Prevailing wage requirements (for example, public works or government-funded projects) have to be managed and classified manually. This is time‑consuming and error‑prone — especially when there are multiple job types, labor classes, and changing wage determinations. Mistakes can lead to underpayment, overpayment, compliance issues, and extra rework for payroll and project teams. The prevailing wage automation feature simplifies how prevailing wage data is stored, applied, and updated so payroll can be processed more accurately and efficiently.

Table of Contents

• ExakTime
  • Jobs
  • Labor Classes
• Wage Determination in Payroll
  • Adding Pay Rate Table
  • Fringe Benefit Setup
  • Automatically Setting Rates
• Validating and Running Payroll

ExakTime

Jobs

"Jobs" provides an expanded structure for managing project details. For any user who has jobs turned on, they are now a required field for any employee to choose when they clock in.

Adding a Job

• Click Add Job to create a new job.
• Complete the provided fields for the job.
  
  • ID – (Required) Each Job and Subjob requires a unique ID.
  • Name – (Required) Each Job and Subjob requires a unique Name + ID combination.
  • Start Date – Does not currently affect job availability.
  • End Date – Does not currently affect job availability.
  • Certified Job – Enables tagging of jobs for prevailing wage requirements. This flag ensures that a labor class is chosen when an employee clocks into a job.
  • Department – Assigning a department applies that department to all time records for the job.
  • What locations should be associated with this job? – Location Assignment: Select all, one, or multiple locations available for time tracking to the job.
    • When a job is created, locations are associated with that job.  This allows field employees the ability to clock in to the correct location.  When they choose a job on clock in they will only be shown associated locations.
• Click Save or Save + New when finished.

Labor Classes

"Labor Classes" support certified job workflows by documenting what classification a worker is working in for a time period.  If a job is flagged as certified, employees are required to choose a labor class when they clock in.

Adding a Labor Class

• Click Add Labor Class.
• Complete the labor class details:
  
  • ID – (Required) ID + Name combination must be unique. Duplicate IDs may be used only when paired with unique Names.
  • Name – (Required)
  • Assign the labor class to the available employees.
    • Employees are assigned to labor classes in ExakTime.
    • If an employee is assigned to a labor class, that labor class will be selectable for that employee when they clock in.
    • If an employee does not have any assigned labor classes, they will see the full list of labor classes when clocking into a certified job.
    • Labor class is a required selection if an employee clocks into a certified job and an optional selection if the job is not marked as certified.
  • Click Save or Save + New when finished.

Reviewing Labor Classes in Timecards

When jobs are enabled, they are a required field on timecards.  Timecards will now show the two new fields of Job and Labor Class. Jobs and labor classes will now both be selectable during the clock in process on ExakTime Mobile.

Syncing Time To Payroll

1. Once you are tracking job and labor class fields with employee time, you have the correct metadata included with employee time for admins to validate prevailing wage rates.  When an admin is ready to run payroll, time data is sent from ExakTime to Payroll via the Integrations module.
   • The integrations module can be found in the main navigation at the top.
     
   • Once you are in the Integrations module, run the sync from ExakTime to Payroll.  When the sync is run, it will ask for payroll information, so it knows which employee’s time to pull into Payroll.
     
   • The new metadata fields of job and labor class are now included in the sync to payroll with employees’ timecards. This allows the payroll system to validate pay rates.  The new fields are shown on the payroll details when a payroll is created.
     

Wage Determination in Payroll

An admin creates pay rate tables by navigating to the Wage Determination section under Setup.  The Wage Determination navigation page is only accessible to payroll admins and controllers.

The "Wage Determination" menu will show the following columns:

• Actions – An admin can copy or edit the pay rate table
• Job – The job that the pay rate table is tied to.  This is created and managed in ExakTime
• Effective Date – The date on which the pay rate table can be used to validate employee pay rates
• Expiration Date – The date on which the pay rate table stops being used to validate pay rates
• Classifications – The number of labor classifications included in the pay rate table
• Status – Active or Inactive

Adding Pay Rate Table

• Click Add Pay Rate Table to create a new pay rate table
  
• Set up the pay rate table with the provided fields. Click Save when finished.
  
