Home / Compliance desk / Certified payroll review
Rung three · per active public-works job
Your payroll checked against the wage determination before it goes in, not after the audit.
Every week, we read what your payroll clerk produced against the determination that actually governs the job, and hand back the problems with the Labor Code section cited and a dollar figure attached. You correct it. You submit it. Your certification stays yours.
Why it matters
Under Labor Code §1776(h), a contractor who paid every worker correctly still forfeits $100 per day per worker once a written request for payroll records goes unanswered for 10 days — and the forfeiture runs until strict compliance. The records penalty does not care whether the wages were right. That is the shape of this whole regime: the exposure attaches to the paperwork, and the paperwork is the part nobody has time for.
The check itself
Eighteen checks, run before you submit.
The engine reads your payroll against the governing determination and produces findings, each carrying the statute it came from — fifteen of the eighteen name a section of the California Labor Code, two check the federal Davis-Bacon Related Acts and the DIR eCPR schema, and one is an internal data-integrity check that holds any filing whose own numbers do not reconcile and a conservative dollar estimate of the exposure. Then a person reads every finding before it reaches you. The machine drafts. The human decides.
Findings are for your correction. We never sign a certification for you and would not want to: the certification on a certified payroll is a sworn statement by the contractor, and it should stay in the contractor’s hands.
Scope
What is in the price, and what will never be.
The included list below is scope, not upsells. They are part of the engagement, not separately priced add-ons.
Included, at no separate charge
- Weekly pre-flight review of base and fringe rates by craft against the governing DIR determination, with classification checked against the work actually performed
- Overtime under Labor Code §§1813 and 1815. The flat $25 per worker per day forfeiture carries no good-faith reduction, so it gets checked every week
- Apprentice registration and the numeric apprentice-to-journeyman ratio floor, LC §1777.5(g)–(i) and 8 CCR §230.1
- DAS-140 and DAS-142 status tracking
- The monthly CAC-2 apprenticeship training-fund contribution computation and filing package, 8 CCR §230.2, due the fifteenth for the prior month
- Fringe-benefit statement review, travel and subsistence, wage-determination import and refresh through the job
- Audit-readiness file assembly, so a records request is a folder you already have rather than a two weeks of digging
Explicitly excluded
- Portal submission is not included in this price. The certification is a sworn statement by the contractor and always stays yours; working inside your own DIR eCPR, LCPtracker or eMars account is a separately published add-on, never something we absorb quietly.
- Any response to, or representation in, a DLSE proceeding or a Civil Wage and Penalty Assessment. That is attorney territory and we will refer it, not take it.
- Running your payroll. We review; we do not process, pay, or file taxes.
- Designing or administering a fringe-benefit trust. That requires a license we do not hold.
- Legal conclusions of any kind. Findings cite the statute so that you and your counsel can decide what they mean.
Pricing
Per active public-works project, per month.
A project counts as active in a month if payroll was reported on it. Demobilised jobs drop out of the count the following month, without you having to ask.
| Concurrent active public-works projects | Monthly | Per project |
|---|---|---|
| 1 project | $1,350 | $1,350 |
| 2–3 projects | $3,500 | from $1,167 at three |
| 4–6 projects | $6,750 | from $1,125 at six |
| 7+ projects | $6,750plus $1,050 per project per month | marginal rate |
Minimum engagement: one full project cycle or three months, whichever is longer. The product is a running record; a single week of it is worth very little to you and prices the line down for everyone else. Discounts: 10% for a twelve-month commitment paid quarterly in advance, 12% for annual prepay, and 10% off the smaller line if you take this with roster monitoring, because the roster, the determinations and the standing call are already paid for once. Surcharges, published rather than buried: +$250 per month per project if you need us working inside your own LCPtracker, eMars, or agency portal account; +50% on retroactive or remediation work reconstructing prior periods, which is the highest-risk work we do; +25% where more than one collective bargaining agreement is in play; +20% for payroll documentation requiring non-English review.
| Alternative | Published price | Plus your own staff time |
|---|---|---|
| Certified-payroll platform A | from $1,000per month | Full payroll migration; all classification, wage-determination, fringe, and apprentice judgment stays with your people. Sourced |
| Certified-payroll platform B | from $175per month, plus $995–4,995 setup and $7.50 per report | Same again. The software is the filing cabinet, not the reviewer. Sourced |
| Construction accounting suite with a certified-payroll module | from $500per month, plus $3,000–8,000 implementation | An entire accounting system change to get the module. Sourced |
| The operating cost nobody quotes you | 8–15 hrsper pay period, per a competing payroll bureau writing about these two platforms | Whatever that time is worth in your office, it is on top of the subscription — and the classifying, the determination and the fringe check are still being done by your staff. Sourced |
| A labor-compliance consultancy | Not published. Of fourteen California firms I could open and read on August 19, 2026, none published a fixed rate for reviewing certified payroll. One sells certified-payroll training seminars through a public storefront; a seminar is not a review of your payroll. | Unknown until after the discovery call. Quote-only |
The honest read. $1,350 replaces the subscription and the labor, and adds somebody who has actually read the determination. It is not cheaper than the software line on its own. It is priced against what that software plus your own hours already costs you. Every price above is the vendor’s own published figure; the one time figure is a competing payroll bureau’s published claim about these two platforms and is attributed as one below. Where a vendor publishes nothing, the table says so rather than repeat a third-party estimate as fact.
