My company has instituted a new policy that fines employees if they are late in entering their billable time. Employees are full time, salaried employees. I know it's certainly not good for morale, but is it legal? Below is the complete policy as given to the employees.

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COMPANY Time Entry Policy

Each employee of COMPANY is responsible for entering their time into the System on a daily basis. Regardless of what the time is for, each employee should enter a minimum of eight (8) hours for the day. This time should be charged to a client as billable or non-billable, administration, PTO, or a valid category.

All time should be entered no later than 9:00 a.m. each day for the previous days work. ASSIGNED_PERSON will be responsible for verifying that all time is entered and entered correctly to the correct category. For Friday or weekend work, this should be in no later than 9:00 a.m. the following Monday.

All service tickets should be closed as soon as they are completed. This is critical for invoicing of COMPANY clients in a timely and accurate manner.

For each day that an employee is late in entering their time, the employee will be fined $50 per day. All fines will be deducted from the employees next pay check. The employee will be notified by email of all fines.

This policy will be effective February 1, 2006.

Off the top of my head, I don't know if it's legal in your state or not. Patty might.

But whether it is or not, there's one easy solution to the problem.

Don't enter your billable time late. As long as you do that, the problem will never arise.