Certified payroll software (2026): the Who-Chooses Test

Eight specialist certified payroll software tools rank on the first page of results or in Google’s AI answer, and one of them prints a price grid. We read every vendor there on 26 August 2026: the eight specialists (the compliance portals agencies buy, the reporting layers contractors bolt onto the payroll they already run, and the all-in-one construction payrolls), one construction-management tool that ranks for the term without producing the report, and the general payroll tools whose customers keep asking whether the report is built in. Everything below is quoted from the vendors’ own pages and marketplace listings, or from the Department of Labor, with the date, because that is the only evidence this page of results offers: on the day we captured it, eight of nine organic results were vendors, the ninth a Reddit thread, and both “best of” lists were written by vendors ranking themselves first.

Be clear about what this page is not. We have never filed a certified payroll on a public-works job, and we have not tested any of the tools below. We test payroll and HR software on accounts we pay for. The one product here we do run, Gusto, documents no certified payroll capability at all. There are no scores here, no screenshots of a report we produced and no affiliate links. What there is: the same questions asked of every tool, answered from their documentation, with the gaps left visible.

The first question decides most of the others. We call it the Who-Chooses Test.

Who chooses the tool: the Who-Chooses Test

Certified payroll software is three different purchases, and which one you are making depends on who gets to choose. Run the questions in order and stop at the first yes.

Question	If yes	What you actually buy
1. Does the contract name a portal?	The prime or agency runs LCPtracker Pro, B2Gnow’s eComply or eMars, and you submit through it	Usually no licence of your own, but not nothing: either someone types the weekly payroll into the portal (eMars documents manual entry and Excel upload) or your payroll has to export what the portal imports (CSV, XLSX or XML; eComply’s help centre says PDFs are not acceptable), which is where a reporting layer earns its fee. What a mandated subcontractor pays, if anything, is not stated on the portals’ pages
2. Does your payroll already output the report?	QuickBooks Online Payroll Premium or Elite, or Desktop Payroll, per Intuit’s help articles updated 4 and 19 August 2026	Time, not software: the manual fields, the signature, and a check that your state accepts the format
3. Neither?	Nobody has chosen for you	The real shopping decision: a reporting layer on the payroll you keep (LCPcertified, Points North, Dapt) or a construction payroll that replaces it (Miter, FOUNDATION, Payroll4Construction)

Two of the three exits involve no purchase, which is why the vendor-written comparisons skip the test. Google’s AI answer on this query ends by asking whether you want “a standalone reporting tool or an all-in-one construction accounting and payroll system”; that is question 3, and it only applies once questions 1 and 2 have come back no.

One thing the test does not touch is your tax filings. A reporting layer reads payroll after it runs and writes a report; it does not set the prevailing wage rates or fringe credits that go into it (Points North sells that pre-payroll step as a separate product, WageIQ), and deposits and returns stay with whoever runs the plain payroll job today. If that part is the problem, the week-one test that flags union or certified payroll in our payroll buying guide is the place to start, and the wider list of compliance, records and reporting jobs software can take over puts this one in context.

At a glance: what the vendors document, read 26 August 2026

The columns are the ones the vendor lists leave out. “Not stated” means we could not find it on the vendor’s public pages that day, not that the feature is absent.

Tool	Shape	Published price	WH-347 stated	State formats named	E-signature of the Statement documented on the pages read
LCPtracker LCPcertified	Reporting layer (contractor)	Yes: first project free; $12/report; Plus $145/mo for 5 active projects	Yes (“the updated WH-347 form”)	CA DIR, WA L&I, MD DLLR (XML)	Not stated
LCPtracker Pro	Portal (agency/prime)	Quote-only	Yes	Not listed per state	Not stated
Points North	Reporting layer + managed service	Quote-only (/pricing is a 404)	Not on the product page; yes on its WH-347 page (“prepared and ready for signature every week”)	Portals listed; “100+ formats” is a claim	Yes, on its QuickBooks and Paychex marketplace listings, not on its own site
eMars	Portal sold per project	Quote-only, frozen per contract	Yes (“Generate The New WH-347 in One Click”)	CA DIR, WA L&I, NY XML, OR WH-38, NJ, AASHTO	Yes (“sign it electronically”)
B2Gnow eComply	Portal (agency/project owner)	Quote-only	Yes, one line	None named	Yes, in the help centre (“Select Sign”)
Miter	All-in-one construction payroll	None (/pricing is a 404)	Yes, explicit	CT, IL, NJ, CA, NY, OR forms; 11 state portals	Not stated
FOUNDATION	Payroll module of an accounting suite	Quote-only	Not stated	None named	Not stated
Payroll4Construction	Outsourced service	Quote by form	Yes	13 print + 9 electronic formats	Not stated
Dapt	Layer on ADP, Paychex, Paycor, Paycom	None (/pricing is a 404)	Yes	”State forms”, none named	Not stated
QuickBooks Payroll	General payroll with a built-in federal report	Shown as accounting bundles, from $88 + $7/employee	Yes (Online Premium/Elite per the help articles; Desktop)	Not stated; state work via the Points North app	No: “review and sign” by hand
Gusto	General payroll	Yes: $49 + $6/person (Simple)	Not documented	Not stated	Not stated

