How to Fill Out the WH-347 Certified Payroll Form (Line by Line, With a Worked Example)

The WH-347 is the weekly certified payroll form you submit on a Davis-Bacon job to prove you paid each worker at least the prevailing wage. It has one header block, nine columns, and a signed Statement of Compliance on the back. The form itself is optional; the weekly sworn statement it carries is required by the Copeland Act (40 U.S.C. § 3145, 29 CFR Part 3). Most tutorials show you a blank form and relabel the boxes. This one fills a real worker's row end to end, so you can copy the pattern.

A small sub on r/GovernmentContracting summed up the weekly grind: filling out the WH-347 by hand, "doing the math on overtime and fringe separately, then filling in the Statement of Compliance," running 2 to 3 hours every Friday. The math is not hard once you see one row done right. The errors that bill back wages live in three cells: classification, fringe, and overtime.

What is the WH-347 form?

The form carries OMB Control No. 1235-0008 (DOL WH-347). It is the certified payroll report each prime contractor/subcontractor files for a covered job, one report per week the work runs. You can submit your own payroll register instead of the WH-347, as long as it carries the same data and the signed compliance statement (29 CFR 5.5(a)(3)(ii)). But primes often mandate the WH-347 layout anyway. One contractor confirmed it plainly: "our prime specifically requires WH-347 format every Friday. I don't think they'd accept a generic certification statement." When the prime sets the format, you use the form.

One heads-up from the field: DOL revised the WH-347 in December 2025 with updated compliance language. Practitioners noticed fast, and not fondly. Pull the current PDF each week rather than reusing an old copy, so your Statement of Compliance text matches what DOL publishes now.

Is there a fillable WH-347 form, and can I get it in Excel?

Yes to the fillable PDF. No official version in Excel. DOL posts Form WH-347 as a fillable PDF on dol.gov that you type into, save, and print. It is free. Search "WH-347" on the DOL site and download it fresh each week so the OMB date and compliance language are current.

An official Excel WH-347 does not exist. The government form is a PDF. Third-party Excel and Google Sheets templates are common, and they can carry your weekly math for you, which is the appeal. The catch is ownership: every figure on a template you did not build is still your figure to certify. Before you sign anything produced by a spreadsheet, confirm two things. First, the column order matches the current WH-347. Second, the Statement of Compliance wording is the current DOL text, not a 2019 copy. A template that computes fringe as a flat weekly amount will hand you a compliant-looking form and an underpayment at the same time. More on that cell below.

How do you fill out a WH-347, line by line?

Start with the header block above the grid. Six fields:

• Name of contractor or subcontractor, with your address, and a box to mark which one you are.
• Payroll No.: the sequential week number for this project (1, 2, 3...). Mark the last one "Final."
• For Week Ending: the last day of the workweek you are reporting.
• Project and Location: the job name and where it sits.
• Project or Contract No.: the project/contract number off the contract, so the agency can match your weekly payroll to the right job.

Now the grid. Take one real worker. Maria Reyes, an electrician, worked a 44-hour week (40 straight, 4 overtime) on a project where the wage determination lists a $35.00 base rate plus $18.75 fringe for her classification. Her shop pays the fringe in cash on every hour. Here is her row, column by column.

The WH-347 in seven steps — fringe is reported per hour in the Rate of Pay cell, and the Statement of Compliance is signed under 18 U.S.C. 1001.

A few of those cells decide whether the row passes an audit. Here is the reasoning.

Column 3, classification. Write the work actually performed on this job this week, not the worker's usual title. If Maria ran conduit as an electrician, that is the row. If she spent Tuesday as a laborer, split her hours across two classification rows. The classification must trace to a line on your wage determination. New to that document? Start with how to read a wage determination.

Apprentices and the ratio. An apprentice may be paid the reduced apprentice rate only if enrolled in a registered apprenticeship program. List the apprentice on the form under the classification and write the registered program name or number, and keep the registration certificate as proof. Watch the apprentice ratio: the number of apprentices to journeyworkers on site cannot exceed the ratio in the registered program. Any apprentice over that ratio owes the full journeyworker rate for those hours, and the shortfall becomes back wages.

Column 6, rate of pay. The straight-time cash rate is $35.00. The fringe rate of $18.75 rides alongside it, shown per hour with a slash. Overtime is where shops slip. The overtime cash rate is time-and-a-half on the base only: $35.00 × 1.5 = $52.50. Fringe does not get the 1.5 multiplier. It stays $18.75 on overtime hours too. So the OT box reads $52.50 / $18.75, not $52.50 / $28.13.

Column 7, gross earned. Two numbers, and the bottom one is never smaller. The top figure is what Maria earned on this federal project. The bottom is her total across every job that week. When a worker splits the week between a public job and private work, the all-projects number is larger. Maria worked only this project, so both read $2,435.00. That gross is built from 40 straight hours at $53.75 (base plus fringe) plus 4 overtime hours at $71.25 ($52.50 base plus the flat $18.75 fringe): $2,150.00 + $285.00 = $2,435.00.

