Time Records: What Employers Must Keep (and You Should)

The twelve items in 29 CFR 516.2(a)

For each employee covered by the minimum wage, or the minimum wage and overtime rules, the employer must keep payroll or other records with:

1. Full name as used for Social Security, plus any employee number used in place of it on time or payroll records.
2. Home address, including ZIP code.
3. Date of birth, if under 19.
4. Sex and occupation.
5. The time of day and day of the week the employee’s workweek begins. One notation is enough if the whole workforce shares the same workweek.
6. The regular hourly rate for any week with overtime, the basis of pay (per hour, day, week, piece, commission), and the amount and nature of any payments excluded from the regular rate.
7. Hours worked each workday and total hours worked each workweek.
8. Total daily or weekly straight-time earnings, not counting the overtime premium.
9. Total premium pay for overtime hours, separate from the straight-time pay for those hours.
10. Total additions to and deductions from wages each pay period, with the dates, amounts and nature of each item in the employee’s own record.
11. Total wages paid each pay period.
12. The date of payment and the pay period it covers.

Exempt executive, administrative, professional and outside sales employees need a shorter list: items 1 to 5, 11 and 12, plus enough detail on the basis of pay to compute total pay for each period (29 CFR 516.3).

Workweek, workday and fixed schedules

Item 7 uses two defined terms. A workday is any fixed period of 24 consecutive hours, and a workweek is any fixed, regularly recurring period of 7 consecutive workdays. Overtime is counted per workweek, so the records need to show which hours fall in which week, not only which pay period.

For employees on a fixed schedule, 516.2(c) allows recording by exception: keep the normal daily and weekly schedule, mark each week it was followed, and record the exact hours in any week that was longer or shorter.

How long to keep them

Fact Sheet #21 adds where and how: the records may be kept at the workplace or a central records office, they must be open to inspection by the Wage and Hour Division, and the FLSA requires no particular form. Part 516 allows microfilm or electronic storage if clear copies can be produced (29 CFR 516.1(a)).

Two other clocks are worth knowing. Federal wage claims generally must be filed within 2 years, or 3 years for a willful violation (29 U.S.C. 255), which lines up with the 3-year payroll rule. And the IRS tells employers to keep employment tax records at least 4 years after the tax is due or paid, whichever is later. Your state’s rules may be longer; your state labor department can tell you.

A sample week, recorded the way 516.2 asks

Any timekeeping method is acceptable if it is complete and accurate, Fact Sheet #21 says: a time clock, a timekeeper, or employees writing down their own times. Here is one workweek, Sunday through Saturday, at $18.00 an hour, with the totals from the engine.

The pay items for that week:

• Regular rate (item 6): $18.00.
• Straight-time earnings for all 45:02 hours (item 8): $810.60.
• Overtime premium on the 5:02 over 40 (item 9): $45.30.
• Total for the week: $855.90.

Keeping item 8 and item 9 apart is not just tidiness. In a week like this one, where overtime is paid exactly as the FLSA requires, the item 9 premium is the qualified overtime that employers report in Form W-2 box 12, code TT for 2026–2028, the starting point for the worker’s federal overtime deduction; see the no tax on overtime guide. And the daily hours in item 7 are what a rounding or meal-break question gets checked against; the 7-minute rule guide covers rounding.

What workers should keep

The law puts the recordkeeping duty on the employer, but your own copy is useful if a paycheck ever looks wrong. The Wage and Hour Division lists copies of pay stubs and personal records of hours worked among the information that helps when a worker contacts it.

A simple set:

1. A daily hours log. In and out times, unpaid breaks, and the date, written the same day. The time card calculator can total it and save a copy on your own device.
2. Every pay stub, or at least the last one of each year with year-to-date totals.
3. Your schedule and any messages about extra shifts, schedule changes or work before and after your shift.
4. Your rate history: offer letters and raise notices.

Two years is the minimum worth keeping for wage questions, since federal claims generally have a 2-year limit (3 for willful violations). For tax purposes, the IRS says to keep records that support your return until its period of limitations runs out, generally 3 years after filing. Pay stubs that support a 2025 overtime deduction belong in that pile.

If your records and your employer’s don’t match, ask your employer first. Your state labor department or the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (1-866-487-9243) can investigate; they, not a calculator, decide what was due.

Next step

Record a week in the time card calculator. It adds the hours in minutes, shows each day and the workweek total in h:mm and decimal, splits overtime by workweek, and exports a CSV or PDF you can keep.