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Record-keeping obligations

Australian employers must make and keep employee records for seven years. The rules sit in the Fair Work Act and the Fair Work Regulations, and they're not just about pay: they cover the paper trail of the whole employment relationship. Records must be legible, in English, readily accessible to a Fair Work Inspector, and private — and they can't be false or misleading.

What you must keep

  • Basics: name, start date, employment type (full-time, part-time, casual), and the employer's details.
  • Pay: rates, gross and net amounts, loadings, penalties, allowances, bonuses and deductions.
  • Hours: overtime hours where penalty rates or loadings turn on them, plus any averaging or individual flexibility agreements.
  • Leave: leave taken and balances accrued.
  • Super: contributions, payment dates and fund details.
  • Endings: how and by whom employment was terminated.

Payslips are a separate, parallel duty — records are what you keep; payslips are what you give.

Why good records protect you

In an underpayment dispute, missing records flip the script: a reverse onus can apply, leaving the employer to disprove the claim. Accurate time records are the small business's best defence — and the simplest way to keep them accurate is to capture hours as they happen, not reconstruct them later.

Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) s 535 and Fair Work Regulations 2009 Pt 3-6 — enforced by Fair Work Inspectors; see the Fair Work Ombudsman's record-keeping guidance.

Tommy's time clock records who worked, when, and on which shift as it happens — building the accurate, timestamped trail the seven-year rule expects.

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