Leave & Attendance
Part of Time and attendance technology
Handling corrections to recorded work time
Set up a clear process for employee time corrections, approval, payroll cut-offs and an explainable record of changes.
Design a correction workflow that lets an employee report an inaccurate time entry, a reviewer establish what happened and payroll use the approved record. The Fair Work Act 2009 and Fair Work Regulations 2009 set employee record-keeping obligations; the Fair Work Ombudsman publishes record-keeping guidance.
Check the employee’s applicable modern award or enterprise agreement when assessing how an approved time change affects pay. Missing punches, incorrect breaks and late roster changes are routine; an unclear edit path can turn them into pay errors.
Separate the request from the approved record
Give employees a clear way to flag an entry and propose the correct time. The request should identify the shift, disputed field and a short reason.
A manager or designated reviewer can check the roster, surrounding entries and other relevant information, then approve or reject the change. Let the employee see the outcome and raise a further query if the record is still wrong.
Keep the original value, proposed value, reason, decision, reviewer and time of decision together. Do not replace the old value without showing what changed.
Decide what happens at the payroll cut-off
Corrections need different handling depending on their timing:
- Before approval:resolve the exception in the attendance system and send only the approved result to payroll.
- After approval but before payroll processing:identify whether the earlier export must be replaced or adjusted; confirm the receiving system has the current result.
- After payment:involve payroll in checking the pay impact and the appropriate correction process. Preserve the link between the time correction and any payroll adjustment.
Set a payroll cut-off and internal submission and review deadlines that leave time to process approved changes. Assign employees to submit requests, a manager or designated reviewer to decide them, and payroll to process approved records.
Route disputed or late requests to the payroll owner for a decision on the next step. Track unresolved requests at cut-off so none is silently carried forward.
Test the awkward cases
Apply the same request, review and audit-trail steps to a missed start, an incorrect unpaid break, two entries for the same shift or an overnight shift assigned to the wrong date.
After payroll export, compare the approved correction with the exported record. Record whether the period changed, a replacement export was created or payroll needs to find and handle the difference manually.
Do not use an automatic rule to conceal a genuine dispute. A system may flag a long shift as unusual, but that is a prompt to review the time, not evidence that the work did not occur. A reviewer should establish the facts before changing the record.
Close the loop
At each payroll close, reconcile approved corrections due for the period against the payroll result and the employee-visible record. Investigate and document any mismatch.
For a correction after payment, keep the approved time change linked to any payroll adjustment in the audit trail, then check the resulting payroll record against the approved correction.
The Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth), section 535, and Fair Work Regulations 2009 (Cth), regulations 3.32–3.41, cover employee record-keeping requirements. Keep time and wage records for seven years from the date each record is made; records must be legible, in English and readily accessible to employees and Fair Work inspectors.
Fair Work Record-Keeping Requirements (Australia)
- Language requirement
- Records must be in English
- Accessibility requirement
- Available to employees and Fair Work inspectors
