Export Required Data for Certified Payroll

📄 Export Required Data for Certified Payroll

Certified payroll reports are built from exported payroll and time data, not reconstructed after the fact. If you cannot cleanly export the required data from your systems, certified payroll becomes manual guesswork and audit risk increases.

This page explains what data you need and how to export it reliably from common payroll and time systems.

What Data You Must Export

Every certified payroll report requires:

Employee identifying information
Job or project worked
Classification worked
Hours by classification
Base rate and fringe treatment
Gross pay, deductions, and net pay

If any of these elements are missing or unclear, the report is incomplete.

Export Pay Stub Data (Payroll Systems)

Payroll exports are the source of truth for what was paid.

Paychex

Export:

Employee pay stubs or detailed payroll register
Earnings broken out by type (base, fringe if paid in cash)
Deductions and net pay
Pay period dates aligned to certified payroll weeks

Avoid summary exports that collapse multiple jobs or classifications.

Inova

Export:

Detailed payroll reports with employee-level earnings
Separate visibility into base pay and fringe treatment
Pay period detail that aligns with reported hours

Confirm that payroll exports can be reconciled back to time entries.

Paylocity

Export:

Payroll register with labor allocation detail
Earnings broken out by pay component
Employee-level detail by pay period

Paylocity works well for certified payroll when labor categories are exported cleanly.

Paycor

Export:

Payroll registers that include job or labor distribution
Earnings components separated for base and fringe
Employee-level records, not department summaries

Verify that classification data survives the export.

ADP, UKG, Dayforce

Across these systems, look for:

Detailed payroll registers (not summaries)
Clear separation of base wages and fringe
Job, project, or labor allocation fields included in the export

If classifications are inferred from rates rather than explicit fields, reporting will break.

Export Hours Worked (Time Systems)

Time exports must show facts only: who worked, where, and in what role.

From systems such as:

Paychex Time
Inova
Paylocity Time
Paycor Time
Workday Time
UKG Time
QuickBooks Time (TSheets)
ExakTime
ClockShark
WorkMax
HeavyJob
TCR / TCP / FieldClix

Export:

Employee identifier
Job or project
Classification or labor code
Hours worked by day or week

Free-text notes are not a substitute for structured classification fields.

Match Hours to Wage Determinations

After exporting payroll and time data:

Match each job and classification to the correct wage determination
Confirm the determination was effective during the work period
Verify that hours, rates, and classifications align

Most certified payroll errors originate at this step – not in the report format.

Common Export Problems

Exporting summaries instead of detail
Losing classification data during export
Combining multiple jobs into a single line
Using reports that cannot be reconciled to pay stubs

If you can’t trace a certified payroll line back to both time and payroll, expect rejections or follow-up questions.

Key Takeaway

Certified payroll starts with clean, detailed exports – not report templates.
If payroll and time data can be exported with job, classification, and pay clearly intact, certified payroll becomes repeatable whether you stay manual or automate later.