WeeklyCertified / Compare / QuickBooks and Certified Payroll: What It Does and Doesn't Do
QuickBooks and Certified Payroll: What It Does and Doesn't Do
Does QuickBooks do certified payroll?
Partially. QuickBooks Online produces WH-347 reports only on its top-tier Payroll plans, and QuickBooks Desktop builds an Excel-based substitute that many agencies and state portals do not accept. Most small subcontractors on prevailing-wage work pair QuickBooks with a dedicated certified payroll tool.
QuickBooks runs the books for a huge share of small construction companies, so the natural first question on winning a prevailing-wage job is whether it can just produce the WH-347. The honest answer has three parts.
What QuickBooks does well here
Paychecks, withholdings, and the accounting behind them. If your crew is already paid through QuickBooks Payroll, your gross, tax, FICA, and net numbers exist and are right. Those feed columns 7 through 9 of a WH-347 directly.
Where it falls short
- Tier gating. Certified payroll reporting lives in the top payroll tier of QuickBooks Online. If you are on a lower tier, the feature you need for one public job means upgrading the whole payroll subscription.
- The Desktop substitute. Desktop Payroll produces an Excel-based WH-347 lookalike. Some reviewers accept it; many agencies and every state with its own mandated format or portal do not. A rejected substitute costs you a resubmission cycle on a job where payments can be withheld for paperwork.
- No wage determination awareness. QuickBooks does not know your county's determination, your classifications, or the base-plus-fringe minimums. The compliance-critical inputs still come from you, unchecked.
- Fringe mechanics. The split between plan credit (column 6B) and cash in lieu (column 6C), and the rule that fringe applies to every hour including overtime hours, is exactly where spreadsheet-adjacent workflows go wrong.
The pairing most small subs land on
Keep QuickBooks as the system of record. Add a certified payroll layer for the weekly report: one that fills the current January 2025 revision of the official form, pulls the wage determination live so classifications and minimums are checked, and does the fringe and overtime arithmetic to the cent.
That layer is what the free WeeklyCertified generator does in the browser, with your pay data never uploaded anywhere. Enter the week's hours and rates, download the signed-ready form, staple it to the records QuickBooks already keeps.
| QuickBooks alone | QuickBooks + WeeklyCertified | |
|---|---|---|
| Paychecks and withholding | Yes | Yes (unchanged) |
| Current official WH-347 | Top tier only; Desktop substitute | Yes, free |
| Wage determination rates checked | No | Yes, live from SAM.gov |
| Fringe and OT arithmetic | Manual | Computed to the cent |
| Cost for the payroll report | Payroll tier upgrade | $0 to start |
Questions
Which QuickBooks plan includes WH-347 reports?
Intuit's own documentation places certified payroll reporting in the top payroll tier of QuickBooks Online, and offers an Excel-based WH-347 substitute workflow for Desktop Payroll users.
Why do agencies reject the Desktop output?
It is a spreadsheet rendition rather than the official form layout, and states with their own formats or portals require their format, not a lookalike.
Should I drop QuickBooks for prevailing-wage work?
No. QuickBooks remains a fine system of record for accounting and paychecks. The gap is the weekly certified report itself: the current official form, the wage-determination rates, and the fringe arithmetic.