Wage and Hour
Your Workplace Rights*
Wage and hour help: Working off the clock? Overtime Calculator Are you really exempt?
Recordkeeping
What Kind Of Time & Pay Records Should Be Kept & Maintained By Your Employer?
The Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) sets minimum wage and overtime pay recordkeeping standards for employment subject to its provisions. Every covered employer must keep certain records on wages, hours, and other items for each non-exempt worker.
Although the FLSA does not require any particular form for the records, it does require that the minimum wage and overtime pay records include certain detailed identifying information about the employee and employment data about the hours worked and the wages earned. The basic employee overtime pay and minimum wage records that an employer must maintain and keep include the following:
1. Employee’s full name and social security number.
2. Address, including zip code.
3. Birth date, if younger than 19.
4. Sex and occupation.
5. Time and day of week when employee’s workweek begins.
6. Hours worked each day.
7. Total hours worked each workweek.
8. Basis on which employee’s wages are paid (e.g., “$10 per hour”, “$500 a week”, “piecework”)
9. Regular hourly pay rate.
10. Total daily or weekly straight-time earnings.
11. Total overtime earnings for the workweek.
12. All additions to or deductions from the employee’s wages.
13. Total wages paid each pay period.
14. Date of payment and the pay period covered by the payment.
How Long Should Your Wage & Hour Records Be Retained By Your Employer?
Each employer is required to preserve for at least three years payroll records, collective bargaining agreements, sales and purchase records, etc. and related recordkeeping. Records on which wage computations and calculations are based should be retained for two years, e.g., wage rate tables, work and time schedules, time cards and piece work tickets, and records of additions to or deductions from wages. The records may be kept at your employer’s place of employment or in a central records office.
What Kind Of Timekeeping Methods Must Your Employer Use?
Employers may use any timekeeping method they choose to track your time and hours worked. For example, they may use a time clock, have a timekeeper keep track of employee’s work hours, or tell their workers to write their own times on the records. Any timekeeping plan is permissible as long as it is complete and accurate.
Many employees work on a fixed schedule from which they seldom vary. The employer may keep a record showing the exact schedule of daily and weekly hours and merely indicate that the worker did follow the schedule. When a worker is on a job for a longer or shorter period of time than the schedule shows, the employer must record the number of hours the worker actually worked, on an exception basis
If Your Employer Fails To Keep & Maintain Records…
Your employer’s failure to keep adequate employee time and wage records should not prevent you from recovering the overtime pay and other unpaid wages that your employer owes you.
Where an employer fails to maintain accurate payroll records an employee can still carry his or her burden of proof under the FLSA if he or she can show he performed work for which he was improperly compensated and produces some evidence to show the amount and extent of that work as a matter of just and reasonable inference.
Because precise evidence of the hours worked by each individual is not available due to the failure of (employers) to keep adequate records, overtime pay workers may satisfy their burden with inexact or approximate evidence (i.e., they may not need to prove the precise hours worked). Employees can often meet their burden of proof in wage and hour lawsuits and overtime pay actions by their own testimony showing that they have, in fact, performed work for which they have not been properly compensated.
Once overtime employees establish a prima facie case, the burden shifts to the employer to come forward with evidence of the precise amount of work performed or evidence to negate the reasonableness of the inference to be drawn from the employees’ evidence of hours worked and wages earned.
* The information provided on this site is general in nature. It cannot substitute for a thorough evaluation of the unique facts of your case. Your case facts may point toward legal conclusions that differ from those summarized on this site. We strongly recommend that you obtain an individualized review of your case facts, whether it be by us or other qualified employment law counsel.
