Title: Late Wages & Time Sheets
Are companies allowed to withhold wages, or pay late wages to an employee who submits an inaccurate or late timesheet, or who doesn’t turn in a time sheet at all? We were recently told by our company that they do not have to pay us if we do not turn in timesheets.
A lot of the employees have experienced paycheck discrepancies in the form of late wages. Most of the late wages are overtime wages. The company eventually pays the wages but some employees have waited up to a month to receive their owed wages.
The company claims that these late wages are due to employees submitting inaccurate timesheets or failing to submit a timesheet. This claim has frustrated the majority of employees who turn in their time sheets without error and on-time.
Even those employees have experience late wages. When the company finally issues the owed wages, the late wages are sometimes not accurately listed on our paychecks as adjustments or corrections. Management will simply add a few hours onto a future paycheck instead of submitting a correction to payroll.
This has been going on for about a year now. In the beginning the company blamed the discrepancies on the payroll department. But now the blame has shifted to the employees submitting inaccurate time sheets or not submitting a timesheet.
Hi Anonymous,
Thank you for your question. Employers in California are obligated to pay all wages that they reasonably know are due, in full and on-time. (Labor Code, § 206, subd. (a).) There is no exception for inaccurate or missing time sheets, even if it is the fault of the employee.
When it comes to missing or inaccurate time sheets, the real question is this: which wages did the employer reasonably know were due? If there was some amount of wages that were undisputed, those wages must be paid on time.
For example, if the employee fails to submit a time sheet and the employer reasonably knows that the employee worked at least 30 hours, but is uncertain whether the employee worked more than that, the employer would be obligated to pay for those 30 hours on the normal date the check is due.
If, however, the employer and employee have a good faith dispute about how much the employee is actually owed, the employer might have a right to withhold the disputed amount until the dispute is resolved. (Labor Code, § 206; Cal. Code Regs., tit. 8, § 13520.)
Anyway, I hope this information helps. Please remember that this information does not constitute legal advice and should not be relied on. Nor does it create an attorney-client relationship.
I wish you the best of luck in your situation!