Preserving and Retaining Your Records

April 13, 2006

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The federal government has certain requirements related to how and where you keep your records. According to those requirements, you must:

Keep your records at your place of business or at an established central recordkeeping location.
Keep your records safe, accessible, and open to inspection and transcription at any time by auditors from the Wage and Hour Division.
If your records are kept at a central location apart from your place of business, make the records available at the place of inspection within 72 hours after notice from the Wage and Hour Division.
Make any extensions, recomputations, or transcriptions of your records and submit them to the Wage and Hour Division, if the auditor makes such a request in writing.
Make a request to the Wage and Hour Division if you want to convert your old records to microfiche or microfilm, but you must have the equipment necessary to review them, should you be audited by the Wage and Hour Division.

Recordkeeping form or media. The law does not specify what form your records should take. Whatever method you use is sufficient if the records establish the information or data required by law. You may choose to keep the records on paper, on microfiche, on microfilm, or on your computer.

Warning

If you keep records on microfiche or microfilm, you must have the equipment available to read them, should Wage and Hour Division auditors drop in.

If you keep your records on your computer, make sure you have a backup on a disk.

Organization is the key. Records will not be considered adequate if the specified information must be computed from scattered, unrelated, or unintelligible sources. So, having a bunch of sticky notes in a folder that record your employee's information will not be considered proper recordkeeping.