Road and highway contractors owe one payroll week to the agency, the state portal, and the inspector at the cone line, and every answer has to match. With WageTime, the WH-347, the portal numbers, and the wage-rate interview all come from the same run.
Highway payroll isn’t hard because the wages are exotic. It’s hard because one weekly dataset owes answers to the agency, the portal, the union hall, and the inspector at the cone line, and every answer has to match.
Private-side contractors meet Davis-Bacon when they win the occasional school. A road contractor meets it in every bid: the highway determination sets the operator groups, the laborer lines, and the flag-person rate before the first cone goes down, and the office inherits a classification map that changes by county.
The state got a certified payroll mandate and bought software for it: AASHTOWare in one state, LCPtracker in the next, eCPR in California, a brand-new portal in New York. The payroll is finished Friday. Then somebody re-keys it, worker by worker and classification by classification, into a system that exists to receive it.
Agencies buy their lane closures at night, and the wage schedules price that: New Jersey’s statewide highway determination pays irregular night shifts at 15 percent above the rate, benefits included. The premium is real money, it belongs inside the overtime math, and the Friday spreadsheet treats it as a rounding error.
Every July, one pay period becomes the FHWA-1391: workforce counts by project, from every prime and every sub with a subcontract over $10,000. Add the OJT trainee whose rate steps 60, 75, then 90 percent of journey scale with hours reported to the DOT, and payroll has quietly become the civil-rights filing cabinet.
A paving spread lives where the corridor goes. Past the mileage line in the schedule or the agreement, the crew is owed subsistence by the day: $75 in one state’s zone, $100 a calendar day in another’s, and the office tracks who slept where on a whiteboard next to the fuel cards.
Wage-rate interviews are routine on federal-aid work: agency staff walk the work zone, ask a worker what they make, and check the answer against the payrolls you certified. When the paystub, the punch, and the answer don’t line up, the mismatch becomes a noncompliance notice with your name on it.
Often yes: New Jersey’s statewide highway determination pays irregular night shifts, starting between 5 p.m. and midnight, at 15 percent above the rate, and other states carry their own off-shift terms. WageTime makes the closure crew’s premium a pay code in the run.
Replaces the spreadsheet that pays the differential but forgets to put it in the overtime rate.
Davis-Bacon and related acts cover roughly $217 billion a year and about 1.2 million workers per the Labor Department’s 2023 rulemaking, and FHWA-1273 turns the WH-347 into a weekly deliverable. WageTime pulls it from the finished run, certified payroll priced and scoped at the demo.
| Worker | Hours | Gross |
|---|---|---|
| Denny K. · Paver Operator$38.40 + $12.15 fringe | 40.0 | $1,536.00 |
| Rosa V. · Roller Operator$34.25 + $11.40 fringe | 38.0 | $1,301.50 |
| Cass M. · Flagger$24.10 + $8.05 fringe | 32.0 | $771.20 |
| Leo A. · OJT Trainee75% journey · $28.80+$12.15 | 40.0 | $1,152.00 |
| Odell P. · Laborer, Group 1$26.20 + $8.70 fringe | 40.0 | $1,048.00 |
Replaces the second job the office holds all season: rebuilding a payroll you already ran into a federal form, week after week.
Federal-aid work grades your payroll data in ways private work never does, and WageTime keeps the answers where the questions land. The 1391 stays your form to file; the payroll week behind it becomes a report you run, not a reconstruction you dread.
| Project | Workers | Hours |
|---|---|---|
| US-30 wideningOperator | 4 | 152.0 |
| US-30 wideningLaborer / Flagger | 3 | 118.0 |
| SR-141 mill & overlayOperator | 2 | 76.0 |
| SR-141 mill & overlayOJT trainee | 1 | 40.0 |
| County bridge deckLaborer | 2 | 80.0 |
Replaces the August afternoon spent reverse-engineering July from check stubs and a foreman’s memory.
Zone pay lands in WageTime as a reimbursement pay code on the same check as wages, codified rather than improvised: Nevada’s northern rural schedule owes $75 a day at 70 to 119 miles out, Alaska’s operating-engineers agreement $100 a calendar day past 65 road miles.
Replaces the whiteboard of motel nights, and the separate expense app nobody on the crew ever opens.
Wage-rate interviews are routine on federal-aid projects: Caltrans devotes a full chapter of its labor-compliance manual to the procedure. WageTime keeps payroll on the record by default, so the answer at the cone line and the record behind it come out of the same system.
| Day | Punches | Hours |
|---|---|---|
| Mon Jul 6SR-141 night closure | 6:58 PM - 5:04 AM | 10.0 |
| Tue Jul 7SR-141 night closure | 6:55 PM - 5:01 AM | 10.0 |
| Wed Jul 8SR-141 night closure | 7:02 PM - 5:06 AM | 10.0 |
| Thu Jul 9SR-141 night closure | 6:59 PM - 4:33 AM | 9.5 |
| Fri Jul 10e-signature on file | Attested 6:12 AM |
Replaces the scramble to reconstruct a week when the noncompliance notice names it.
Full-service payroll is $10 a month per person paid that month, plus $50 a month per company, with unlimited runs. No long-term contracts, no per-run charges.
Off-cycle runs and bonuses cost nothing extra. No long-term contracts; cancel anytime.
Example: 50 people paid × $10 + $50 company = $550 for the month
HR & hiring, onboarding, PTO, time tracking, benefits, and workers’ comp are optional add-ons, priced separately when you’re ready.
See a demoYes. Form FHWA-1273 folds weekly certified payroll into every federal-aid construction contract, and prevailing wage applies through the highway wage determination. WageTime generates WH-347 reports from the payroll run with job-costing segments for federal public work, offered as an add-on, scoped and priced on the demo.
WageTime generates the federal WH-347 from the run, through the certified payroll add-on scoped and priced on the demo, and the payroll behind it carries hours by worker, classification, project, and week, so what a portal asks for comes from a report instead of a Friday-night reconstruction. Bring your state’s portal to the demo and we’ll confirm the exact flow for your setup.
From one payroll week. Every prime and every sub with a subcontract over $10,000 that works any part of July reports its workforce for the last July payroll period. WageTime reporting pulls hours and headcount by project for any week you name, with scheduled distribution when you want it recurring.
Generally yes on covered work: flaggers controlling traffic inside the work zone are Davis-Bacon-covered laborers, and determinations carry flag-person classifications with real money attached; New York City’s schedule has listed $45.60 base plus $55.73 in supplements. WageTime pays classification rates per project and location, so the flagger line stops being a guess.
Highway schedules and agreements often owe distance-triggered pay: a Nevada schedule sets $75 a day at 70-119 miles out, an Alaska operating-engineers agreement $100 a calendar day past 65 road miles. WageTime configures per diem and mileage as reimbursement pay codes, non-taxable earning types where they qualify, paid on the same check as wages.
$50 per month per company plus $10 per person paid that month, with unlimited runs, so an extra check for a short closure week costs nothing. Certified payroll and union payroll, zone rules included, are add-ons scoped and priced on the demo. Onboarding and migration are full-service and paid; we’ll scope the cutover with you.
One week of the closure crew’s timesheets, your wage determination, the name of the portal your state uses, and your last WH-347. Twenty minutes with a payroll specialist on a live demo company: the run, the differential lines, the per diem, and the federal form at the end of it.
Book a 20-minute demo