Recordkeeping Under the Fair Labor Standards Act

Under the Fair Labor Standards Act’s minimum wage provisions, employers are required to keep records for employees. Those records must be kept “safe and accessible” at the place of employment or at a central record keeping office. The records must be open at any time to inspection and transcription by representatives of the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, or if the records are not on site, within 72 hours of the time the employer receives notice from a Wage and Hour representative to produce them. The following guidelines on what data employers should keep about employees help ensure efforts to comply with the FLSA.

No particular order or form of record is required so long as the following information and data about each employee are set forth:

1. Name (as used in Social Security records) and the employee’s identification symbol or number if it is used in place of his name on any time, work, or payroll records;

2. Home address including ZIP code;

3. Date of birth (if under 19);

4. Sex and occupation in which employed. Sex may be indicated by use of Mr., Mrs. or Miss;

5. Time of day and day of the week on which the employee’s workweek begins. If the employee is part of a work force or employed in an establishment in which all employees have a workweek beginning at the same time on the same day, a single notation of time and day will suffice for the entire establishment or work force (but a separate notation is necessary for any employee or group of employees having a workweek beginning and ending at a different time);

6. Regular hourly rate of pay for any week in which overtime is worked and overtime excess compensation is due and;

(a) basis on which such wages are paid such as “$2.00 hour”; “$16.00 day”; “$80.00 per week plus 5 percent commission on sales over $800.00″, etc; and

(b) The amount and nature of each payment excluded from the “regular rate” of pay under � 7(e) of the FLSA;

7. The hours worked each work day and the total hours worked each workweek;

8. Total daily or weekly straight-time earnings or wages including all wages due during any overtime worked but excluding overtime excess compensation;

9. Total overtime excess compensation for the workweek (excess compensation for overtime is the amount over and above all straight-time earnings or wages also earned during overtime);

10. Total additions to or deductions from wages paid each pay period. Individual employee accounts must be maintained showing a record of dates, amounts and nature of items which make up the total additions and deductions:

11. Total wages paid each pay period;

12. Date of payment and the pay period covered by the payment. Where employees work on fixed schedules, an employer may maintain records showing the schedule of daily and weekly hours the employee normally worked and indicate by check mark, or statement, or other means that such hours were in fact actually worked by the employee. However, for weeks in which more or less than the scheduled hours are worked, the employer must show the exact number of hours worked each day and each week for such employee.