Prices are list prices from the vendor pages on 26 August 2026, no promo. Read the last column first: for five of the eight specialist tools, no public page says how the Statement of Compliance gets signed, and the Department of Labor does not accept a scanned signature. Our dated pricing index tracks the general payroll tools as they change; seven of the eight specialist tools have no price to track.

Will QuickBooks do certified payroll?

Yes for the federal report, on two products, and the forum answer you will find first is out of date. Intuit’s article “Create and review your certified payroll report in QuickBooks Online Payroll”, updated 4 August 2026 and tagged for Online Payroll Premium and Elite (its body already calls the product Intuit QuickBooks Workforce, the new name for the line), is the route: Reports, Standard reports, search “certified payroll report”, pick the pay period and project, download a spreadsheet. The setup article, updated 19 August 2026, requires time entered “using the QuickBooks weekly timesheet (not the Time app workflow)” and a separate standard-time and overtime pay type per classification (“Painter ST, Painter OT”). For Desktop Payroll: Reports, Employees & Payroll, More Payroll Reports in Excel, Certified Payroll Report, with “a full version of Microsoft Excel”.

The spreadsheet step is where the work still lives. Intuit’s list of what “you’ll need to manually enter”: project ID, wage determination number, certified payroll number, worker entry number, cash paid in lieu of fringes (Intuit’s article still says box 6B; on the January 2025 form that is column 6C, with 6B reserved for the fringe benefit credit), apprentice details, then “review and sign the Statement of Compliance”. The rates are yours too: QuickBooks supplies no prevailing wage tables, you type the hourly rate into each pay type. Federal only: no state format is mentioned, and Intuit’s App Store sends state work to the Points North app, priced “based on individual reporting needs”.

The stale answer: a QuickBooks Team reply on the Community forum from April 2023 says Online Payroll subscriptions “don’t have that feature”. It was true then; the August 2026 articles supersede it and name Premium and Elite only, so we make no claim about the entry-level tier. One caution on Premium: Intuit’s accountant-facing site, Firm of the Future, has a page on this feature that search engines index with the sentence “certified payroll reporting is available exclusively in QuickBooks Workforce Elite”; the page would not open from our network on 26 August 2026, so we could not date it against the August help articles. Confirm it on your own plan before you count on it. Prices, for the record, are shown on Intuit’s pricing page as accounting bundles: $88 plus $7 per employee at list, and up; stand-alone payroll plans exist, but their list prices were not shown on the pages we could read.

Does Gusto do certified payroll? Not that it documents, and its help centre says why

We run our own payroll on Gusto and rate it 8/10 in our review, which is why we checked this the hard way. On 26 August 2026 a help-centre search for “certified payroll” returned twenty articles, none about it; “prevailing wage” returned 186, none about it. The app directory returned nothing for “certified payroll”, “prevailing wage”, “Points North”, “eBacon” or “LCPtracker” (a control search for “Workyard” returned one). The construction page does not contain the phrase, and Gusto’s May 2026 blog post on certified payroll suggests “outsourcing it to a payroll service provider, like Gusto” without saying the product produces the report. The employer onboarding guide is the closest thing to a statement: “Gusto does not support all services required for government payroll.” Absence from documentation is not proof of impossibility, but it is the only answer Gusto gives.

Prices held the same day: Simple $49 a month plus $6 per person, Plus $80 plus $12, Premium $180 plus $22. If you are on Gusto and take a covered job, the test puts you in exit 1 or exit 3, never exit 2; our Gusto alternatives page prices the general payroll tools if you decide to move.

