Your office manager rebuilds certified payroll by hand every week.
- Friday afternoon is somebody re-keying hours from the time-clock export into the certified payroll form, line by line, by hand.
- An operator ran the roller for two hours and the dozer the rest of the day, and the report shows him as one classification because nobody caught it until the audit letter.
- Three public jobs, three wage determinations, one spreadsheet, and the only person who knows how it works is the one who built it.
This page settles one job: turning the time-tracking export you already have into the weekly certified payroll report, with the classifications and rates you have set per contract applied the same way every time. You supply the wage determination and the classification decisions. Kairos supplies the software that applies them, and any line the rules cannot resolve goes to a person on your staff, not to a guess.
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From the time export to the signed report. Your rules, applied by software.
Contract rule setup
Each public contract holds the classifications, rates, and fringe schedule you have decided apply to it. Entered once, applied every week.
Time-export import
Reads the CSV or API feed your time-clock app already produces. No new app for the crew, no second place to enter hours.
Classification mapping
Hours are matched to the classification you set for that task on that contract. An operator on two machines in one day gets two lines, not one.
Exception queue
Anything the rules do not resolve cleanly goes to a named person with the context attached. The software never guesses a rate.
Weekly report output
The certified payroll report produced in the layout each awarding agency specifies, with every total traceable to the original entry.
Payroll and accounting hand-off
Classified hours flow to your payroll provider and QuickBooks from the same entry, so nobody keys the week twice.
Why does certified payroll take an office manager a day a week?
Because the information arrives in the wrong shape. The time-clock app or the foreman’s sheet records who was on which job for how many hours. The certified payroll report wants those same hours broken out by classification, with the rate and fringe that applied to each one, on the form the awarding agency prescribes, signed every week. Nothing in between does the conversion, so a person does: export, sort, look up, retype.
On a site-work job the conversion is harder than it looks. An operator who ran the dozer before lunch and a compactor after it may be two classifications in one day. A laborer who flagged traffic for an hour is a different line from the laborer who set pipe. The crew knows which was which; the time export does not, and the office reconstructs it from memory and text messages.
Multiply that by three open public jobs with three wage determinations and the spreadsheet becomes the only place the rules live. At that point the person who built it is the only person who can run it, and the week they are out is the week the report is late.
What does Kairos build, and what do you still own?
We build the software layer. It reads the time-tracking export you already produce, applies the classifications, rates, and fringe schedules you have entered for each contract, and produces the weekly report in the layout the agency asks for, with every total traceable back to the original time entries.
You own the rules. The wage determination, which classification applies to which work, how fringe is credited, and what the awarding agency will accept are decisions for you, your payroll provider, or your compliance advisor. Kairos does not interpret wage determinations and does not advise on prevailing-wage law. We encode the decisions you have already made so they are applied the same way every week, by software instead of by whoever is in the office on Friday.
When a line does not resolve cleanly, an hour entry with no classification, a rate missing for that contract, an employee on two jobs in one shift, the software does not guess. It routes that line to a named person on your staff with the context attached, and the report does not close until that person settles it.
When is this the wrong build?
If your payroll provider already produces compliant certified payroll from your time data and the only problem is that nobody finished setting the module up, finish setting it up. That is cheaper than anything we would build, and we will say so on the first call.
If classifications are decided after the fact by whoever is doing the report, the problem is a process problem. Software built on top of that will apply the inconsistency faster, not fix it. Settling who classifies hours, and when, is worth doing before a build and does not need us.
If you run one public job a year on a single crew, a careful spreadsheet and a Friday afternoon is probably the right tool. The case for building starts when public work is a standing part of the business and the report is eating a day a week of someone who has other work to do.
What does it connect to?
Custom software should sit alongside the tools you already pay for, not replace them. These are the connections we build most often for excavation and site-work contractors.
Time-tracking exports
CSV or API from the time-clock app or foreman sheet you already use. We start from the export you already produce, not a new one.
QuickBooks
Classified hours and job cost entries pushed to accounting so the office is not keying the same week twice.
Payroll providers
Hours with classifications attached sent to ADP, Gusto, Paychex, or whichever provider runs your paychecks.
Agency report layouts
The weekly report produced in the format each awarding agency specifies, set up per contract from the template you supply.
Job costing
The same classified hours land on the right job and cost code, so labor cost is current while the job is running.
Document storage
Signed reports, wage determinations, and supporting entries filed by job and week, retrievable when an audit letter arrives.
How long does it take, and what does it cost?
A first build covering contract setup, time-export import, classification mapping, the exception queue, and the weekly report output typically ships in six to ten weeks once the scope is defined. Payroll-provider and QuickBooks connections extend that, mostly because of how those systems handle authentication rather than the work on our side.
The price is fixed before any code is written. Each feature is priced in Kairos Units during scoping, converted to a total, and locked in the project agreement. We offer 0% payment plans, so the cost can be spread into equal monthly installments with nothing due before work begins.
Setting up your existing contracts, loading the rules you have already decided, and training the people who will work the exception queue are part of launch. After go-live, the Kairos Care plan covers hosting, patching, and continued development.
See how KU pricing worksFrequently asked questions
Does Kairos know prevailing-wage rules or interpret wage determinations?
No. The wage determination, the classification that applies to each kind of work, and the fringe rules are yours to decide with your payroll provider or compliance advisor. Kairos builds the software that applies those decisions to your time-tracking exports consistently every week. We do not provide prevailing-wage or labor-compliance advice.
What happens to hours the rules cannot classify?
They are routed to a person, not guessed. An entry with no classification, a rate missing for that contract, or an employee logged on two jobs in one shift goes into an exception queue with the context attached. A named person on your staff resolves it, and the weekly report does not close until every exception is settled.
Which time-tracking apps can it read?
Any that exports a CSV or offers an API, which covers the common ones. We start from the export your office already produces each week. If the export is missing a field the rules need, such as which task an operator was on, we scope the smallest change to the field process that gets it captured at time entry.
Can it produce the report in the format our awarding agency requires?
Yes, from the template you supply. Each contract is set up with the layout its agency specifies, whether that is a federal form or a state DOT template, and the agency’s own template is the source of truth. If an agency changes its format, the layout is updated for that contract without touching the others.
Does it replace our payroll provider?
No. Your provider keeps running paychecks and tax filings. The build sits between your time tracking and your payroll, so the classified hours flow to the paycheck and to the certified payroll report from one entry instead of two.
How long does it take, and what does it cost?
A first build covering contract rules, time import, classification mapping, the exception queue, and report output typically ships in six to ten weeks once scope is defined. The price is fixed before any code is written and locked in the project agreement, and 0% payment plans are available. Anything added later is quoted as a separate change order.
Get Friday afternoon back.
Tell us which time-clock app you use and how many public contracts are open. We will scope the build and quote a fixed price before any code is written.
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