Can A Manager Alter My Timesheet?

1. Can Managers Cut or Edit Employee Timesheets?

NO, managers are strictly prohibited from cutting or altering worked time.

Under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) (29 U.S.C. § 201 et seq.) and Missouri minimum wage and hour laws (RSMo § 290.520):

• Mandatory Compensation for All Hours Worked: An employer must compensate non-exempt employees for all hours actually worked (often referred to as time "suffered or permitted to work").

• Unapproved Hours: If an employee works unauthorized hours or overtime, the employer must still pay them for that time. The employer may discipline or write up the employee for violating scheduling rules, but they cannot legally edit the timesheet, shave off hours, or label time worked as "falsified" or "unapproved" to avoid paying wages.

• Accuracy Requirement (29 C.F.R. § 516.2): Employers are legally required to maintain accurate, unaltered records of the exact hours worked each day by employees.

2. When IS a Manager Allowed to Adjust a Timesheet?

A manager is only permitted to adjust a timesheet under very narrow, corrective circumstances, such as:

1. Correcting Mistakes: Fixing an unintentional error (e.g., an employee forgot to clock out for lunch or clocked in twice).

2. Employee Agreement: Reflecting the actual hours the employee worked when the recorded time was objectively inaccurate.

Any managerial edit that reduces hours actually worked to avoid paying overtime, reduce payroll costs, or discipline an employee constitutes illegal wage theft.

3. Key Legal Violations & Practices Established in the Statements

Based on the verified witness statements from former employees, several specific timekeeping practices violate state and federal labor laws:

A. Off-the-Books Cash Payments for Missing Hours

• The Rule: All compensation for hours worked must be processed through official payroll, subject to proper tax withholdings and reflected on pay stubs.

• The Violation: Altering a timesheet to remove worked hours and subsequently paying the employee in cash out of a desk drawer (as documented in Katie Oldham's supplemental statement regarding a $46 cash payment) violates FLSA recordkeeping mandates and tax withholding regulations.

B. Targeted "Witch Hunts" and Retroactive Time Edits

• The Rule: Employers cannot retroactively alter past time logs or selectively audit documentation blocks to penalize employees.

• The Violation: Digging through months of past app records to penalize an employee over a single 30-minute block of documentation time (Carrie Jackson) or issuing write-ups for "falsifying time" when the employee was physically present and working (Natalie Gittings) violates FLSA compliance standards.

C. Uncompensated Travel Time Between Shifts

• The Rule (29 C.F.R. § 785.38): Under the FLSA "continuous workday" rule, travel between job sites during a single workday (e.g., traveling between different client homes or facilities across consecutive shifts) is compensable work time.

• The Violation: Scheduling back-to-back groups in different physical locations without allocating paid drive time—forcing employees to absorb unpaid travel time while the agency bills Medicaid continuous shifts—is illegal under federal wage law.

D. Mandatory Off-the-Clock Work & Training

• The Rule: Time spent completing mandatory paperwork, incident reports, or required employee training modules is compensable work time.

• The Violation: Requiring staff to complete mandatory training during direct-care shifts or forcing employees to complete incident reports off-the-clock without pay violates both FLSA standards and state Medicaid provider rules.

E. Illegal Withholding of Earned PTO Upon Separation

• The Rule: When an employee earns Paid Time Off (PTO) under company policy, withholding accrued PTO upon termination or resignation as a financial penalty constitutes wage theft.

4. Establishing a "Pattern and Practice"

Under the FLSA, when multiple employees—such as Katie Oldham (hours removed/paid in cash), Natalie Gittings (reprimanded for unapproved hours worked and unpaid overtime), and Carrie Jackson (uncompensated travel time and withheld PTO)—report the exact same timecard alterations, it elevates the employer's conduct from simple administrative error to a willful violation.

Willful violations extend the federal statute of limitations for back-pay recovery from 2 years to 3 years and open the organization to mandatory liquidated (double) damages and federal payroll audits.