ADP and Paychex: quote-only, and the report comes from a partner

RUN Powered by ADP shows four packages behind “Get Pricing”; Paychex Flex Select, Pro and Enterprise sit behind “Request Pricing”. ADP’s Workforce Now for Construction page claims to “automatically create certified payroll reports for government agencies” without saying whether that is native or a partner. RUN’s pages claim nothing native. ADP Marketplace lists Points North and Dapt for the job, prices behind a login, with a note that ADP receives a commission. Paychex’s article, updated 18 June 2026, describes payroll “infrastructure” and “fringe benefit documentation” and never states that Flex generates a WH-347; its marketplace lists Points North, HCM TradeSeal and LCPtracker. The pattern is a big payroll plus a bought layer, quoted once and priced twice. If quote-only is the dealbreaker, our Paychex alternatives round-up starts from published prices.

The one public price, and what quote-only hides

One of the eight specialist tools publishes a price grid. The related search “Points North certified payroll cost” exists because the answer is not on the site, and the Reddit thread on page one calls dedicated tools “pricey and a bit heavy”.

LCPtracker’s LCPcertified prints a full grid, plus a free tier its solutions page does not mention: the sign-up landing page offers “unlimited CPRs on your first project for free”, then “$12 Per Report”, then Plus at “$145/Month” for up to five active projects, “$1,300/Year” for ten, “$2,500/Year” for 25, “$3,700/Year” for 50 and “$7,400/Year” unlimited; Professional runs from “$1,900/Year” for ten projects to “$18,200/Year” for 450. The unit is active projects, and the page does not define one, so ask. At one covered job a year the first project is free; from the second, $12 a report times your weekly submissions is the figure to hold against everything else here.

eMars publishes no figure but does publish its model: once a price is set for a project “you will never have a rate increase for that contract”, with subcontractor training and support “part of the contract”. A per-project price paid by whoever contracts the platform, usually the agency or prime.

Everyone else is a demo away from a number. Points North, B2Gnow, Miter, Dapt and FOUNDATION have no pricing page, and FOUNDATION says so: “we don’t offer you standard pricing.” Payroll4Construction promises “your custom pricing right after submitting this form”, a quote with a shorter wait. Price it the way we price stacks in the Year-One Bill: a full year at your project count, with implementation in the ledger; FOUNDATION’s FAQ puts implementation at “a couple months”, against a report you may owe in week one.

One warning on third-party prices. The number-three result, a “top 5” list by Contractor Foreman, attributes “$50/month + $6.50/employee” and “$88 + $10” to Miter. Those figures match the Criterion HCM grid quoted on the same page and appear nowhere on miter.com, which has no pricing page. A price you cannot find on the vendor’s own site is not a price.

The portals your agency may choose for you: LCPtracker Pro, eComply, eMars

These sit at the top of the results because agencies search for them too. If your contract names one, question 1 is answered.

LCPtracker Pro is “ideal for public agencies and prime contractors that are responsible for monitoring the compliance of all contractors on their project”; its subcontractor page opens with “if you are required by a prime contractor or project owner to submit certified payrolls via LCPtracker”. It supports “the updated WH-347 form with expanded fringe reporting, apprentice details, and worker classification fields”. Not stated on the nine pages we read: how the Statement of Compliance is signed, and what a mandated subcontractor pays. Both are demo questions.

B2Gnow eComply serves the other side of the table: it “enables project owners to automate and aggregate the real-time payroll reporting, monitoring and enforcement of federal Davis-Bacon requirements”. For you, the useful pages are the import ones. It lists fifteen payroll sources, including ADP, Foundation, Paychex, QuickBooks, Viewpoint and, tellingly, LCPtracker CSV and eMars. Its help centre rules that “PDFs are not acceptable for CPR uploads”, and its submission article shows the signing step with a “Select Sign” control. No state format is named on its marketing pages.

eMars is sold per project to agencies, general contractors and subcontractors. It is the one vendor whose public pages document the signature in plain words: “users can upload their payroll, sign it electronically, and the system will automatically produce a fully populated WH-347 within seconds”, including “the mandatory Statement of Compliance”. It names XML output for California’s DIR, Washington L&I and New York, Oregon’s WH-38, New Jersey, AASHTO and California’s DAS 140 and 142. Payroll comes in by manual entry or an Excel upload that eMars maps; no payroll vendor is named as an integration, which matters if you hoped to click rather than type.

