Timesheet & Wage Record Requirements in NZ: What Contractors Must Keep

If a Labour Inspector knocks, 'the hours are in the group chat' is not a wages and time record. NZ employment law is specific about what you must keep for every employee — and paper timesheets in a ute glovebox rarely survive contact with an audit. Here's what's required and the easiest way to stay covered.

What you must record

• Hours worked each day in each pay period, and the pay for those hours
• Wages paid each pay period and how they were calculated
• Leave taken and leave balances — annual, sick, bereavement, public holidays
• Details of employment agreements and any changes to hours

Records generally need to be kept for at least six years, and you must be able to produce them if MBIE asks. Penalties for missing or inadequate records run to five figures — and in a pay dispute, no records means the employee's version of the hours usually wins.

Why paper and spreadsheets fail audits

Paper gets lost, spreadsheets get edited. Neither shows when hours were logged, who approved them, or how the pay was calculated from them. An auditor wants a chain: hours logged → approved → paid, with dates and names attached at each step.

What a timesheet app gives you

• Every entry stamped with who logged it, when, and against which job
• An approval trail — who reviewed it, when, and any rejection reasons
• Automatic leave balance updates when sick or annual days are approved
• Overtime calculated by rule, not by memory, and visible on the pay run
• Six-plus years of records retrievable in seconds, not shoeboxes

Fieldlink keeps all of this automatically for NZ crews — hours from the field, approvals in the office, overtime rules applied, leave balances live, and a one-click export to Xero Payroll NZ. Audit-ready by default, not by Friday-night panic.