Certified Payroll Compliance Readiness Assessment for Contractors

The Assessment

For each question, pick the answer that best describes your organization today and note its points. Add up your points as you go. Your total maps to a result band below.

1. 1

   How does your team identify which prevailing-wage law governs each active project?

   Diagnoses jurisdiction-mapping accuracy, the foundation of all downstream compliance.

   • We assume the same law applies to all projects and do not check contract language for specific prevailing-wage requirements.0 pts
   • The project manager checks the contract at bid time, but there is no formal tracking system for which law applies to each active project.1 pt
   • We maintain a spreadsheet or list linking each project to its governing law (Davis-Bacon, DIR or other state statute), updated when new projects start.2 pts
   • Every project is tagged to its governing law in our payroll or project system at contract award, and dual-coverage projects (federal plus state) are flagged separately.3 pts
2. 2

   How do you source and apply wage determinations for each project?

   Diagnoses whether the correct wage schedule is sourced from SAM.gov, DIR or the applicable state agency and matched to worker classifications.

   • We use the same wage rates across all projects and do not pull project-specific wage determinations.0 pts
   • We pull wage determinations at contract award but do not re-check for modifications during the project.

Score Yourself

Add up the points from every answer. Your total falls between 0 and 30. Find your band below.

• 0 to 8 points

  Critical Exposure

  Your current certified payroll process has fundamental gaps across multiple compliance dimensions. Jurisdiction mapping, wage determination sourcing, time capture and recordkeeping each show practices that would be flagged in a DOL or DIR audit. Back-wage liability, contract debarment and restatement costs are elevated risks at this level.

  Next step: Conduct an immediate gap review of your three most active prevailing-wage projects, starting with jurisdiction mapping and wage determination sourcing, and consult qualified counsel on your current audit exposure.

• 9 to 15 points

  Foundational Risk

  You have some compliance practices in place, but they rely heavily on manual effort and are inconsistent across projects. Time capture likely lacks classification context at the point of punch, and recordkeeping may not survive a retrieval request within a typical audit response window. Errors are caught reactively rather than before submission.

  Next step: Prioritize connecting your time capture to project and classification data at the point of entry so certified payroll reports can be assembled from verified source records instead of reconstructed after the fact.

• 16 to 23 points

  Developing Compliance

  Your processes cover most compliance dimensions, but targeted gaps remain. You likely have digital time capture and a defined submission schedule, yet fringe benefit verification, overtime rule configuration or retention policy enforcement may still involve manual workarounds. Restatement events are occasional rather than routine, but they still cost labor hours to resolve.

  Next step: Identify the one or two dimensions where you still rely on manual calculation or post-submission correction and evaluate whether automated rule application and pre-submission validation can close those gaps.

What to Do Next

This assessment gives you a dimension-by-dimension view of where your certified payroll compliance stands today and where your gaps create the most audit exposure. EasyClocking by WorkEasy Software helps public-works contractors capture field time with project, cost code and classification context at the point of punch, so the data feeding your certified payroll reports is accurate before it ever reaches the payroll desk. If your score revealed gaps in time capture or report production, request a walkthrough of how EasyClocking by WorkEasy Software connects punch data to payroll-ready output for prevailing-wage projects.

• Certified Payroll Compliance Readiness Assessment
• Certified Payroll Automation ROI Calculator
• How to Complete a Certified Payroll Report
• Davis-Bacon and DIR Compliance Framework