The reporting layers: LCPcertified, Points North, Dapt

Question 3’s first branch: keep your payroll, add a layer that reads it and writes the report.

LCPcertified is for “self-performing contractors who are not responsible for other subcontractors’ compliance”, explicitly “for projects that don’t have a designated electronic solution outlined in the contract”. It carries the only public price grid among the specialist tools, produces XML uploads for California, Washington and Maryland, and names two payroll sources, HH2 and “direct payroll import from Paychex”, with the full list on request. If yours is not named, the free first project or the $12-per-report option is the cheap way to find out before the $145 tier.

Points North is the layer the big payrolls point to. Its partner page names ADP (RUN, Workforce Now, Vantage), Paychex Flex, QuickBooks Online and Desktop, Paycor, UKG, Deltek, Greenshades, Rippling and Workday, plus QuickBooks Time, ClockShark and Raken for hours. It is “compatible with all electronic portals employed by government agencies”, listing LCPtracker, eMars, eComply, AASHTO and the California DIR. Two things before the demo. Its site publishes no price, and its main product page does not name the WH-347, although its dedicated WH-347 page does (“current WH-347 forms prepared and ready for signature every week”) and adds “automated wage calculations with real-time validation against stored prevailing wage rates”; the “more than 100 report formats” line is a claim without a list. And the electronic signature is documented on its Intuit App Store listing (“Sign Reports Electronically”) and its Paychex listing (“digitally signed”), not on points-north.com. A managed service will generate and submit the reports for you.

Dapt calls itself “a smart integration layer between your existing systems” and promises “WH-347, state forms, and LCPtracker-ready output”. Its integrations page names ADP Workforce Now, Paychex, Paycor and Paycom as payroll sources; its solutions page for JobTread users adds Paylocity and Dayforce, and, “with manual rate adjustment”, Gusto, QuickBooks Payroll and ADP RUN. Ask which connector you would actually get, and what “manual rate adjustment” means for your Friday. No price, no pricing page, no state named on the product page.

All-in-one construction payroll: Miter, FOUNDATION, Payroll4Construction

The second branch: replace the payroll with one built for prevailing wage.

Miter names more state paperwork than anyone here: Connecticut WWS-CPI, Illinois IL-452CM02, New Jersey MW-562, California A-131, New York DOL uploads, Oregon WH-141 and WH-38, direct submission to eleven state portals, exports for LCPtracker, eMars, eComply and Elation. Reports “generate straight from payroll data, pre-filled and ready for submission”; its FAQ covers apprentice ratios and multiple classifications in one pay period. Not on the page: any price, any e-signature statement, a public help centre (support is by email, “within a day”); we also do not repeat its unverified claim about a New York electronic-submission mandate. The “8 best construction payroll” article at position six is by Miter’s own product manager, ranks Miter first, and prices none of the eight tools.

FOUNDATION sells payroll as a module of its construction accounting suite and is candid about the model: “your business isn’t standard, which is why we don’t offer you standard pricing.” It runs “multi-state, multi-union and multi-trade timecards” and produces “print or electronic certified payroll reports for numerous state, federal or local agencies”, but the WH-347 is not named, no state is named, and the FAQ puts implementation at “a couple months”. Six months of phone support is included in the purchase price, the kind of line to get in writing from every vendor here.

Payroll4Construction, “powered by FOUNDATION”, is the outsourced version: “You submit time. We do the rest.” It lists the most formats of the eight specialist tools, thirteen print and nine electronic, including the California DIR, LCPtracker, eMars, eComply, AASHTOWare and Maryland, Texas and Wisconsin agencies, and its price is a form that returns a quote. If the office’s real problem is running payroll at all, price this shape; if it is only the weekly report, it is more payroll than the problem.

Contractor Foreman: a public price, and not a certified payroll tool

It ranks third, publishes a full grid, and is the wrong shelf. Contractor Foreman is construction management software from $49 a month on annual billing (Basic, one user) to $332 (Unlimited), with a 30-day trial and a conditional 100-day money-back guarantee; its own “top 5” article says “specialized software handles tax filing and WH-347 form generation”, and what it does is export time cards to Gusto or QuickBooks. The word “certified” does not appear on its plans page.

