Why lock timesheets after payroll?

So the hours that were paid stay the hours on record. Without a lock, anyone with edit rights can change last week's time after the checks went out, and the paycheck and the timesheet quietly stop agreeing. A lock turns every later correction into a visible, deliberate event.

Is a pay period the same as a workweek?

No. Under federal rules a workweek is a fixed, regularly recurring period of 168 hours, seven consecutive 24-hour periods, and overtime is figured by the workweek. A pay period is how often you pay. A two-week pay period contains two workweeks, and each one stands on its own for overtime.

What should we check before locking a pay period?

Entries with no clock-out, missing days, shifts that cross midnight or the start of a new workweek, breaks, any edits made during the period and who made them, and overtime by workweek. Let crew members see their own hours before you lock.

How should we fix a mistake found after the lock?

Record it as a dated correction with the original period, the reason, who approved it and the amount, and pay what is owed. Tell the employee. Never silently change a closed period's hours. Your payroll provider and accountant can tell you how they want prior-period corrections recorded.

How long should time records be kept?

The Department of Labor says payroll records should be kept for at least three years and the records wage computations are based on, such as time cards, for two years. The IRS says to keep employment tax records for at least four years after filing the fourth quarter for the year. Your accountant may advise longer.

What does Traffic OS do when a pay period is locked?

Time entries inside a locked pay period can no longer be edited, and every change in Traffic OS is written to an audit log. Hours can be exported as a timesheet CSV for payroll.

Closing a Pay Period: Locking Timesheets Before Payroll

Why a traffic control company should lock timesheets once a pay period is closed, what to check before locking, how a pay period differs from a workweek, and how corrections after the lock should be handled.

Payroll ran on Friday. On Monday a foreman opens the time clock and fixes Tuesday's hours for one of his crew, because the punch-out was wrong. He is right about the hours. But the check already went out with the old number, nobody in the office knows the record changed, and the timesheet now disagrees with the paycheck.

Nobody did anything dishonest. The pay period simply was never closed.

What locking a pay period means

Closing a pay period means deciding that the hours in it are final for payroll, then preventing ordinary edits to them. After that point, the record that paid people stays the record. A correction is still possible, but it becomes a deliberate step with a name and a reason attached, instead of a quiet edit.

Three reasons this matters in traffic control specifically:

Many people can touch time. Crew members punch from their phones, foremen punch whole crews, dispatchers fix forgotten punch-outs. Each of those is useful. Together they mean a lot of hands on the same records.

Overtime is common. Night work, long closures and callouts push crews past 40 hours. An edit after payroll can change whether someone crossed the overtime line, and the paycheck will not follow on its own. See overtime and FLSA basics for traffic control crews.

Some jobs carry certified payroll. On prevailing-wage work, the hours reported for a week should match the hours paid. A record that keeps changing after the report is filed is a problem waiting to be found. See certified payroll for traffic control contractors.

A pay period is not a workweek

Before you close anything, be clear about the two units involved, because they are often confused.

The Department of Labor's overtime interpretations define a workweek as "a fixed and regularly recurring period of 168 hours—seven consecutive 24-hour periods." It "need not coincide with the calendar week but may begin on any day and at any hour of the day," and once its beginning is set, "it remains fixed regardless of the schedule of hours worked" (29 CFR 778.105). Overtime under federal law is figured per workweek.

A pay period is simply how often you pay: weekly, every two weeks, twice a month. A two-week pay period contains two workweeks, and each workweek stands on its own. The Department of Labor's recordkeeping list reflects this. Employers record the "time and day of week when employee's workweek begins" as well as the "date of payment and the pay period covered by the payment" (DOL Fact Sheet #21).

The practical point: check overtime workweek by workweek before you lock, not pay period by pay period. A night shift that starts on the last day of one workweek and ends in the next belongs partly to each.

What to check before locking

A short, repeatable checklist works better than a careful review that happens only when someone has time.

Entries with no clock-out. The most common problem. Someone forgot to punch out, or their phone died. Fix these first, with the actual end time from the foreman or the daily ticket.
Missing days. Compare who has hours against who was on a job. A signed daily ticket lists the trucks and employees on the job that day. Someone on a ticket with no hours, or with hours and no ticket, needs a look.
Shifts that cross midnight or a workweek boundary. Make sure the hours land in the right day and the right workweek.
Breaks. Short paid breaks and unpaid meal periods should be recorded the way your policy and your state's rules require.
Edits made during the period. Review what was changed, by whom, and why. A period with many edits by one person is worth a conversation, even if every edit was right.
Overtime, by workweek. Confirm who crossed 40 hours in each workweek, and any state daily overtime rules that apply where your crews work.
Crew review. Let each crew member see their own hours before you lock. The person whose pay depends on a number is the best person to catch a mistake in it.

Then one person locks the period, at a set point in the payroll cycle: after the review, before the export goes to payroll.

Corrections after the lock

Locks do not make records perfect. Sooner or later you will find a missed punch-out from a period that is already paid. How you handle that matters more than whether it happens.

A sound correction has five parts:

The original period. Which pay period and which workweek the hours belong to.
What changed. The hours before and after.
Why. "Punch-out missed, end time from signed daily ticket" is a reason. "Fixed" is not.
Who approved it. Someone other than the person who made the original mistake, where possible.
The payment. The amount and the payroll it goes into. The lock protects the record; it does not settle what the employee is owed.

The Department of Labor's recordkeeping regulation requires, among other things, records of "total additions to or deductions from wages paid each pay period," and in individual employee records "the dates, amounts, and nature of the items which make up the total additions and deductions" (29 CFR 516.2). A correction paid in a later period is easiest to defend when it is recorded that way: dated, explained and traceable to the period it fixes.

Whether you pay a correction in the next payroll or run an off-cycle check, and how your payroll provider wants prior-period adjustments recorded, are questions for your provider and your accountant. Wage-and-hour rules, including when wages must be paid, vary by state, so confirm with the Department of Labor, your state labor office or counsel. What should not vary is the principle: never silently rewrite a closed period. And tell the employee what changed.

How long to keep the records

The Department of Labor's fact sheet says employers "shall preserve for at least three years payroll records," and that records on which wage computations are based, including time cards, wage rate tables and work and time schedules, "should be retained for two years" (DOL Fact Sheet #21). The IRS separately says to "keep all records of employment taxes for at least four years after filing the 4th quarter for the year" (IRS, Employment tax recordkeeping). Your accountant may want you to keep them longer. A locked pay period is a convenient unit to keep: the hours as paid, with the corrections that came after.

How Traffic OS handles pay periods

In the Traffic OS time clock, pay periods lock. Once a period is locked, the time entries inside it can no longer be edited, so the hours that went to payroll stay the hours on record. Every change in Traffic OS is written to an audit log, including edits to time entries before the lock, so the review of who changed what has something to read.

Hours can be exported as a timesheet CSV, with each employee's time by day split into regular and overtime minutes, for your payroll provider or accountant. Check the overtime against your workweek before you send it, as above. The driver hours report in the reports gives the office another view of the same hours.

The crew side of the record starts earlier, at the punch. If foremen clock in whole crews, read clocking in the whole crew before your next pay period closes.