# Certified payroll

The weekly wage report a public-works contractor files to prove pay.

Public-works jobs pay above private rates and cost more to administer, and certified payroll is where that cost lives. Every week, for every worker on the job, the contractor files what was paid and at which classification, signed. Getting a classification wrong is not a clerical matter: it underpays a worker and is recoverable years later, which is why an unresolved wage claim belongs in the price. Large federal projects add a [project labor agreement](https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/project-labor-agreement) on top, setting the terms for every contractor on the job. Ask who prepares these reports at the target, because at a lot of contractors the answer is one person nobody has ever backed up.

In numbers: A missed payroll filing lets a federal agency, after written notice, suspend any further payment on the job, so a $2M contract drawing $150,000 a month stops paying until the paperwork clears.

Source: https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/certified-payroll
Not dated: A definition is editorial: what a term means, why it matters, and an example. None of it reads a source that can go stale, so there is no date to take and a stamped one would be the build time wearing a costume.

Site index for machines: https://searchspheresource.com/llms.txt