How Long Must Employers Keep Time Records?

What “Payroll Records” Legally Means

When a company says it keeps payroll records, that phrase has a specific federal definition. 29 CFR 516.2(a) lists the data an employer must maintain for every nonexempt employee. Use it as a checklist to tell whether what you were handed is complete.

• Full name and any employee identifying number used on payroll
• Home address, including ZIP code
• Date of birth, if the employee is under 19
• Sex and occupation
• The time of day and day of week on which the employee’s workweek begins
• Regular hourly rate of pay and the basis on which wages are paid
• Hours worked each workday and total hours worked each workweek
• Total daily or weekly straight-time earnings
• Total overtime premium pay for the workweek
• Total additions to or deductions from wages each pay period
• Total wages paid each pay period
• Date of payment and the pay period the payment covers

The item almost nobody asks for

Look again at the workweek line. Your employer is legally required to have on file the exact day and hour your workweek starts, because that boundary determines which hours cross 40 and trigger overtime. Shift the workweek start and you can shift hours out of an overtime week entirely.

Almost no worker knows to request it, and it is one line of text. If you’re auditing your own pay, ask for it by name. Our guide to the FLSA workweek definition explains why that boundary matters, and how to read your pay stub walks through the earnings lines that should match these records.

The Gap Nobody Warns You About

One mismatch sits at the center of this whole topic, and it is why employer-side compliance articles miss the point for workers.

Your time cards only have to survive 2 years. Your wage claim can reach back 3.

29 CFR 516.6 puts time cards and the underlying wage-computation records in the two-year bucket. But 29 U.S.C. § 255(a) gives you two years to sue under the FLSA, or three years if the violation was willful, meaning the employer knew it was violating the law or showed reckless disregard for whether it was.

Do the subtraction. The exact evidence that proves an off-the-clock or unpaid-overtime claim is legally allowed to be shredded while your claim is still live.

Why waiting is expensive twice

The FLSA clock generally runs per paycheck, and it only stops when you actually file. In a collective action, it stops when you file your written consent to opt in, not when someone else files the case. Every month you wait, older weeks fall off the back end of your recoverable period while the records covering them age toward the shredder.

If you think you’re owed money, request your records now, not when you file. Our breakdown of the back pay and unpaid overtime statute of limitations covers the lookback math, and the back pay calculator gives you a dollar estimate once you know your hours.

If the records are already gone

Missing records are not the dead end they feel like. In Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co., 328 U.S. 680 (1946), the Supreme Court held that where an employer’s records are inadequate or nonexistent, the employee only has to show the amount and extent of uncompensated work by “just and reasonable inference.” The burden then shifts to the employer to produce evidence negating that inference.

Sloppy recordkeeping does not reward the boss. Still, an estimate backed by a contemporaneous personal log beats one reconstructed from memory two years later. See how to prove hours worked with no time clock for what that evidence looks like in practice.

State Rules That Run Longer Than Federal

Federal retention periods are the minimum. Several states make employers hold records longer, and where the two conflict, the longer window governs.

New York: 6 years

New York Labor Law § 195(4) requires employers to establish, maintain, and preserve for not less than six years contemporaneous, true, and accurate payroll records. That is double the federal payroll window and triple the federal time-card window.

California: 3 years

California Labor Code § 1174(d) requires payroll records showing daily hours worked and wages paid to be kept on file for not less than three years, at a central location in California or at the place of employment.

You will see “four years” quoted for California on a lot of websites. That number comes from practitioner advice tied to the four-year lookback available under California’s Unfair Competition Law (Business and Professions Code § 17200), not from a retention statute. The retention requirement is three years. The four-year advice is prudence, not law.

Washington: 3 years

Washington’s Department of Labor and Industries requires payroll records to be kept for at least three years, and separately gives employees the right to request copies.

The operating rule

Take the longest applicable window between federal and state law. One thing overrides both: a pending claim, agency audit, or litigation hold freezes destruction entirely. Once an employer is on notice of a dispute, “our retention period expired” stops being a defense for destroying the relevant records.

Retention rules also sit alongside other requirements that vary by state, such as the time clock rules for hourly employees and the rounding practices covered in our timesheet rounding guide.

How to Actually Get Your Own Punch History

This is where most articles stop and most readers actually start.

There is no federal right of access

The FLSA obligates your employer to keep records and to make them available to the Department of Labor on request. It does not give you a personal right to demand a copy. If you want your own time and payroll records, that right comes from state law, and state law varies a great deal.

Where the right exists, it has teeth

California: Labor Code § 226(b) and (c) let current or former employees request their payroll records orally or in writing. The employer must comply as soon as practicable and no later than 21 calendar days. Failure to comply within that window entitles the employee or the Labor Commissioner to recover a $750 penalty, and an employee may also sue for injunctive relief and recover costs and reasonable attorney’s fees.

Washington: employees may request copies of their payroll records at any reasonable time, and a copy of the full personnel file must be provided within 21 calendar days.

What a good request looks like

• Put it in writing and date it. Even where an oral request is legally valid, a written one starts a clock you can prove.
• Name the records specifically: time cards or punch detail, itemized wage statements, and pay records. “My records” is easy to answer partially.
• Give an exact date range. Start it earlier than you think you need.
• Ask for the workweek definition (the day and time your workweek begins). One sentence, high value.
• Send it to HR or payroll, and copy your personal email, not your work address. Work email access disappears the day you leave.
• Keep a copy of everything you send. Expect that a reasonable copying fee may apply in many states.

If they refuse or the records are gone

Escalate to your state labor agency, or contact the U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division at 1-866-4-US-WAGE (1-866-487-9243). Complaints are confidential, and you do not need the records in hand to file. Our walkthrough on filing a wage claim for unpaid hours covers what to bring and what happens next. If the underlying issue is unpaid work before or after your shift, working off the clock explains what counts.

Keep Your Own Record: The Version That Never Gets Purged

Employer retention is a floor, and it expires. Your own log never does. It is yours the day you’re hired and still yours the day after you leave, and no retention schedule can delete it.

The Department of Labor suggests it too. worker.gov, its worker-facing site, tells workers plainly that their employer must keep records of all wages paid and all hours worked, and then encourages workers to keep their own record of hours and pay anyway. The DOL publishes a timesheet app and printable calendars for exactly that purpose.

What a defensible personal log contains

• Date and day of week
• Clock-in and clock-out times
• Unpaid break start and end times
• Total hours for the shift
• Pay rate that applied
• A note field for anything unusual: worked through lunch, stayed late, off-the-clock task before the punch

Two qualities matter more than format. Contemporaneous beats reconstructed: an entry made the same day carries weight that a spreadsheet built from memory does not. And exportable beats trapped: a log you cannot get out of an app is a log you cannot hand to a claims examiner.

That is the gap TimeClock44 was built for. It handles multiple jobs with independent pay rates, breaks (including shifts that cross midnight), and a note per shift, then exports to CSV or PDF so your record leaves as a document rather than a screenshot. Everything stays on your device, and no account is required. If you’d rather work from a spreadsheet, our timecard calculator and the guide to tracking work hours get you the same result.

The best time to start a log is the first week of a job. The second best is today, while the employer’s records still exist.