Prevailing Wage Time Clock: What It Has to Capture Before Payroll Day
A prevailing wage time clock has to record hours by classification, project and wage determination. See what to capture so your WH-347 comes out right.
A foreman texts the office on Friday: "Mike was on the Elm Street school job Tuesday and Wednesday, half the day running the excavator, half the day on labor." The time clock app says Mike worked 9.5 hours each day. That's it. No job, no classification, no split. Somebody now has to rebuild two days of certified payroll from a text message.
That's the problem a prevailing wage time clock solves. A normal time clock records how long someone worked. A prevailing wage time clock records what they worked on, on which project, under which wage determination, and whether the hours were drive time or site time. If it can't capture those things at the moment they happen, your certified payroll is a reconstruction, and reconstructions are where the errors live.
We built our prevailing wage time tracker after seeing this exact gap with contractors who do a mix of public and private work. This post is about the time-capture layer: what the clock has to record, why a standard one doesn't, and where it goes wrong.
Why a normal time clock fails on prevailing wage jobs
Most construction time clocks were designed for private work. They answer one question: how many hours do I pay this person this week? On a prevailing wage job, that's the least interesting question. Certified payroll asks four others.
Which classification? The federal Davis-Bacon rules let you pay a worker at each classification's rate for the time actually worked in that classification, but only if your payroll records accurately show the time spent in each one (29 CFR 5.5). If your clock logs Mike's day as one 9.5-hour block, you've got no record supporting the lower labor rate for any part of it.
Which project? The required payroll records include the daily and weekly hours worked in total and on each covered contract. A worker who splits a day between a public school job and a private warehouse needs those hours separated, because only one of them belongs on the school's certified payroll.
Which wage determination? Davis-Bacon wage determinations are issued county by county, for each general type of construction: building, residential, highway and heavy (DOL). A project that crosses a county line can carry more than one determination. The top of the WH-347 asks for the wage determination number and the project location, including the county. If your clock doesn't know which job a punch belongs to, it can't know which rates apply either.
Drive time or site time? Travel from the yard to the job, when the worker has to report to the yard first, counts as hours worked under federal wage-hour rules (29 CFR 785.38). What rate that drive gets is a separate question, and it's the one contractors most often get wrong. We wrote up the common scenarios in prevailing wage on drive time. For the clock, the point is simpler: if drive and site time aren't separate punches, nobody can apply the right rate to either.
Then there's fringe. The WH-347 has separate columns for contributions to bona fide fringe benefit plans and for cash paid in lieu of fringe (DOL WH-347 instructions). Fringe is owed on covered hours, so every misattributed hour carries a fringe error along with the wage error.
What certified payroll needs from your time records
The WH-347 is optional. The information on it isn't. Covered contractors have to submit certified payroll weekly for every week covered work happens, on the WH-347 or any format with the same information and an identical Statement of Compliance (DOL).
Read the form backwards and it's a spec for your time clock. Column 3 wants the classification. Column 4 wants hours worked on this project each day, split into straight time and overtime. Column 7B wants gross pay for all work that week, including non-covered jobs. And if a worker did two classifications, the instructions tell you to give each one its own row.
Every one of those numbers starts as a punch in the field. Software downstream can do the math. It can't invent data the clock never captured. That's the case we made in certified payroll software for contractors, and it's why we think the clock is the place to start.
What a prevailing wage time clock must capture
| Field | Why it matters | Where it shows up |
|---|---|---|
| Worker and identifier | Ties hours to a person without storing full SSNs on the payroll | WH-347 columns 1A to 1E (last four digits only) |
| Journeyworker or apprentice status | Apprentice rates and ratios differ from journeyworker rates | WH-347 column 2 |
| Project and contract | Separates covered hours from private hours on the same day | Project header, columns 4 and 7B |
| Labor classification per block of time | Lets you pay each classification's rate only for time worked in it | Column 3, one row per classification |
| County and wage determination | Rates depend on the county and construction type of the job | Project header |
| Clock-in and clock-out times, per day | Daily hours are required, not just weekly totals | Column 4 |
| Drive time as its own event | Travel can be hours worked, at a different rate than site work | Feeds column 4 and gross pay |
| Location at each event | Shows the worker was where the timesheet says | Your own audit file |
| Breaks and missed punches | Unflagged gaps turn into guesses on Friday | Your review before export |
| Overtime across all jobs | Federal overtime on covered contracts kicks in past 40 hours in the workweek | Column 4 (OT), column 6A |
A note on that last row. Under the Contract Work Hours and Safety Standards Act, covered workers get at least one and a half times the basic rate for hours over 40 in a workweek (29 CFR 5.5). The 40 counts hours from every job that week, not just the public one. A clock that only knows about one project can't tell you when someone crossed the line.
Where it goes wrong in practice
We've seen the same few failures more than once.
