Guide to How Long to Keep Employee Paystubs

For anyone who has been harboring the dream of being their own boss by investing in a business, there are tons of things and regulations that you will discover more on here! Legal papers that can help in identifying your employees and their paystubs showing hours worked and earnings are some of the things you are required to by law to maintain as discussed here. However, this does not mean you have to keep them forever, there is a specific duration for that but just how long should keeping these sensitive documents take? Continue reading to learn the answers to all these questions.

A minimum of two years if the duration you have to keep your employees’ paystub records if that was your first question; it may seem inconvenient to some people but you never when this sensitive information may come in handy. Employee paystubs are required to be kept for a minimum of two years for federal purposes but each state has a slightly different period for keeping these items, therefore, if you are unsure about the local regulations, be sure to check before throwing any wage-related items out.

The next question you should find an answer to is where to keep these sensitive documents; the answer is very simple; these documents need to be kept in a safe location that is easily accessible because you never when you may have to retrieve them. Another thing you should know about where you decide to keep this sensitive information is security; in as much as the place has to be easily accessible for convenience, it should has restricted access.

This may seem a little too much to some business owners, but given your employees’ sensitive information like social security numbers and addresses are on these documents, you can see why it is important to keep them under lock and key. You should know that the government is interested in and governs more than just employee-related documents, therefore, you need to know everything you are required to keep and for how long before getting rid of anything important.

Other important documents like purchase and sales records should be stored in the same location as the paystubs and other employee-related documents and given the same level of security. As you can see, these documents should be kept for at least two years although state rules may say otherwise. Now you know exactly how long you should keep employee paystubs.