Certified payroll and daily time entry overview

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If your client has employees that are working on a federally or state funded job, such as public works, construction, and such, prevailing wage laws require you to issue a certified payroll. These prevailing wage laws require contractors and subcontractors to submit reports every week to the agency that manages the contract.

The federal government requires that employers complete and submit Form WH-347 Payroll Certification and Form WH-348 Statement of Compliance, and many states have their own specialized form(s) derived from these standard forms. In addition, "no work performed" payrolls are often required when there is a temporary break in a company's work on a government-funded project.

The Payroll CS certified payroll features enable you to specify clients or employees who must use daily time entry and to produce a worksheet that emulates Form WH-347, showing the employees' pay broken down hourly so you can easily and accurately submit the pay rate and hours worked to the government agency.

See also: Payroll Check Entry/Daily Time Entry

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Setting up global information

Creating pay items for use with daily time entry

  1. Choose Setup > System Configuration > Pay Items.
  2. In the Pay Items dialog, either add new pay items or modify existing pay items by highlighting them, pressing F3, and choosing Copy Pay Item from the context menu.
  3. After entering the new pay item and making sure it meets all the requirements for use with daily time entry, click Enter to save the pay item, and then Done to close the Pay Items dialog.

Excluding pay items from daily time entry

You will need to set up pay items to be used specifically for your daily time entry employees. All global payroll items that will be used for an employee's daily time entry must meet the following requirements to show up on your Certified Payroll Worksheet.

  • The wage type must be Hourly
  • The frequency must be Weekly
  • No Special Type can be assigned to the pay item

If there are specific pay items that meet those requirements but you do not want to include in your Certified Payroll Worksheet, follow these steps.

  1. Choose Setup > System Configuration > Pay Items.
  2. In the Pay Items dialog, highlight the pay item to be excluded, and click the Edit button.
  3. Click the Special Information tab and then mark the Exclude from daily time entry checkbox.
  4. Click Enter to save your information and click Done to close the Pay Items dialog.

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Setting up the client

Setting up detailed payroll periods

All clients that need to use certified payroll must use detailed payroll periods with a default frequency of weekly. To set up the client with detailed payroll periods, follow these steps.

  1. Choose File > Client Properties and then click the Calculating Payroll tab.
  2. In the Default frequency field, select Weekly from the drop-down list.
  3. Click the Period Details button.
  4. In the Payroll Period Details dialog, mark the Use detailed payroll period dates checkbox, and then specify the appropriate information and auto-fill the grid.

    Note: If you modify the dates in the Payroll Period Details grid after it has auto-filled, and the new dates do not truly represent a weekly frequency, daily time entry will not work for this client.

  5. Click OK to save the information and return to the Properties dialog.
  6. Click OK to close the Properties dialog.

Setting up projects as departments

For Certified Payroll, all projects are to be set up as departments. It is extremely useful to have the department description specify the Project and Location. The federal Form WH-347 uses this format; for example, MDOC-York Township. However, you can name your departments however you want them displayed on the Certified Payroll Worksheet.

To set up your projects (departments) follow these steps.

  1. Choose Setup > Payroll Departments.
  2. Enter the department description, default employee template, and, if applicable, the project number.
  3. Click Enter to save the department and then click Done to close the Departments dialog.

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Setting up the employee

For employees to use daily time entry/Certified Payroll, the following requirements must be met.

  • The Daily time entry checkbox must be marked for that employee on the Personal/W-2 Info tab of the Employees window.
  • The Wage type for the employee's certified pay items must be specified as Hourly and pay frequency as Weekly in the Pay Item Properties dialog.
  1. Choose Setup > Employees.
  2. In the Employees window, click the Edit depts button to assign the employee to the appropriate department(s).
  3. Mark the employee as Active for the appropriate department(s) (projects), and mark the Home checkbox for the employee's primary project.

    Mark the employee as Active only in projects on which they are currently working. If the Active checkbox is marked for all projects on which an employee has worked or will work, the application is forced to process large amounts of unnecessary information, which can drastically impact performance speed in data entry and reports.

  4. In the Personal/W-2 Info tab, mark the Daily Time Entry checkbox in the Checkbox grid.
  5. In the Earnings tab, add the appropriate Certified payroll pay items for the employee, making sure they meet all the requirements for daily time entry.
  6. Click Enter to save the employee information, and then close the Employees window.

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Payroll check entry

Selecting a daily time entry employee in the Payroll Check Entry window brings up the Daily Time Entry dialog, where you can enter that employee's daily time. You can either enter a week's worth of information at one time, or you can enter time at one sitting and then come back later to add more hours.

Only employees specified as daily time entry employees in the Personal/W-2 Info tab of the Employees dialog will be available for daily time entry.

For pay items to be available in the Daily Check Entry grid, they must meet the following requirements.

  • The wage type must be Hourly
  • The frequency must be Weekly
  • No Special Type can be assigned to the pay item
  • The pay item cannot be marked globally to be excluded from daily time entry

Entering daily time

  1. Choose Tasks > Payroll Check Entry.
  2. Select the employee from the Employee drop-down list.
  3. When the Daily Time Entry dialog opens, enter the employee's daily hours for each day. Move from one department to another by using the Department navigation buttons.

    Note: You have the option to leave the Daily Time Entry dialog and come back to it at a later time. You may choose to enter time on a daily basis rather than a weekly basis, for example. When you want to return to the Daily Time Entry dialog, open the Payroll Check Entry window, press PAGE UP until the appropriate payroll check is displayed or select the check using the Check List command on the right-click context menu, and then choose Edit > Daily Time Entry.

  4. Click Done to close the Daily Time Entry dialog, and the time entry information automatically displays in the Payroll Check Entry dialog.
  5. Enter any additional information on the payroll check, if applicable, and then click Enter or press PAGE DOWN to save the check.
  6. Print your checks as usual.

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Running daily check entry reports

There are two reports related to Certified payroll and daily check entry; The Certified Payroll Worksheet and the Daily Data Entry Worksheet. To print these worksheets, choose File > Print Reports and select the worksheets from the Print dialog. A number of options are available for each report.

The Certified Payroll Worksheet is based on the federal Form WH-347, and can be used to fill out any state-specific certified payroll forms. The report contains the employee's name, SSN, and address, and lists their daily hours, rate of pay, gross amount earned for that payroll week, and net wages.

The Daily Data Entry Worksheet provides an organized way to gather and verify employee check data from your client. A number of options allow you to choose what information to include, which departments to include, and the date range for the report.

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