Are you responsible for certified payroll reporting on a California prevailing wage or Federal Davis-Bacon project? Between the sheer amount of paperwork and all of the acronyms for the forms – WH-347, California A-1-131, DAS 140, DAS 142, CAC 2 – payroll reporting can be pretty confusing! Since they are part of Federal and California prevailing wage requirements, the stress is on, but you don’t have to tackle reporting alone!

Our blog focuses on the instructions for completing the two certified payroll reports for contractors working on a California prevailing wage or Federal Davis-Bacon project. These are the Federal WH-347 and California A-1-131 forms. If you are a contractor working in another state, you may have a certified payroll form for that state. You should check with the awarding body to find out which form they require you to submit.

FORM WH-347

If you are working solely on a Federal Davis-Bacon project, you only need to complete the federal WH-347 form.  This form and instructions can be found on the DOL’s website at: http://www.dol.gov/whd/forms/wh347.pdf.  Because this is a fill-in PDF file, you can save a copy of the document on your hard drive to be used for future projects.  

To complete form WH-347, you will need to enter:

  1. Contractor’s name
  2. Address
  3. Payroll number
  4. Week ending date
  5. Project
  6. Location
  7. Project or contract number

To enter in the payroll data for your prevailing wage employees, you will enter:

  1. Employee’s name
  2. Last four of their SS#
  3. Number of withholdings
  4. Work classification

You will enter the employee’s time under the hours Worked Each Day section.  Remember, you must break out the standard and overtime hours and record them separately.  Finally, these hours are only hours worked on the prevailing wage project.

Column 6

The pay rate in column 6 is the base rate of pay or total hourly rate, depending on whether you have bona fide fringe benefits.

Column 7

In column 7, you will need to break out:

  1. Gross Amount earned on the Davis-Bacon project you are reporting
  2. All projects the employee worked on

Enter in column 7 first the amount earned on the Federal or Federally assisted Davis-Bacon project and then the gross amount earned during the week on all projects. For example, “$163.00/$420.00” would reflect the earnings of a worker who earned $163.00 on a Federally assisted construction project during a week in which $420.00 was earned on all work.

Deductions

The Federal WH-347 form requires deductions from workers’ wages but DOES NOT require contributions to bonafide fringe benefit plans. However, we have been told by DOL auditors that if they were to audit a contractor working on a Davis-Bacon project, they would require the contractor to provide an audit trail reflecting proof of contributions, as the California A-1-131 form does.  

It is our recommendation to our clients that you use the California A-1-131 for all prevailing wage projects, including those solely federal Davis-Bacon, to provide a complete audit trail.

FORM A-1-131

If you are a contractor working on a California prevailing wage project, you will utilize the A-1-131 form. This form can be found on the DIR website at https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/Forms/PW/DLSEFormA-1-131.pdf. While the DLSE has not made this into a fillable pdf, you can save a lot of time by creating one using Adobe Acrobat. You will complete the form like the Federal WH-347 except for a few minor but critical differences.

Section 8

Like Form WH-347, the A-1-131 form requires you to detail deductions. Contributions and payments made on behalf of the employee are also reflected on the A-1-131, unlike the WH-347. You will also need to include the check number that the employee received for tracking purposes.

Bona-fide Fringe Benefit Plans

If you have bona fide prevailing wage plans, you must be sure to allocate them correctly on the A-1-131 form.  Plan contributions MUST NOT BE included in the “Total Deductions” box.  If you do include them in the deductions box, you may be asked for a wage assignment authorization, which is not necessary, as these are employer contributions to plans on behalf of your employees.

Statement of Compliance

Both forms must be completed with a Statement of Compliance certifying that the information on the WH-347 or the A-1-131 form is true and correct. Payroll reporting is not a Certified Payroll Report without the compliance statement.

Please contact our Contractors Prevailing Wage consultants if you need assistance with your certified payroll reports.