The paper book. One of the real searches that lands people on this topic is "prevailing wage site tracking books for hours." Plenty of crews still run a site logbook. It works until the foreman fills in Monday through Thursday on Friday morning from memory. The book has a classification column. Nobody uses it when the whole crew is "on labor" by default.
The app that only knows one job per day. Many time apps attach a single job to a shift. The crew that stops at a private site after lunch gets the whole day booked to the public job, or the whole day booked to the private one. Either way, the certified payroll is wrong.
Classification set once, at hire. The worker's profile says "Laborer," so every hour is laborer hours. When he runs equipment for three hours, nothing records the switch. That's the gap 29 CFR 5.5 punishes: you can only pay the split rates if your records show the split.
Drive time folded into site time. The truck leaves the yard at 6:30 and arrives at 7:15. If the clock shows one punch at 6:30, you've lost the line between travel and covered site work. Paying all of it at the prevailing rate is the expensive way to fix that. Guessing is the risky way.
The truck driver question. Another real search: "do you get paid prevailing wage driving a truck from the yard to the job." The honest answer is that it depends on what the driver is doing. The 2023 federal rule extended Davis-Bacon coverage to delivery drivers' on-site time, and a federal court blocked that provision nationwide in June 2024. On-site construction work a driver does is still covered at that classification's rate (DOL). State programs can differ. Your clock can't settle this for you, but it can record which activity the driver was doing and where, so whoever does make the call has accurate facts.
We're not lawyers and none of this is legal advice for your state. Rules vary by contract and jurisdiction. Pull the wage determination for every job and check it, and when a rate question is close, ask your contracting agency or counsel before payroll goes out.
Our tool, and when you need something custom
Our prevailing wage time tracker handles the most common version of this problem: crews that move between a yard, prevailing wage jobs and private jobs in the same day. The way it works:
- The worker taps Clock In at the yard. The app records the time and GPS location.
- On arrival, they tap Check In at the job site. That separates drive time from site time.
- Each job is tagged prevailing wage or private, so drive time, site time and breaks get the right rate tag automatically, and overtime is calculated as a blend across PW and non-PW hours.
- At the end of the week, an admin exports a CSV broken out by employee, job, rate classification, regular hours, overtime and rate, ready for whoever runs payroll.
The admin dashboard shows every clock event as a map pin, flags missing events for review, and events save on the phone and sync when signal comes back. It's a one-time purchase with no monthly fees. It isn't a payroll system and it doesn't file your WH-347. It gives your payroll person clean inputs. You can answer three questions on the page and we'll send a cost breakdown for your crew.
Where it isn't enough: if your workers regularly switch between several trade classifications in a day, if you run jobs across multiple wage determinations at once, or if you need apprentice ratios, fringe allocations or a direct feed into your payroll provider, that's a custom software build. We design those around how your crews actually work and what your certified payroll reviewer asks for. If you're still comparing off-the-shelf apps, our ExakTime vs ClockShark vs BusyBusy breakdown covers where each one stops on prevailing wage.
The fix starts at the punch
Certified payroll errors almost never start in payroll. They start at a clock that recorded hours without recording what those hours were. Fix the capture and the WH-347 mostly fills itself in. If you want to talk through which version fits your crew, book a call with Ben.
Common questions
What is a prevailing wage time clock?
A prevailing wage time clock is a time tracking system that records more than in and out times. It ties every block of hours to a project, a labor classification and the wage determination for that project, and it separates drive time from site time. Those are the inputs certified payroll needs. A normal time clock records how long someone worked. A prevailing wage time clock records what they worked on, where, and at which rate.
Do you get paid prevailing wage driving a truck from the yard to the job?
It depends on what the driving is and on your contract. Under federal wage-hour rules, if a worker has to report to the yard first, the travel from the yard to the job site counts as hours worked (29 CFR 785.38). Whether that time is owed at the prevailing rate depends on the contract, the state and the work. For delivery truck drivers on federal Davis-Bacon jobs, the 2023 rule extending coverage to their on-site time was blocked by a nationwide court injunction in June 2024, while on-site construction work a driver performs is still covered at that classification's rate. Check your wage determination and ask your contracting agency before you set a rate.
How do I track prevailing wage hours for a worker in two classifications?
Record the hours in each classification separately, every day. Federal rules let you pay a worker at each classification's rate for the time actually worked in it only if your payroll records accurately show the time spent in each one. On the WH-347, each classification goes on its own row under the same worker entry number.
Is the WH-347 form required for certified payroll?
The WH-347 form itself is optional. The information on it is not. Contractors on Davis-Bacon covered jobs must submit certified payroll weekly for every week covered work is performed, and they can use the WH-347 or any other format that includes the same information and an identical Statement of Compliance.
How long do I have to keep prevailing wage time records?
On federal Davis-Bacon and Related Acts work, payroll records have to be kept for three years after the prime contract is completed. State prevailing wage programs can set their own retention rules, so check the requirements for any state job you're on.