Certified payroll services in New York, public jobs and private.
Books, payroll administration, tax planning, and every return you file — for New York trade companies, under one monthly fee.
In New York, private jobs aren’t always private.
Most contractors know Article 8 covers public work. Fewer know about Section 224-a, which since 2022 has pulled certain privately owned projects into the same rules — generally where construction costs top $5 million and at least 30% of the funding is public money.
And “public money” is broader than it sounds. Tax credits, abatements, below-market loans, and money from a local development agency can all count. Contractors who have never done a public job in their lives are finding out mid-project that they’re on prevailing wage, with certified payroll owed retroactively.
New York has also moved certified payroll onto an electronic system filed with the state Labor Department on a rolling schedule, and the agency that awarded your contract may still want its own copy on top of that.
There is also a registry now. Contractors and subcontractors have to be registered with the state before they start covered work, and the registration has to be renewed. It reaches further than most people expect — an owner or developer who lets an unregistered contractor on the job carries exposure of their own, which is why generals are asking for proof of registration before you mobilize.
We check the funding structure before you bid, not after you’ve priced the work wrong.
What one fee covers.
Your books, current
We keep them, or we watch 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. Certified payroll, electronic submission, fringe calculations, and crews working across state lines 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.
Two elections, not one.
New York’s top rate is among the highest anywhere, and if your work touches the five boroughs the city takes its own cut on top.
There is a workaround at each level. The state has a pass-through entity election, and New York City has a separate one. They are two separate opt-ins made in the same annual window early in the year, and electing the state one does not enter you into the city one.
The state election in particular has to be made early in the year it applies to — not at filing time. Miss that window and the option is gone for twelve months, no matter how good a year you had.
That deadline is the single most expensive date on a New York contractor’s calendar, and it passes in the spring while everybody is still thinking about last year’s return. We diarize it for every New York client.
Who this is for.
Owner-operated specialty trade contractors doing roughly $1.5 million to $25 million: electrical, mechanical, plumbing, HVAC, roofing, concrete, framing.
Upstate, Long Island, or the boroughs. If you bid public work, if a private job of yours has public money in it, or if your crews cross into New Jersey or Connecticut — that’s our lane. We handle the buildings you own alongside the company, because they’re one tax picture.
We’re in Alabama. It has never mattered.
Everything runs through a secure client portal — documents, questions, approvals, signatures. You’re not driving into an office and you’re not paying for overhead you don’t use.
Your certified payroll gets filed on time whether we’re forty miles away or a thousand.
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.