Certified Payroll Services: Outsource It or Do It Yourself?

Every week you work a Davis-Bacon job, someone has to turn your crew's hours into a signed Form WH-347 and get it to the agency or prime. You have three ways to make that happen: pay a certified payroll service to do it, do it yourself with software, or grind it out in a spreadsheet. All three can produce a compliant report. They differ wildly in cost, turnaround, and how much of the work stays on your desk. This guide lays out the honest trade-offs.

What a certified payroll service actually is

A certified payroll service is a bookkeeper, payroll firm, or labor-compliance consultant who prepares your weekly certified payroll reports for you. You send over timesheets and pay data; they classify the work, compute gross, overtime, and fringe, fill out the WH-347 and its Statement of Compliance, and often handle the submission itself — mailing to the contracting officer or uploading to a state portal or a prime's compliance system. Some also monitor wage determinations, track apprenticeship ratios, and respond to agency questions on your behalf.

One thing a service can never do: certify for you. The Statement of Compliance must be signed by the contractor or subcontractor, or by an agent who actually supervises the payment of wages. A service can prepare every line, but the signature — and the legal weight behind it — stays with your company.

What services typically cost

Pricing varies a lot by region and provider, but certified payroll prep is commonly billed per report — often somewhere in the range of $50 to $150 per weekly report — or as a monthly retainer that scales with headcount and project count. The catch is the multiplication: certified payroll is filed weekly, per project. A sub running two public jobs at $75 a report is looking at roughly $600 a month, every month those jobs run. That is not a criticism — a good preparer is doing real work — but it is the number to compare against a $29 to $59 a month tool where you enter the hours yourself and the software does the math, the overtime, and the fringe check.

When a service is genuinely the right call

Outsourcing earns its fee in some situations, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise:

• You truly have no time. If you are running crews sunup to sundown and the paperwork simply will not get done, a preparer who guarantees weekly filing beats a report that never gets submitted.
• Complex multi-state portfolios. Many projects across several states means several state prevailing-wage regimes and portals on top of the federal rules. A consultant who lives in that landscape can be worth it.
• You are cleaning up an audit or back-wage finding. Restated payrolls, restitution calculations, and correspondence with investigators are specialist work. Bring in help.
• Unusual fringe arrangements.Multiple benefit plans, annualization questions, or split cash-and-plan packages across classifications can justify a professional's judgment on setup — even if you take the weekly filing back in-house afterward.

When software is the better fit

For most small subcontractors, the weekly reality is simpler: a crew of 1 to 25, a few recurring projects, and hours and rates you already know because they are on your timesheets and in your contract's wage determination. In that world, the expensive part of a service — data collection and judgment calls — barely exists. You are paying someone to key in numbers you already have. Software like Certiwage takes those same inputs, applies the correct Davis-Bacon overtime formula (time-and-a-half on the base rate, fringe at straight time), runs a fringe shortfall check against the required package, and hands you a signable WH-347 in minutes. Your first full report is free, so you can judge the output against what a preparer would send you.

The middle path: a bookkeeper with a good tool

Plenty of small subs land in between: they hand certified payroll to the bookkeeper who already runs their books, and the bookkeeper uses a purpose-built tool to produce the reports. That keeps a human in the loop for classification questions while keeping the per-report cost near the software price instead of the consultant price. Bookkeepers are a real Certiwage audience for exactly this reason — one login, several client projects, copy-last-week roll-forward, and a printable history when an agency comes asking.

Side by side

Questions to ask any service before hiring

• How do you compute Davis-Bacon overtime — is fringe added at straight time, or do you multiply the whole package by 1.5? (Straight time is correct; the other method overpays and signals shaky fundamentals.)
• How do you account for fringe — cash in lieu, plan contributions, and splits — and do you test the total package against the wage determination every week?
• Do you know my state's portal and submission requirements, not just the federal form?
• What is your guaranteed turnaround, and what happens if a filing deadline slips on your end?
• If the agency or prime rejects a report, who fixes it, how fast, and at what cost?
• How long do you retain my payroll records, and can I get them all back if we part ways?

The part you cannot outsource

Whoever prepares the report, the certification is yours. The Statement of Compliance carries a warning that willful falsification can subject the contractor or subcontractor to civil or criminal prosecution under 18 U.S.C. § 1001 — and that exposure attaches to the signer, not the preparer. A service reduces your workload; it does not reduce your duty to know that the classifications, rates, and fringe on the form are right. That is a reason to pick a preparer carefully, and it is equally a reason many owners prefer a tool that shows them the math before they sign.

If your situation is the common one — a small crew, a few recurring projects, hours you already know — run one real week through the free WH-347 builder and see whether the report you would have paid for takes you ten minutes instead.