Late Timesheets – Can You Delay Pay?

Employees who turn in late timesheets can be a challenging problem for employers. It is the employer’s obligation to pay employees on the established payday regardless of whether a timesheet has been submitted. Unfortunately, there is no exception to the law that allows an employer to withhold payment until the next payday or until the timesheet has been turned in. When you don’t have a timesheet, you can comply with the law by paying all of the wages that you reasonably know are due for an employee’s regularly scheduled work period. Straight time pay cannot be delayed.

Please keep in mind that normally, overtime pay earned in a particular workweek must also be paid on the regular pay day for the pay period in which the wages were earned. You may only delay payment for overtime wages that can’t be determined until after the regular pay period. The delayed payment of overtime wages earned in one payroll period must generally be no later than the payday for the next regular payroll period.

A proactive way to address this issue is to have a clear policy and procedure on reporting hours worked, including the deadlines.  Training your non-exempt staff and supervisors on the expectations for accurately completing time reporting records is key to ensuring that you are complying with wage payment requirements.   As a last resort, you can treat the issue as a disciplinary issue should it continue even after expectations have been clearly communicated. But holding the paycheck as a method to gain compliance could subject your company to potential wage claims for unpaid wages.

One solution to this issue is to upgrade your timekeeping system to one that uses technology to automatically track employee hours and calculate overtime. This way you never have to worry about an employee’s timesheet being late – it is the simplest alternative to laborious time card calculations, and time and attendance records are immediately available to you.

Contact GTM for more information about our Time and Attendance systems at (518) 373-4111.