QuickBooks Online doesn't do certified payroll. Here's what to do instead.

If you run payroll in QuickBooks Online and just won a public-works job, you've probably discovered the gap: QBO has no WH-347 report and no California eCPR support. QuickBooks' own documentation points certified-payroll features at QuickBooks Desktop with Enhanced Payroll — and even there, the built-in report needs Excel and manual cleanup.

Your actual options

  1. Switch to QuickBooks Desktop + a $395+ add-on. Tools like Sunburst's Certified Payroll Solution integrate with Desktop only. If you're on QBO, that's a platform migration to file a weekly form.
  2. Enterprise certified-payroll platforms. Powerful, but typical pricing runs $99–$300+/month plus setup — built for contractors with dedicated compliance staff, overkill for a crew of five on one or two public jobs a year.
  3. Hand-fill the forms. The WH-347 PDF plus, in California, retyping everything into the DIR's online eCPR form weekly — commonly 1–4 hours a week of duplicate data entry from your QBO payroll reports.
  4. Generate the forms from your QBO numbers in a browser tool. Keep payroll in QBO; pull each worker's hours and deductions from your payroll summary once a week into a form that produces the WH-347 PDF and the DIR eCPR XML with all the math done.

The browser workaround, step by step

  1. Run your normal payroll in QBO. Open the Payroll Summary by Employee for the week.
  2. In eCPR Express, your company, projects, and crew (names, classifications, rates) are already saved from week one — so you only type each worker's daily hours and that week's deduction amounts.
  3. Download the filled WH-347 PDF (official DOL form, Statement of Compliance included) and, for California jobs, the eCPR XML to upload at the DIR Public Works Portal.

First setup takes about ten minutes; each following week is two to five. Everything runs client-side — your payroll data and SSNs stay in your browser, never on a server.

What this doesn't do

Honesty matters in compliance tooling: this doesn't sync from QBO automatically (you key totals once a week), doesn't calculate prevailing-wage rates for you (those come from your wage determination), and doesn't e-file to agencies — in California you upload the XML and sign at the DIR portal yourself.

Generate your WH-347 + eCPR free →