  • Job - (Required) Specify the job to tell the system when to apply the validation and rules.
  • Effective Date - (Required)
  • Expiration Date
  • Status
  • "Automatically Set Rates" option
• Once these fields have been filled out, click Add Classification to add labor classifications to the rate table.
• Set up the classification:
  
  • Labor Class – Choose the labor class based on the labor classes added in ExakTime.
  • Base Rate – The hourly wage rate associated with regular hours for the labor classification.
  • OT Rate – The hourly overtime rate required to be paid for this labor class and job.
  • DT Rate – The hourly doubletime rate required to be paid for this labor class and job.
  • Fringe Rate – The hourly rate in bona fide fringe benefits that are required to be paid on this job for the labor class.
• As a helpful tool for administrators, there are two new pages under the setup menu that show what jobs and labor classes are being synced to payroll (that can be used for pay rate tables). These pages can be found in the following locations:
  • Setup > Jobs
  • Setup > Labor Classes
• After all desired labor classifications are added to the rate table, they will see them in the main grid.
  
• There are several constraints in place when it comes to editing and changing labor classifications in a rate table.  These constraints are in place to ensure the accuracy of the data is kept for rate validation.  The main constraints to be aware of, when setting up rate tables are:
  • A rate table can be made active/inactive at any time
  • A labor classification can be made active/inactive at any time, but cannot be deleted.
  • There cannot be more than 1 rate table for a given job.
  •  A labor classification can be edited.  This means an admin can change the rates associated with it.  If this happens, we will log all changes under the labor class name and show a history.  A screenshot is shown below of how the history will appear if a labor classification is edited.

Fringe Benefit Setup

An important component of validating employee pay is meeting prevailing wages, calculating how much each employee is making in Fringe benefits.  Fringe benefits are contributions made by an employer to a benefit plan for the employee.  These may include health insurance, retirement or pension, or sick leave.  As a reference, the U.S. Department of Labor defines fringe benefits on its website.

To properly track how much an employer is contributing to fringe benefits, our payroll system first has to know which benefits are counted toward the fringe calculation of prevailing wage.  An administrator can mark benefits as “Prevailing Wage” applicable on their company's benefits management screen.

• Navigate to the company benefits management screen by expanding Setup and clicking Benefits.
  
• The administrator marks a benefit as a prevailing wage benefit by toggling the “Prevailing Wage” toggle on the add/edit benefit screen.
  
• After this toggle is turned on, the admin sees a confirmation of the status on the company’s main benefits grid.
  
• Once a benefit is marked as a prevailing wage benefit at the company level, the flag is also shown for any employee who has that benefit.  The flag showing if an employee has a prevailing wage benefit can be seen in the "Benefits and Deductions" tab of the employee profile.
  
• In addition to benefits being paid on behalf of an employee, employers can also credit accrued time off for vacation or sick leave as part of their fringe benefit requirement that they must meet for prevailing wage.  If an administrator knows that their employees accrue time off in a bona fide plan, they can add this as a fringe credit on the employee’s profile. The fringe credit is added at the bottom of the employee’s benefits and deductions tab, as shown below.
  

Adding a Fringe Benefit

An employee can have as many fringe credits as needed. An admin adds a fringe credit by giving it a name, then specifying two data points.

1. The admin adds a dollar amount paid per hour for the credit accrued.  For example, if an employee is paid $40/hour for vacation time off, this value would be 40.
2. The admin adds an amount of time accrued per hour of work.  If the worker accrues .25 hours of vacation time for every hour of work they complete, this value would be .25.
3. These two values are multiplied to tell the system how much should be counted for the fringe benefit.

The admin will need to calculate the accrual rate for employees before entering them into the payroll system.

Once the proper benefits are flagged as prevailing wage benefits and employees have the correct fringe credits associated with their profiles, an administrator can run payroll and let the system do the work.

Automatically Setting Rates

The prevailing wage automation feature helps payroll administrators by not having to manage separate rate codes for new prevailing wage rates.  This time savings comes from the “Automatically Set Rates” toggle on the rate table.  In order to understand this, it is first important to understand how administrators manage employee pay in the payroll system. 

• For background, the way an employee is paid is based on their “Compensations” tab.  An employee’s time, when it comes into Payroll, is associated with a rate code.  Rate codes are associated with the hourly pay amount on the compensation tab of an employee.  An example of this is shown in the screenshot below.
  
