Keeping the right records

Thousands of employers have used our templates to get their records straight.

On this page:

Record-keeping is important
Basics about record-keeping
Giving out pay slips
Piecework records
Learning how to keep the right records

Record-keeping is important

Accurate record-keeping will help you:

keep a close eye on your finances
comply with the law
avoid fines and penalties.

Get your paperwork in order by using our online tools. We have templates to assist employers with pay slips and piecework records, as well as other employee records.

Basics about record-keeping

Making and keeping proper employee records is not only good business practice – it’s also the law. To comply with the law, employee records:

have to be written in English, and be clear and easy to access
can only be changed to correct an error (you need to keep details of the change made)
can't be false or misleading
have to include all the required information for each employee
have to be kept for 7 years.

For a full list of information that must be kept for each employee, go to our Record-keeping page. There are additional records you need to keep for pieceworkers. To comply with the law, you need to make and keep the full list of information for each employee

To download templates, go to our Record-keeping page.

For more information about rosters, and to download a template, go to our Rosters page.

Giving out pay slips

You must issue pay slips. Pay slips have to be given to an employee within 1 working day of pay day, even if they are on leave. They can be in either electronic form or hard copy.

Go to our Pay slips page to learn:

what needs to go on a pay slip
how to manage requests for pay slips
what happens if you don’t issue pay slips or they have the wrong information on them.

You can also use our free pay slip template (DOCX) (PDF) to help you get it right.

Piecework records

Under the Horticulture Award, employers need to keep 2 additional types of employee records that are specific to piecework. These records are:

a copy of each ‘piecework record’ given to their pieceworkers, which is a written record that employers must give to pieceworkers setting out specified details of their piece rates, and
a record of the hours worked and piece rates paid.

Understand all the rules that apply at Piecework records.

Employers can use our:

Piecework record template (DOCX) (PDF) to easily create a piecework record that meets the Award requirements
Piecework timesheet template (DOCX) (PDF) to record an employee’s hours of work and piece rate.

Covered by the Wine Award? You can learn more about these piecework agreements at How to use piece rates – Wine Award.

Learning to keep the right records

Our Record-keeping and pay slips online course will teach you how to make and manage employee records for your business. By completing the course you'll learn more about:

what employee records are and why they need to be kept
when employee records need to be made and how long they need to be stored
what pay slips are and what information need to be included in them
what tools and resources are available to help you manage your record-keeping and pay slips.

The online course is free and only takes about 25 minutes to complete.