Construction Self-Check for Contractors

What's in each part of the scorecard?

Certified Payroll and Prevailing Wage

Audit readiness, how your certified payroll reports get produced, prevailing wage rates by trade and jurisdiction, overtime when crews move between jobs and counties, back pay when a rate changes mid-job, and California DAS 140/142 apprenticeship filings.

Fringe Benefits

How fringe credits get calculated, whether you use a bona fide fringe trust, whether employees can actually reach their fringe money, PTO fringe credit, and the fringe statements employees receive.

HR

Onboarding, benefits enrollment, workers' comp classifications, apprentice-to-journeyman ratios, certification and license expirations, performance records, training, and how many separate systems your team retypes the same data into.

Field Operations

Clock-in and geofencing, how fast a foreman can see today's labor cost on a job, jobsite documents, safety meetings and incident reports, crew scheduling, and equipment and materials tracking.

Who should take a construction payroll self-assessment?

Payroll managers who run certified payroll are the main audience, since they live with the answers every week. Accountants and construction CPAs can use it to review a client's payroll and compliance setup before an audit or year-end. Owners and controllers get a fast, honest look at where payroll is costing time or creating risk.

How do I know if my certified payroll is audit-ready?

Your certified payroll is likely audit-ready if reports come straight from payroll data without hand formatting, prevailing wage rates are verified by trade and jurisdiction, overtime is calculated correctly when crews move between jobs, and fringe credits are documented. If any of those depend on a spreadsheet or one person's memory, that's the gap to close first.

What should a contractor fix first after a low payroll score?

Fix the items with audit exposure first: certified payroll reports, prevailing wage rates, overtime, and fringe credit calculations. Mistakes there turn into back wages and restitution. After that, tackle the disconnected systems that force your team to retype the same data, because that's where most errors start and most hours disappear.

eBacon runs certified payroll, fringe, time tracking, and HR in one platform, so employee and job data gets entered once and flows everywhere it needs to go.

Do I need to be an eBacon customer to use the scorecard?

No. The Construction Payroll Scorecard is free for any contractor, whether you run payroll in-house, use another payroll provider, or work with an outside accountant. It assesses your current processes, not your software brand, so the report is useful no matter what system you use today.

We won't check your login at the door.

How often should a contractor review payroll and compliance processes?

Review payroll and compliance processes at least once a year, and again any time something changes: your first prevailing wage job, work in a new state or county, new apprentice classifications, or a switch in payroll provider. Each one changes what your payroll has to get right, usually without a memo.