What an Inspector Would Ask For

Attendance records are examined in a wage claim, a disciplinary challenge and occasionally a labour inspection.

A wage claim

Raw times for a named person over a period.

What was paid against what was recorded, with the difference explained.

The rounding configuration and its neutrality.

Break records, and whether deductions matched breaks taken.

Any pre-shift requirement, and whether it was paid.

A claim is usually built by reconstructing pay from the raw records, which is a reconstruction you can run yourself first.

A disciplinary challenge

The full file: allegation, evidence shared, meeting notes, decision, reasons, appeal.

The system checks that were run, including the ones that found nothing.

Comparators considered.

System status at that site for that period.

Absence of any of these is what decides these cases, more often than the facts.

A labour inspection

Records of hours actually worked.

Rest breaks, where prescribed.

Evidence that workers can see their own records.

Evidence that system failures did not produce unpaid time.

What cannot be produced afterwards

Failed punches, if only successes were stored.

The rounding setting as it was two years ago, if changes were not versioned.

System status at a past date, if faults were not logged.

Whether a worker was shown the policy, if delivery was not recorded.

Each is cheap to capture as habit and impossible to reconstruct, which is the entire argument.

The self-audit

Take three people and one month.

Reconstruct pay from the raw records.

Compare against what was paid.

Take one disciplinary file and read it as an outsider would.

Whatever you cannot answer, a claimant's representative would also be unable to answer — which means the matter turns on their account rather than on your records.

What to keep permanently

Rounding configuration history with dates.

Policy versions with delivery records.

System fault log by site.

Investigation authorisations.

Run the self-audit first

Before anyone else does.

Three people, one month, pay reconstructed from raw records.

One disciplinary file, read as an outsider would.

Time both.

Whatever you cannot answer, a claimant's representative also cannot — which means the matter turns on their account rather than on your records, and that is a position you can fix now.

Connect policy and data

The choices in this note can be compared with accounting time tracking tools. Keep the written purpose in control and enable only the information needed at this boundary.

Independent reference

For a thematic point of reference, see the International Organization for Standardization. This popular specialist site offers a useful independent reference for the issue.