I recently quit my job and they are doing an audit of the payroll. I went in as an independent contractor to help the company during the transition. Currently they are withholding paying me due to discrepencies in the timesheets and payroll information. If one of my questions defer to company policy let me know.

In Arizona can an employer have a "use it or lose" policy on vacation and sick time?

If a salaried employee works 4 hours and less and leaves sick, do they have to use sick time? What if they no longer have sick time available? WHat if they work 5 hours or more in a day, do they have to use sick time?

If you work a full 40 hours work week before friday and call in sick, do you have to use 8 hours of sick time? (If so, this is when being an hourly employee is great).

Is comp time legal? And if so, how is it supposed to be decided?

What determines exempt vs. non-exempt salaried employees?

Many times payroll would be done a day before the end of the work week, and employees would then be sick on the last day of the payroll after already turning in timesheets and payroll being submitted. Thus the next payroll an adjustment would need to be made, but very seldom if ever, did the employee ever adjust timesheets or just put a sick day in the new week. I just figured as long as the sick time accrual and vacation time accruals were correct it was ok. Because you couldn't go back and change a previous payroll. I was making adjustments left and right because of the payroll being submitted before end of the work week.

Mainly payroll was only something I did in the last year and frankly I didn't like doing it, since I wasn't sure if anything we were doing was correct. There was no handbook or written policy or anything to go by other than the past practice.

1.) The Arizona website is more or less useless and the only part of it that's in any way helpful is down tonight but if memory serves, use it or lose it plans are legal for vacation in Arizona. NO state requires the payout of unused sick time unless it is required by contract so use it or lose it plans are definitely legal for sick time.

2.) I will assume for purposes of discussion that by salaried you mean exempt. The two are not synonymous. Yes, an exempt employee can be required to use sick time in partial day increments, regardless of how many hours it is. If they run out of sick time they still have to be paid (unless the time is attributable to FMLA) but they can be required to use sick time whether they worked one hour or seven hours. No law in Arizona, or any state with the possible exception of California, guarantees the employee to be allowed leave early without using paid sick time regardless of the length of time. The employer may choose to allow the employee to go home sick without requiring that they use sick time, but they are not mandated to under the law.

3.) If you work a full forty hours before Friday and call in sick, you have to use 8 hours of sick time if your employer says so. The law neither requires nor prohibits the practice. This is true (as is most of the answer to #2*) regardless of whether you are exempt or non-exempt.

4.) If you are an exempt employee (again note that salaried and exempt are not interchangeable terms) comp time is legal but not required. It works however the employer decides it works.

5.) Exempt vs. non-exempt is determined by your job duties.

* If a non-exempt employee goes home sick when they don't have any sick time available, they do not have to be paid. The rest of the answer to #2 applies regardless of whether the employee is exempt or non-exempt.

Many times payroll would be done a day before the end of the work week, and employees would then be sick on the last day of the payroll after already turning in timesheets and payroll being submitted.

That is why paying "current" does not work well. Payroll is constantly chasing problems from the last pay period and probably misses a lot. Add to that the problems of the employee who is overpaid and never works again.:(

Thanks for your advice. I've just been stressing over this entire issue. Can I be held liable for interpreting things incorrectly or any inconsistencies within the payroll if I managed to overpay or underpay an employee?

I'm not sure exactly what you're asking, but let me take a shot (after 30 years since my first payroll job).

Mistakes of "misinterpretation" or clerical errors are not something for which you could be held personally liable. "Mistakes" can always be fixed. If there was a misinterpretation of a law or regulation, and the employee files a claim, and the state or federal DOL orders the company to pay, then the company pays.

Again, as reiterated often on this board, "salary" and "hourly" are pay methods. The legal criteria that must be looked at is "exempt" and "nonexempt". Having said that, the employer cannot change an employee from nonexempt to exempt unless they meet the criteria to be exempt and cannot arbitrarily switch back and forth merely to keep from having to pay overtime; if the change is legally justified and is to be made, it is intended to be, generally speaking, a permanent change.

Honestly, I think you're obsessing over something that you really can't do much about at this point, although as a payroll professional, I do appreciate your sense of professional responsibility.

another question:

if you are salary exempt and work 40 hours in a week:
monday: 6 hours
tuesday: 9 hours
wednesday: 8.5 hours
Thursday: 8.5 hours
Friday: 8 hours

do you have to have 8 hours a day? Regardless of whether you left work for a doctor visit, sick time, personal, etc..etc....Everything I read would state 40 hours a week, nothing I ever read said it had to be 8 hours per day.

40 hours means nothing except for nonexempt employees and determining overtime. There is nothing that says that exempt employees (or even nonexempt) can't be required to work whatever hours/days the employer says are required.

Now, having said that, personally as a manager of both exempt and nonexempt employees, as long as the exempt employee doesn't abuse the privilege, I'll give him/her a little leeway. If he has to leave early to go a doctor's appointment, for example, and "makes up" the time on another day, I'm not going to charge him PTO time for that "early out". But that's just me, and I've been given the flexibility to make those decisions for my employees. Some companies don't provide for that flexibility, and there is no law that is going to make them do so.

You are correct that salary can only be docked in full-day increments for exempt employees, unless the partial day is for intermittent FMLA. However, there is no law that says that the employer can't require use of paid time off to substitute for missed hours on a given day.

thank you for your help

I was going through my check stubs and looking at a calendar and realized that I missed charging myself for 2 days that I think I was out. How does this affect me?

I've always tried to be an honest person and I know I was in a position of financial responsibilty and I always tried to be responsible and aware of that fact. But also being someone who always assumes the worst, now that I am aware of my oversight I'm afraid that they may think I did something wrong intentionally because I "profited" from my error.

Everyone keeps telling me to stop reading about this stuff and that if I did nothing wrong I should have a clear conscience but its hard to feel that way when you realize you did do something wrong even if it was unintentional.

Mistakes happen. :o

thanks patty, i just hope they think that way too.