The revised WH-347 and the “new form” pitch

The form was revised in January 2025, and no transition deadline appears on the Department of Labor page or in the Federal Register notices we read. Two vendors above sell support for a “new” or “updated” WH-347, and eMars says the Department “will accept the previous form through September 30, 2026”. What the primary sources support. In the Federal Register on 30 August 2024 the Department proposed “revisions to form WH-347, to simplify and clarify certain fields and to obtain more specific information about fringe benefits”, adding “check boxes and electronically fillable fields”. Its 27 November 2024 notice adds that “substantive edits to the WH-347 form were last made in 2011”. The current form is marked “Rev. January 2025”, OMB control number 1235-0008, expiring 31 January 2028, and Intuit’s Desktop article confirms the update “brought new fields, column headings, and calculations”. The September 2026 deadline we could not find on the Department’s WH-347 page or in either notice, so we do not repeat it as fact.

The larger point is the one the vendors skip: the form is optional. The Department’s instructions say “use of Form WH-347 itself is optional”; what is required on Davis-Bacon-covered federal and federally assisted work is weekly submission with a Statement of Compliance in identical wording, as why Form WH-347 is optional sets out from the source, and states run their own systems on top. A tool that generates the 2025 layout is convenient. A tool that produces the required data in a format your agency accepts meets the reporting rule, and the rates and classifications inside it are still yours to get right; those are three different claims.

Run the Statement-of-Compliance Test on the demo, not the brochure

Our guide gives a five-minute check for any payroll tool: ask it for one week of one project and look for the six data points a valid report carries, ending with a signature that is either original or a legally valid electronic one, and no full Social Security numbers. The Department is explicit on the signature: “photocopies or scanned copies of signatures do not satisfy this requirement.”

On the vendor pages, the signature is where documentation thins. eMars states it; B2Gnow shows the signing step; Points North states it on two marketplace listings; QuickBooks tells you to sign the spreadsheet yourself; LCPtracker, Miter, FOUNDATION, Payroll4Construction and Dapt do not mention it on the pages we read. Ask it in writing, with three more: which of your states’ formats it outputs, by name; which payroll systems it imports from, by product; and what the price becomes in the year you have one covered job and the year you have four.

Our pick, by who chooses

There is no single winner, because the test has three exits and we have tested none of these tools. On documented evidence:

• If the contract names a portal, submit through it and buy no second reporting tool until you know whether your payroll’s export imports cleanly; if it does not, the choice is typing the payroll in each week or paying a layer to translate it, and the prevailing wage rates on the paycheck are still yours to set before payroll runs.
• If you run QuickBooks Online Payroll Premium or Elite, or Desktop Payroll, use the built-in report for federal jobs and budget the manual fields and the signature into someone’s Friday; add the Points North app only when a state format is required.
• If nobody chose for you, price LCPcertified first, because it is the only specialist tool you can price without a call, and its first project is free. Then take one demo from Points North if you are on ADP, Paychex, QuickBooks, Paycor, UKG or Rippling, and one from Miter if you are multi-state or union and would rather replace the payroll than layer it.
• If you are on Gusto, as we are, nothing Gusto publishes says the report will come from Gusto; plan for the first or third exit.

Whatever the exit, the report you sign each week is the thing you are certifying, so the tool’s job is to make that signature safe, not just fast. For the payroll underneath it, the free payroll round-up maps where each free tier stops, none of them at certified payroll, and the payroll automation round-up covers how much of the ordinary pay run can run itself. The five tools we have actually tested live in our reviews; none of them is on this page for this job.

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Sources. Vendor pages read 26 August 2026: lcptracker.com including the LCPcertified sign-up page, points-north.com including its WH-347 page (plus its Intuit App Store and Paychex marketplace listings), emarsinc.com, b2gnow.com and its help centre, miter.com (including its construction payroll list, updated 6 August 2026), foundationsoft.com, payroll4construction.com, dapt.tech including its JobTread solutions page, contractorforeman.com, Intuit help articles on certified payroll for QuickBooks Online Payroll (updated 4 and 19 August 2026) and Desktop Payroll, Gusto pricing, help centre, app directory and blog (7 May 2026), adp.com and ADP Marketplace, paychex.com (article updated 18 June 2026) and Paychex Marketplace; Intuit’s Firm of the Future page on certified payroll in QuickBooks Workforce, unreachable from our network and quoted from its search-engine listing. Primary sources: U.S. Department of Labor, instructions for Form WH-347 (read 24 August 2026); Federal Register notices of 30 August and 27 November 2024 on the Davis-Bacon certified payroll collection, read on govinfo.gov on 26 August 2026. Search results captured 26 August 2026, United States, desktop.