• In a prevailing wage pay rate table, there is a toggle to “Automatically Set Rates.”
  
• If this toggle is enabled, the payroll system will set earning rates in the following way:
  • When employee time is synced into payroll by an administrator, payroll will check to see if a user has time that matches the active rate table.
  • If the employee has a time record that matches the rate table, it will look to see how much they are being paid hourly.
  • If their hourly earnings amount is below the prevailing wage in the rate table, the payroll system will overwrite the compensation amount with the prevailing wage rate.
  • If the employee’s hourly earning rate is at or above the prevailing wage rate, the payroll system will send the time over unchanged.

• Once earning rates are changed for an employee, a new system-generated rate code will be shown in two places, documenting the change

  • The new rate code will show on payroll items
  • The new rate code will show on employee compensation

  

• The new earnings will be shown with a rate code that is system-generated with the following naming convention:
  • [Job] – [labor class] – [time category]
• If the “Automatically Set Rates” toggle is not set, no earning rates will be overwritten when time is synced.  The pay rate table will just be used to validate pay in a payroll.
• The “Automatically Set Rates” toggle will only overwrite earnings for the following categories of pay:
  • Regular time
  • Overtime
  • Doubletime
• *This means that the feature does not automatically add earnings if the fringe is lower than expected.  An admin will have to adjust this manually after checking the employee's pay in the payroll.

Validating and Running Payroll

After compensations, benefits, and rate tables are configured properly, a payroll administrator is ready to complete a payroll run. During a payroll run, you will now see a new “Wage Determination” tab that validates employee pay amounts against what was added to the relevant pay rate tables. The "Wage Determination" tab will show for payrolls in with a "Draft" status and is located next to the "Contractors" tab.

• From the "Wage Determination" tab, admins can click the “Validate Payroll” button to check employee rates against active pay rate tables.
• Once the system has validated employee pay, it will show employees on the page with alerts where pay does not meet prevailing wages.
  
• Several components of the results on the Wage Determination tab are important.
  • Employee display – Any employee who has pay in the payroll that matches an active rate table’s job and labor class is shown.
  • The validation for each employee runs two checks against employee pay:
    • Individual Rate Checks – These check each rate type (regular, OT, DT, Fringe) against what the rate table states the employee should make.  If an individual rate check shows a rate lower than prevailing wage, the corresponding rate is highlighted in red.
      
    • Total Package Rate Checks – The second type of check that happens is a total package rate check.  Here, the system looks at the relevant active rate table and adds the base rate to the fringe rate, then compares it to the same sum from the employee’s pay.
    • An example is shown below.  In this case, the employee’s total package prevailing wage rate is $58/hr ($30+$28).  The employee is making only $26 in total package, so we show an alert below the employee explaining this.
      
  • Employees with any alerts on their pay are shown on the tab with a flag.
  • Both the individual rate check as well as the total package check are necessary due to a condition of prevailing wage compliance.   This condition states that companies have the option to offset fringe pay requirements with extra cash in an employee’s regular pay.  For example, if an employee is supposed to make $30 in regular pay and $10 in fringe, the employer can meet these requirements by paying $35 in wages and $5 in benefits OR by paying $30 and $10.  An example is shown here on the Department of Labor’s website.  Since this is the case, an admin may choose to pay fringe amounts as extra wages and this is their choice.

Filtering Employee List

The "Wage Determination" tab allows admins to search by an employee’s name and filter the list of employees to only show flagged employees. Each employee’s details can be expanded or collapsed using the arrow on the right side of their pay detail.

Updating Employee Pay

If an employee’s pay must be updated, an admin can:

• Update the employee’s compensation in the employee profile.
• Resync time data to payroll
• Use the “Refresh Validation” button on the "Wage Determination" tab to check pay again. 

Confirming Employee Pay Rate

There are two additional features on the Wage Determination tab that help an admin confirm that they are paying their employees the correct rate.

• The first is a link to view the relevant pay rate table for an employee.  This takes the user to the rate table to check the details if necessary.
• The second is an informational tooltip that displays the details of how the fringe hourly rate was arrived at.  When clicked, the “i” icon shows a grid with benefit contributions and hourly amounts used to arrive at the fringe hourly payment to the employee.