8. Pay for the week
Tab 3, Certified payroll. Import your payroll system's CSV export for the week (one row per employee; columns are matched by name), or click Enter pay by hand and type rates, fringe, gross, deductions and net from the pay register.
9. Build, check and sign
Click Build payroll. Every line is checked: base and fringe against the determination, overtime, apprentices, gross and net. Anything short is shown in dollars, by worker, with the rule behind it. When it is clean, the signer ticks the statements, types their name, re-enters their password and signs. The WH-347 PDF is locked and fingerprinted, with a code anyone can check at certifywage.com/v. Signing does not send anything to the agency; you submit the PDF (and the state file, where one is required) as you do now.
10. Subcontractors
Tab 4: invite each sub by email. They upload their weekly payroll to a free portal, it is checked against your job's determination on arrival, and missing weeks are chased by email. Their payrolls appear in your weekly package.
11. Mistakes after filing
Never edit a certified payroll: click Revise, fix the hours or pay, and sign the revision; it keeps the same number. If a worker was underpaid, Restitution computes what each person is owed and prints the notice to the agency.
Questions: hello@certifywage.com.