Chase certified payroll and flag prevailing wage gaps with DeepSeek and Airtable

Federal certified payroll deadlines do not wait for anyone. This workflow finds the subcontractors who have not filed their weekly certified payroll, chases them on a Monday schedule, checks the submissions that do arrive against your prevailing wage rates, logs every event in Airtable, and only pulls a human in when a wage shortfall needs correcting.

Last updated: November 2026.

Quick Overview

A weekly lane starts on Weekly Certified Payroll Window every Monday at 08:00: Read Subcontractors and Read Payroll Ledger pull the roster and the ledger from Airtable, Find Missing Payrolls works out who has not filed, Draft Payroll Chase writes the reminder, Parse Payroll Chase and Prepare Chase Ledger Rows normalise the result, Log Chase in Ledger records it, and Email Chase to Subcontractor sends it, followed by one chase summary to the compliance lead. The intake lane runs off the When Certified Payroll Arrives webhook at /certified-payroll: Read Prevailing Wage Rates pulls the wage rates, Check Submission Against Rates compares the submission with the rates and the subcontractor record, Submission Readable? rejects malformed payloads, Payroll Compliant? sends a good submission to the ledger with a receipt email, and a shortfall goes to Draft Wage Correction Request. Shortfall Beyond Grace? escalates what is still unresolved to the project manager and books a compliance review on the calendar.

How it works

1. Weekly Certified Payroll Window fires every Monday at 08:00.
2. Read Subcontractors reads the Payroll Subs table and Read Payroll Ledger reads the Payroll Ledger table, and Find Missing Payrolls works out which subcontractors have no payroll entry for the week.
3. Draft Payroll Chase runs on the Chase Model (deepseek-v4.1-flash) and writes a short WH-347 reminder, Parse Payroll Chase reads the draft back, Prepare Chase Ledger Rows and Log Chase in Ledger write the chase into the ledger, and Email Chase to Subcontractor sends it to the subcontractor contact email.
4. Reattach Chased Subs, Summarize Chases and Email Chase Summary to Compliance Lead send the compliance lead one summary of that run.
5. When Certified Payroll Arrives receives a POST on the /certified-payroll webhook, Read Prevailing Wage Rates reads the Payroll Rates table, and Check Submission Against Rates matches the submitted work week and wage lines against those rates and the subcontractor record.
6. Submission Readable? sends a payload with no usable lines down the malformed path, where Email Malformed Submission Notice tells the compliance lead the submission was rejected.
7. Payroll Compliant? sends a clean submission through Record Verified Payroll, Append Verified Payroll to Ledger and Email Verified Payroll Receipt, which confirms receipt to the subcontractor.
8. A submission that does not match the rates goes to Draft Wage Correction Request on the Correction Model and Email Correction Request to Subcontractor sends the correction request. Shortfall Beyond Grace? then decides what happens next: a shortfall beyond grace escalates to the project manager by email, and Hold Compliance Review books the review on the primary Google Calendar.

Setup

1. Connect the Airtable credential and check the base plus the three tables the workflow uses: Payroll Subs, Payroll Ledger and Payroll Rates.
2. Give Payroll Subs the subcontractor fields the chase needs, such as company name, contact email and project, and let the Payroll Ledger hold the event rows the workflow writes (event_id, event_type, sub_id, work_week and status).
3. Fill the Payroll Rates table with the prevailing wage rates per classification and project so Check Submission Against Rates has something to compare against.
4. Connect Gmail OAuth2 and replace the placeholder compliance lead and project manager recipient addresses used by the chase summary, the malformed submission notice and the shortfall escalation.
5. Connect Google Calendar OAuth2 for the Hold Compliance Review node and confirm the calendar it books into.
6. Point your payroll intake at the /certified-payroll webhook with a POST carrying the submission id, the subcontractor id, the work week and the wage lines, then confirm the Monday 08:00 schedule in your timezone.

Quick Answers

How does the weekly chase decide who to email?
Find Missing Payrolls compares the Payroll Subs roster with the Payroll Ledger for the week, and only subcontractors with no entry get a Draft Payroll Chase reminder.

What happens to a submission that arrives malformed?
Submission Readable? catches payloads with no usable lines, and Email Malformed Submission Notice tells the compliance lead the submission was rejected instead of logging it to the ledger.

What if the submitted wages do not match the prevailing wage record?
Payroll Compliant? routes it to Draft Wage Correction Request and the correction request is emailed to the subcontractor. If the shortfall is beyond grace it is escalated to the project manager and a compliance review is booked on the calendar.

Where is everything recorded?
Every chase and every verified submission is written to the Payroll Ledger table in Airtable with an event id, so both lanes share one audit trail.

Additional info

Built with n8n. Need an assessment on your business? Feel free to reach out at https://khmuhtadin.com/consultation/