SCA Health and Welfare Fringe Checker API Reference

Beta. Checks one pay period of Service Contract Act health and welfare, employee by employee, for a fixed-rate wage determination: the required amount on all hours paid up to 40 a week (29 CFR 4.175 and 4.172), what was furnished as plan contributions and cash in lieu (4.177), the shortfall, and the Fact Sheet #67B recordkeeping problems. Product page and free test form.

Endpoint

Parameters

An unknown parameter is refused, so a typo never changes the result quietly. True and false may also be written yes and no.

Columns

A header row, then one row per employee. Case and spacing in column names do not matter, and a few other names are accepted (for example employee_id, contributions, cil). Blank money cells count as 0. Columns for names or Social Security numbers are refused.

Start from the CSV template or the sample with errors. The employees in the samples are invented.

Method

• Hours counted: all hours paid in the period, including paid vacation, sick leave and holidays, up to 40 per week. With weekly hour columns each week is capped at 40; without them the period total is capped at 40 times the number of weeks. If ytd_hw_hours is given, hours past 2,080 for the contract year are not counted.
• Required H&W: hours counted times the H&W rate, rounded to the cent.
• Furnished H&W: bona fide plan contributions plus cash in lieu, less any administrative costs or employee-paid amounts included in the contributions, which cannot be credited.
• Shortfall: required minus furnished, when positive. Each employee is checked on their own; an overpayment for one employee never covers another.
• Back wage exposure: the sum of the shortfalls for the period.

Report

The report never repeats your employee references. Join it back to your file by line.

Rule IDs

Source keys, as returned in every report:

• 29 CFR 4.170: furnishing fringe benefits, no offset by wages, separate records
• 29 CFR 4.171: bona fide fringe benefits
• 29 CFR 4.172: no deduction for administrative costs; 40 hours a week, 2,080 a year
• 29 CFR 4.175: health and welfare on all hours paid; average cost determinations
• 29 CFR 4.176: temporary and part-time employees
• 29 CFR 4.177: equivalent benefits and cash in lieu
• DOL Fact Sheet #67B: Meeting Requirements for SCA Fringe Benefits (October 2024)
• DOL Fact Sheet #67: The McNamara-O'Hara Service Contract Act (penalties and typical problems)
• DOL All Agency Memorandum No. 246 (July 16, 2024): end of average cost wage determinations
• SAM.gov All Agency Memorandums: All Agency Memorandum No. 252, the 2026 health and welfare rate
• GAO-21-11: Actions Needed to Improve DOL's Enforcement of Service Worker Wage Protections (2020)

Not checked

• Whether your wage determination is the right one for the contract, and whether its rate is the one in effect. Existing contracts change rates only when the contracting officer adds a revised wage determination.
• Whether each worker is a covered service employee and correctly classified.
• Whether your plans are bona fide under 29 CFR 4.171: written, funded, irrevocable and communicated to employees.
• Vacation, holiday and EO 13706 paid sick leave obligations. Paid sick leave under EO 13706 cannot be credited toward H&W.
• Whether cash in lieu was paid on the regular payday and whether the hours and amounts you entered are accurate.
• Average cost health and welfare wage determinations.

Example responses

A paid check of the clean sample (report shortened), and the findings from a demo run of the sample with errors. Both generated by running the real endpoint code.

