Payroll Records - Act Part 3, Section 28
Last updated on September 9, 2024Contents:
Summary
Text of Legislation
Policy Interpretation
Related Information
Summary
This section sets out what information an employer must keep regarding current and past employees, for how long and where those records must be kept, and requires that the records be kept in English.
Text of Legislation
28. (1) For each employee, an employer must keep records of the following information:
(a) the employee's name, date of birth, occupation, telephone number and residential address;
(b) the date employment began;
(c) the employee's wage rate, whether paid hourly, on a salary basis or on a flat rate, piece rate, commission or other incentive basis;
(d) the hours worked by the employee on each day, regardless of whether the employee is paid on an hourly or other basis;
(e) the benefits paid to the employee by the employer;
(f) the employee's gross and net wages for each pay period;
(g) each deduction made from the employee's wages and the reason for it;
(h) the dates of the statutory holidays taken by the employee and the amounts paid by the employer;
(i) the dates of the annual vacation taken by the employee, the amounts paid by the employer and the days and amounts owing;
(j) how much money the employee has taken from the employee's time bank, how much remains, the amounts paid and dates taken.
(2) Payroll records must
(a) be in English,
(b) be kept at the employer's principal place of business in British Columbia, and
(c) be retained by the employer for 4 years after the date on which the payroll records were created.
Policy Interpretation
Subsection (1)
Employers are required to keep records as specified in this section for all employees.
Subsection (2)
This subsection requires that the records noted in s.28 (1) must be kept in English at the employer's principal place of business in B.C. for no less than four years after the record is created.
If an employer does not have a physical place of business in B.C., the records must still be kept in a format such that they are available to be produced to the Employment Standards Branch when and as requested.
Employers are required to keep records of all employees’ hours of work regardless of how they are paid or what work they perform.
In the absence of payroll records kept by an employer in accordance with this section of the Act, the Branch will consider records supplied by the employee for the purpose of calculating outstanding wages.
Failure to keep payroll records
An employer who is named in a determination for failure to keep records is liable for an escalating monetary penalty pursuant to s.98 of the Act.
Employees covered by a collective agreement
Section 3 provides that parties to a collective agreement may not negotiate terms and conditions that do not meet or exceed the standards set out in section 28. Where there is a collective agreement, the enforcement of matters relating to section 28 is through the grievance procedure, not through the enforcement provisions of the Act.
Related Information
Related sections of the Act or Regulation
ESA
ESR