Prevailing wage payroll in Minnesota, state and federal both.
Books, payroll administration, tax planning, and every return you file — for Minnesota trade companies, under one monthly fee.
Two rulebooks on the same job.
Minnesota has its own prevailing wage law covering state-funded work, and plenty of jobs also carry federal Davis-Bacon money on top. When both apply, you follow the higher rate — classification by classification, not job by job.
That’s where it goes wrong. A crew can be under the state schedule for one trade and the federal one for another, on the same site, in the same week. Add the seasonal compression Minnesota contractors live with — a construction year squeezed into the months the ground allows — and certified payroll becomes the thing that slips while you’re trying to finish before the freeze.
We keep it running weekly so it isn’t waiting for you in November.
Payroll here got heavier this year as well. The state paid leave program went live in January, it applies to every employer in Minnesota regardless of size, and the premium is split between you and your crew and comes out of every payroll run. It has to be set up correctly in your payroll system and reconciled like anything else, and it is not optional.
What one fee covers.
Your books, current
We keep them, or we monitor the ones you keep. Either way somebody is in your numbers every month, which is the only way any of the rest of this works.
Payroll, administered
Inside your own payroll account. You stay the employer, your money stays yours. State and federal certified payroll, fringe calculations, and multi-state crews are ordinary work here.
Planning and every return
Moves made during the year, not reported after it. Then the company return and your personal return, same fee.
Certified and prevailing-wage payroll is priced on its own line, per active project.
A short season and a long tax bill.
Minnesota’s top rate is among the highest in the country, and it arrives on a business whose revenue is packed into eight or nine months of the year.
That combination makes timing worth real money here in a way it isn’t everywhere. When equipment gets bought, when retirement contributions get funded, how owner compensation is set against a lumpy revenue year, and whether the pass-through entity election makes sense — each of those is a decision with a deadline, and most of the deadlines fall while you’re still busy on site.
The state’s pass-through entity election is the biggest single lever, and like everywhere else it’s elective. Nobody enrolls you.
The rest of it is ordinary planning done at the right time of year rather than after the year has closed.
Who this is for.
Owner-operated specialty trade contractors doing roughly $1.5 million to $25 million: electrical, mechanical, plumbing, HVAC, roofing, concrete, framing.
The Twin Cities, Rochester, Duluth, St. Cloud. If you bid public work, if your crews cross into Wisconsin or the Dakotas, or if you own the shop and the yard as well as the business — that’s our lane.
We’re in Alabama. It has never mattered.
Everything runs through a secure client portal — documents, questions, approvals, signatures. You’re not driving anywhere and you’re not paying for an office you’ll never sit in.
Your certified payroll gets filed on time whether we’re forty miles away or a thousand.
Minnesota draws a line. We stay on our side of it.
Minnesota is specific about who may do what with financial statements. We prepare yours from your own records, and we do not express an opinion on them — which is exactly what the state allows a firm like ours to do.
Every set of statements we hand you carries the disclaimer Minnesota requires of a firm that is not licensed by or registered with the Minnesota Board of Accountancy. It is the Board’s own wording, and it goes on the statements whether anybody asks for it or not.
If your bank or your bonding company needs statements with an opinion behind them, that is a different engagement and a different kind of firm. We will introduce you to one and keep working alongside them.
Let’s find out what you’re carrying.
Thirty minutes, no charge, no pitch deck. Tell us what you build and how your books are kept, and we’ll tell you straight whether we can help.