{
  "requestId": "7f3c2a1e-5b8d-4c6f-9e0a-1d2b3c4d5e6f",
  "api": "sca-hw-fringe-checker",
  "mode": "paid",
  "charged": true,
  "priceCents": 10000,
  "balanceCents": 10000,
  "report": {
    "schemaVersion": 1,
    "status": "PASS",
    "summary": "Every employee received at least the required H&W, and no recordkeeping problems were found.",
    "parameters": {
      "wdType": "fixed",
      "eo13706": true,
      "hawaii": false,
      "periodWeeks": 1,
      "weeklyHours": false,
      "annualCapApplied": false,
      "rates": {
        "rate": "5.42",
        "basis": "default"
      },
      "rateMemo": "All Agency Memorandum No. 252",
      "rateEffective": "2026-08-10"
    },
    "totals": {
      "employees": 4,
      "passing": 4,
      "failing": 0,
      "required": "715.44",
      "furnished": "715.44",
      "backWageExposure": "0.00"
    },
    "employees": [
      {
        "line": 2,
        "hoursCounted": "40.00",
        "capped": true,
        "rate": "5.42",
        "required": "216.80",
        "furnished": "216.80",
        "notCreditable": "0.00",
        "shortfall": "0.00",
        "result": "PASS",
        "partTime": false
      },
      {
        "line": 3,
        "hoursCounted": "40.00",
        "capped": false,
        "rate": "5.42",
        "required": "216.80",
        "furnished": "216.80",
        "notCreditable": "0.00",
        "shortfall": "0.00",
        "result": "PASS",
        "partTime": false
      },
      {
        "line": 4,
        "hoursCounted": "20.00",
        "capped": false,
        "rate": "5.42",
        "required": "108.40",
        "furnished": "108.40",
        "notCreditable": "0.00",
        "shortfall": "0.00",
        "result": "PASS",
        "partTime": true
      },
      {
        "line": 5,
        "hoursCounted": "32.00",
        "capped": false,
        "rate": "5.42",
        "required": "173.44",
        "furnished": "173.44",
        "notCreditable": "0.00",
        "shortfall": "0.00",
        "result": "PASS",
        "partTime": true
      }
    ],
    "shortfallLines": [],
    "recordkeeping": [
      {
        "item": "separate",
        "label": "Wages kept separate from H&W fringe on payroll records",
        "status": "clear",
        "lines": [],
        "source": "fs67b"
      },
      {
        "item": "partTime",
        "label": "Part-time employees given pro-rated H&W",
        "status": "clear",
        "lines": [],
        "source": "fs67b"
      },
      {
        "item": "adminCosts",
        "label": "No administrative costs or fees credited against H&W",
        "status": "clear",
        "lines": [],
        "source": "fs67b"
      }
    ],
    "findingCount": 0,
    "findingCounts": {
      "error": 0,
      "warning": 0
    },
    "ruleCounts": {},
    "findings": [],
    "findingsTruncated": false,
    "notes": [
      "Default rate from All Agency Memorandum No. 252, effective 2026-08-10. Use the rate printed on your contract's wage determination if it is different: an existing contract keeps its rate until the contracting officer adds a revised wage determination."
    ],
    "scope": "A math check of the H&W amounts you entered against the published SCA rules. It is not a compliance determination, not legal advice and not DOL acceptance. A PASS means the arithmetic on these rows meets the rate you chose; your obligations under the contract remain yours.",
    "input": {
      "format": "json",
      "bytes": 444,
      "columns": [
        "admin_costs_credited",
        "cash_in_lieu",
        "cash_in_lieu_separate",
        "employee_ref",
        "hours_paid",
        "hw_hours_credited",
        "plan_contributions",
        "wage_rate_paid",
        "wd_wage_rate"
      ]
    },
    "inputSha256": "2a5c38e2661e1f52a42ffaab956ba51bb16c5fddcdaf7ac60bc8d934c6d945d3"
  }
}

[
  {
    "severity": "error",
    "ruleId": "SCA-HW-SHORTFALL",
    "path": "/employees/line[4]",
    "line": 4,
    "message": "Furnished H&W is below the required amount for this employee. The difference is owed to the employee as plan contributions or cash in lieu, and an overpayment for another employee does not cover it.",
    "source": "cfr4.172"
  },
  {
    "severity": "error",
    "ruleId": "SCA-PART-TIME",
    "path": "/employees/line[4]",
    "line": 4,
    "message": "A part-time employee received no H&W. Part-time employees are owed H&W pro-rated to the hours they were paid, and those a plan excludes are owed the cash equivalent. Fact Sheet #67B lists this as a common violation.",
    "source": "cfr4.176"
  },
  {
    "severity": "error",
    "ruleId": "SCA-ADMIN-COSTS",
    "path": "/employees/line[5]",
    "line": 5,
    "message": "Administrative costs or fees were counted as H&W. They are a business expense and cannot be credited, so they were taken out of the furnished amount. Fact Sheet #67B lists this as a common violation.",
    "source": "cfr4.172"
  },
  {
    "severity": "error",
    "ruleId": "SCA-HW-SHORTFALL",
    "path": "/employees/line[5]",
    "line": 5,
    "message": "Furnished H&W is below the required amount for this employee. The difference is owed to the employee as plan contributions or cash in lieu, and an overpayment for another employee does not cover it.",
    "source": "cfr4.172"
  },
  {
    "severity": "error",
    "ruleId": "SCA-HW-SHORTFALL",
    "path": "/employees/line[6]",
    "line": 6,
    "message": "Furnished H&W is below the required amount for this employee. The difference is owed to the employee as plan contributions or cash in lieu, and an overpayment for another employee does not cover it.",
    "source": "cfr4.172"
  },
  {
    "severity": "error",
    "ruleId": "SCA-WAGE-OFFSET",
    "path": "/employees/line[6]",
    "line": 6,
    "message": "This employee was paid above the wage determination rate, but wages above that rate cannot make up an H&W shortfall. H&W must be furnished separately and in addition to wages, so the shortfall is still owed.",
    "source": "cfr4.170"
  }
]

Errors

See the shared error table. Rejected with HTTP 400 and not charged: an average cost determination, a missing required column or parameter, a column this check does not use, an unreadable or negative number, a repeated employee_ref, a name or Social Security number column, weekly columns that do not match periodWeeks, and on the demo endpoint more than 10 employees. Example, an average cost determination (HTTP 400):

{
  "error": {
    "code": "input_error",
    "message": "This check supports fixed-rate (employee by employee) health and welfare wage determinations only. Average cost determinations work differently: contributions are averaged across everyone in the plan (29 CFR 4.175(b)), and DOL stopped issuing them for new contracts in All Agency Memorandum 246 (July 16, 2024). No result was produced and nothing was charged.",
    "requestId": "7f3c2a1e-5b8d-4c6f-9e0a-1d2b3c4d5e6f",
    "charged": false
  }
}

Code samples

curl -X POST "https://www.spreadrun.com/api/v1/sca-hw-fringe-checker?eo13706=true" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SPREADRUN_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet" \
  --data-binary @pay_period.xlsx