Columns 8 and 9. Deductions start with FICA at 7.65% of gross ($2,435.00 × 0.0765 = $186.28), then federal and state withholding from Maria's W-4 (shown here as $255.00 and $97.40 for illustration), then any other deductions. Total them, subtract from gross, and column 9 is the net check: $2,435.00 − $538.68 = $1,896.32. Every deduction has to be one the law permits (29 CFR Part 3); a deduction that kicks part of the wage back to you is exactly what the Copeland Act bans.

How does the fringe benefits column work on the WH-347?

The WH-347 has no separate fringe column. Fringe shows up in two places, and getting them to agree is the whole game. It appears per hour inside column 6 next to the cash rate, and it is declared on the back page in box 4(a) or 4(b) of the Statement of Compliance.

You pay fringe one of two ways, and how you pay decides what column 6 shows. If you pay fringe into approved plans, funds, or programs (health, pension, approved training), column 6 shows only the cash base rate of $35.00. You do not list the fringe as cash, because it went into the plan. You mark box 4(a) and record the plan fringe there, so Maria's row would read $35.00 straight and $52.50 overtime with 4(a) checked. If instead you pay fringe in cash as extra taxable wages on every hour, column 6 shows the base rate and the fringe rate together, $35.00 / $18.75, and you mark box 4(b). That is the version in the table above.

The cell shops fill wrong is the fringe rate itself. Fringe is owed per hour worked, not as a flat weekly dollar figure. Set fringe at a flat $750 a week for someone who books 46 hours and the effective rate silently drops to about $16.30, below the $18.75 the determination requires. That gap is what a back-wage finding is built on, and one shop paid $13,508 on a single project for exactly this. The fix: multiply the fringe rate by actual hours every week. The full method, including the annualization math for benefit credits, is in Davis-Bacon fringe per hour. If you want the weekly gross and fringe run for you against a county rate, the certified payroll calculator does it.

How do you fill out the Statement of Compliance on the back?

The back page is a sworn statement, and it is the part with teeth. You are certifying, under penalty of law, that the front page is true. Here is what each numbered item asks.

• Date, name, and title, then "do hereby state:" You sign as the person who pays or supervises the payment of the workers listed.
• Item (1): names you as the one who pays the workers on this contractor or subcontractor, on this project.
• Item (2): certifies the payroll is correct and complete, and that each worker was paid no less than the applicable wage rates and fringe benefits for the classification.
• Item (3): certifies that no unlawful deductions were taken, the Copeland Act core.
• Item (4): the fringe election. Mark 4(a) if fringes went into approved plans, funds, or programs. Mark 4(b) if fringes were paid in cash. Use 4(c) Exceptions to list any worker the two boxes do not cover, with the classification in the left column and the hourly amount in the right. You mark 4(a) or 4(b), not both, unless 4(c) explains the split.
• Remarks and signature: note anything the agency should know, then sign with your name and title. DOL does not require notarization.

Read the warning printed at the bottom before you sign it: willful falsification "may subject the contractor or subcontractor to civil or criminal prosecution," citing Section 1001 of Title 18 and Section 231 of Title 31 of the U.S. Code. That is not boilerplate. A false Statement of Compliance is a false statement to the federal government under 18 U.S.C. § 1001, which carries fines and up to five years in prison. You are not certifying that the form looks tidy. You are certifying that Maria got paid what the row says.

What are the most common WH-347 mistakes?

The mistakes that get rejected or bill back wages are the same handful, every audit. Field practitioners on r/CertifiedPayroll list them, and they match what the DOL flags:

Two of these are worth the extra sentence. Classification is set at bid, not at payroll. As one contractor put it, "you should have already picked the classification of the workers when bidding the work" — if the row and the bid disagree, one of them is wrong. And the fringe error is the expensive one precisely because the form still looks complete when it is wrong. The contractors who watch it hardest fear debarment from the federal pipeline, not just the back wages. For the full audit-side checklist, the certified payroll pillar walks the weekly workflow end to end.

How do you fill out a WH-347 for a no-work week?

If a covered project runs but your crew logged no hours that week, you still owe a report on most contracts. You have two ways to satisfy it. Submit a WH-347 marked "No work performed this week" across the payroll, or send a short signed no-work-week statement referencing the project and payroll number. Do not simply skip the week. A gap in the payroll numbers reads as a missing report, and that holds up progress payments. Number your payrolls straight through so weeks 1, 2, and 3 are all accounted for, even the empty ones. The no-work-week rules spoke covers which contracts require the filing and the exact wording.

Frequently asked questions

How do I do a certified payroll each week?

Pull the wage determination, classify each worker, calculate straight-time and overtime pay plus fringe per actual hour, then enter one row per worker on the WH-347. Total the gross, deductions, and net; sign the Statement of Compliance with the correct fringe box; and submit it to the prime or agency on the required day, every week the job runs. That whole sequence is how certified payroll works.

Verify the form and the rate before you sign