I am trying to find out if it is required to have a signed time card to get a paycheck. We are going to start using a clock in system for our employees. With this particular system, you have to clock-in and clock-out to receive your hours. If you clock in but do not clock out, no hours are recorded for that day. Can my employer not pay an employee if they do not clock out and the system shows no hours, but we know that they were there for some of the hours? Also, the employees would be signing these timecards when they received their paychecks (not before). Can we issue a paycheck without a signed timecard? Thank you so much for any help you can give.

If be "required" you mean that there is some federal or state time card law requiring that employees sign time sheets, the answer is no. What time accounting rules that exist are federal law (FLSA) and these rules basically require the employer to maintain time accounting records. There are no governmentally imposed time accounting rules on employees.

In the 1930s there was a court decision (Yankowski v. Montgomery Ward) in which the court said that if the employee voluntarily prepares and signs the time sheet/card, then it becomes legally difficult for the employee to later challenge the hours worked. Many employers have rules requiring that employees sign the time accounting records based on this court case, but this is not a legal requirement, just best practice and a legally imposed employer rule.

Can we issue a paycheck without a signed timecard?

Can you? Sure!

Not only that, but you MUST pay the employee if you know that he/she worked, with or without a signed timecard. The difficulty is figuring out just how much the employee worked. If you have a supervisor that could say "Jane worked eight hours a day, Monday through Thursday," then pay Jane on that basis. She does not have to sign a time card. If she protests the hours paid (they rarely complain if they worked less than paid), then you, the supervisor and the employee can get into a discussion about the time actually worked and fix it, if necessary.