No More Record Keeping for Professionals
By Ruder Ware Alumni
May 14, 2014
Wisconsin has always been a little different because it required employers to keep a record of the hours worked by a professional employee who was exempt from the overtime pay requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act. This requirement also applied to other exempt employees such as administrative or executive employees that were considered exempt from the FLSA requirements.
Recent legislation adopted by the Wisconsin Legislature and signed by the Governor removes the requirement of keeping a record of hours of work for exempt employees. 2013 Wisconsin Act 286 which is effective as of April 17, 2014 provides a specific exception to the record keeping requirement of Section 104.09 of the Wisconsin Statutes. Section 104.09 has been amended to provide that, “An employer is not required to keep a record of the hours of employment of an employee who is exempt under rules promulgated by the Department from the requirement under s. 103.02 that an employee being paid overtime compensation, as defined in s. 103.025(1)(c), and who is not compensated on an hourly rate basis.”
While this language is lengthy, the real impact of this language is that if you have an employee who is deemed exempt from overtime pay requirements and the employee is paid on a salary basis, an employer is not required to keep payroll records showing the hours worked by that employee. Employers may want to have an exempt employee sign a timesheet showing their regular hours of work for documentation purposes but a company is not required to do so as existed under the prior law. While many companies did not require these payroll timesheets be kept, it was a requirement of the law that has now been eliminated. Employers can now truly treat exempt employees as exempt professionals, executives or administrators that are not subject to overtime pay requirements.
Each employer may want to review their payroll procedures and consider implementing this new statutory provision.
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