Sources
- Vendor-published pricing pages for the certified-payroll platforms and accounting suite cited, accessed August 19, 2026.
- “8–15 hours per pay period” to operate LCPtracker and eMars: My Construction Payroll, a New York construction-payroll bureau that sells against both platforms, “LCP Tracker and eMars Software Issues,” myconstructionpayroll.com/post/lcp-tracker-and-emars-software-issues, accessed August 21, 2026. That is a competitor’s marketing post rather than independent research, and we cite it as one.
- Survey of fourteen California prevailing-wage and labor-compliance firms whose sites could be opened and read, compiled from firm websites August 18–19, 2026 and re-verified August 19, 2026. Firm list available on request.
If the first full month of review finds nothing on a payroll you believed was already clean, that month is free.
First-month findings guarantee · rate card effective 2026-08-19Scope and license, stated plainly
Aeternus Dynamics LLC holds no CSLB contractor license. This page is not an offer or advertisement to perform construction, repair, improvement, or the supervision of means and methods, and it may not be read as one (Business and Professions Code §7027.1). This service is review and documentation only.
On work we perform for you, you are the bidder of record and the contractor of record: we never sign your bid, never sign as your contractor of record, and never perform, direct, schedule, or supervise any physical work. We do not run your payroll. We never sign a certification on your behalf — that is a sworn statement by the contractor and it stays with you — and portal submission is not part of this service; working inside your own portal account is a separately published add-on, on your instruction and under your certification. We do not represent you before the Department of Industrial Relations or the Labor Commissioner, do not respond to a Civil Wage and Penalty Assessment, and do not issue legal conclusions. Dollar exposure estimates are conservative planning figures produced from the statutory ranges, not predictions and not legal opinions. Aeternus Dynamics is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice. See our Terms & Disclosures.
Questions
What contractors ask about this one.
Do you replace my payroll company?
No. Your payroll company still runs payroll. We read what comes out of it against the wage determination that governs the job, weekly, before you submit. If you already have a system you like, keep it. We work from its output.
Why won’t you just submit it for us?
Because the certification on a certified payroll is a sworn statement by the contractor about the contractor’s own records. Signing it for you would put our name on your representation and your liability in our hands, and neither of those is honest. If you want us working inside your portal account on a project, that is a published add-on of $250 per month per project.
What exactly is the findings guarantee?
If the first full month of review turns up zero findings on a payroll you believed was clean, that month is free. It is bounded to one month and one project cycle, and we offer it because the engine finds things. If we find nothing, you have a written record that your payroll was clean and you paid nothing for it.
What if my payroll is a mess from earlier in the job?
Retroactive reconstruction is real work and it is surcharged at +50%, published rather than hidden. Historic payroll arrives as scanned paper, determinations have changed since, and there is no clean data path. We would rather tell you the number up front than discover it in the invoice.
Can you tell me what a violation will actually cost?
We give you a conservative estimate built from the statutory range, and we tell you it is a range. Labor Code §1775 tops out at $200 per day per worker. That is a ceiling the Labor Commissioner sets within, not a guaranteed bill. The floor moves with your record: $40 a day as standard, waived altogether for a good-faith mistake you corrected promptly and voluntarily; $80 if you have been assessed prevailing-wage penalties on another contract in the previous three years; and $120 if the Labor Commissioner finds the violation was willful. Anyone quoting you only the ceiling is selling fear.
Does this help with the prime-contractor safe harbour?
It is one of its conditions. Labor Code §1777.7(e) protects a prime from a sub’s apprenticeship violation only where the prime included the required clauses in the subcontract, continually monitored the sub’s apprentice use through periodic certified-payroll review, took corrective action, and obtained a signed compliance declaration before final payment. This service and roster monitoring are how those duties get performed and documented. Whether the safe harbour applies to any particular situation is a legal question for your counsel.
How do I know the review actually works?
Every payroll passes a statute-cited pre-flight gate read against the governing DIR wage determination, with verified DAS apprenticeship records carried into the same gate — DIR publishes no public apprentice-registration lookup, so those records are entered rather than fetched. Every finding comes back with the statute it is drawn from, so you can check the work against the code rather than take our word for it, and a person reads every finding before it reaches you. If the first full month turns up nothing on a payroll you believed was clean, that month is free.
Configure and sign it yourself → Pick the services, see the estimate, sign online.
Aeternus Dynamics uses AI-assisted tools to help prepare and check compliance documents; all deliverables are reviewed by a qualified human before submission or use. Aeternus Dynamics is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice. Statutory references are provided for orientation and are not legal advice; verify against the current text and the determination governing your job. Prices on this page are the current published rates for the Compliance Desk, effective 2026-08-19, and govern where they differ from older per-line rates listed elsewhere on this site. See our Terms & Disclosures.
Send one week of payroll. See what comes back.
The free entry point to the desk is the Sub Roster Check. But if certified payroll is the fire, say so in the email and we will talk about the project count first.
Email hello@aeternusdynamics.com