How Payroll Construction Services

Managing certified payroll for government projects might take up a lot of your time each week, time that would be better spent getting new contracts and running lucrative activities.

Payroll Construction Service makes this complicated regulatory need into a simple procedure that keeps your organization safe and saves you time.

Understanding the Certified Payroll Challenge & Eliminates Certified Payroll Headaches for Contractors

Government contracts include larger profit margins and regular employment, but they often have rigorous rules about how you disclose payroll.

The Davis-Bacon Act says that contractors that work on federal construction projects must pay their workers the same salaries and benefits as other workers in the area. This implies that every week, verified payroll records must include the hours, earnings, classifications, and benefits of each person. If you don’t follow the rules, you will be fined.

If you miss a deadline or make a mistake, you might face fines of $1,000 to $10,000 for each infraction, have your contract put on hold, or even be banned from doing federal work in the future. Contractors that work on many government projects in various areas have to deal with a lot more compliance issues.

Working for the government might be much harder when it comes to state and municipal initiatives. Federal Davis-Bacon projects usually need verified payroll, but state standards are quite different.

Some states need verified payroll for projects they pay for, while others don’t. Because of this hodgepodge of rules, contractors need to keep track of which projects need certified reporting and in what format.

Examples of state requirements:

• California: DIR requires electronic filing
• New York: You have 30 days to submit after paycheck
• Illinois: Reporting every month is okay
• New Jersey: Reports every ten days

Keeping track of these changes and making sure they are correct becomes a full-time task that takes your staff away from things that make money.

And the problems don’t end with the different deadlines. The prevailing pay rates vary by geography, trade, and kind of work.

The average pay for a carpenter in Chicago is different than the average pay for a carpenter in Springfield, and both rates change often.

When you add in fringe benefit calculations, union rules, and working in more than one state, you have a compliance labyrinth that even experienced contractors may get lost in.

How Payroll Construction Service Makes Things Easier

Payroll Construction Service takes care of certified payroll as part of your normal payroll processing, not as an extra service or an afterthought.

The program produces certified payroll reports on its own after each payroll run, so you don’t have to rush to fulfill weekly requirements. These reports aren’t just any old reports; they are designed to fulfill certain federal and state standards:

• Standard WH-347 forms for projects funded by the federal government
• Formats for local compliance that are peculiar to each state
• Electronic filing options when needed
• When necessary, combined certified and union reporting

Automatic Prevailing Wage Calculations

One of the most frequent errors individuals make when processing certified payroll is not using the proper prevailing wage rates.

It’s easy to miss changes in rates since they happen so regularly. It all depends on the kind of transaction, the category, and the location.

Wage Advocates argues that 68% of workers make errors with their pay since there are so many different methods to figure things out. This isn’t very good.

Payroll Construction Service gets rid of this risk by keeping pay rates up to date and automatically applying the proper rates based on the kind of work and the location of the project.

The system handles difficult calculations for fringe benefits, making sure that cash payments and contributions to benefits are accurately divided. This automatic calculation stops you from making costly errors that come when you have to keep track of different rates for different projects by hand.

When salary choices are changed, which happens a lot throughout the year, Payroll Construction Service automatically incorporates the new rates.

You don’t have to worry about missing a modification that might create compliance concerns or check for changes manually.

You don’t have to worry about your payroll all the time since the service takes care of everything.

Multi-State Compliance Made Simple

Payroll Construction Service takes care of the difficult web of requirements that apply to contractors that work in more than one state.

The service stays up to date on the multiple ways to report, submit, and deadlines for each state.

Whether you’re filing online in California, mailing in paper reports in Texas, or dealing with New Jersey’s 10-day reporting period, Payroll Construction Service takes care of the discrepancies for you.

This ability to work in various states is especially helpful for contractors who only work in certain locations. You don’t need to follow separate rules in each state. Instead, you get the same compliance reporting no matter where the project is.

The system knows what format to use, when to submit, and how to file in each jurisdiction. This is information that would ordinarily need a full-time compliance officer.

Seamless Accounting Integrations

Payroll Construction Service works with the most popular construction accounting systems, which gives it benefits that other payroll services can’t offer. Certified payroll data links seamlessly to your job costing and project management, no matter what accounting software you use, like FOUNDATION®, QuickBooks®, Sage, or another one.

Real-time cost visibility ensures that certified payroll expenses get straight into work cost reports. When you run payroll on Friday, the expenses show up in your project reports right away, not weeks later when you have to enter them by hand.

There is a full audit trail since all certified payroll reports are kept and may be accessed. You may get any report right away if agencies ask for it months or years later.

Time and Cost Savings That Add Up

Typically, contractors spend 4 to 6 hours a week manually maintaining certified payroll. With Payroll Construction Service, the time goes down to less than 30 minutes, mostly simply looking over reports before sending them in.

For a contractor with five government projects going on at the same time, this increase in efficiency means they may spend around 20 hours a month on tasks that make money.

The savings go beyond just time. An audit that costs thousands of dollars in fines and administrative time might happen if even one person is misclassified or their pay rate is wrong.

Payroll Construction Services’ automated calculations and built-in compliance checks stop these expensive errors from happening in the first place.

Key Benefits at a Glance

When you convert to Payroll Construction Services, you may see and feel the difference in your company right away:

• Save more than 20 hours a month on certified payroll handling
• Automatic calculations might help you make fewer mistakes when it comes to compliance.
• With FOUNDATION integration, you can get rid of duplicate entering.
• Get any report right now for audit protection
• File in any condition and let the program choose the right format.
• Change salary rates automatically when decisions change
• Make union reports at the same time as certified payroll
• Scale up from one to more than 50 federal projects without any problems.

Simplify Your Certified Payroll

It’s easy to set up since Payroll Construction Services works with the systems you already have. The Payroll Construction Services team helps you set up your system so that your prevailing pay categories, fringe benefits, and state obligations are all set up appropriately from the start.

Government work has never been better for growth since infrastructure expenditure is at an all-time high. Payroll Construction Services makes sure that your certified payroll is correct, on time, and compliant, no matter how many government projects you are in charge of.

For a full comparison of how Payroll Construction Services compares to doing certified payroll by hand or with general payroll services, download our free comparison guide.