How long to keep employee records at a restaurant: a retention schedule and a personnel file checklist
A former server files a wage claim two years after leaving. The time cards are in a banker's box in the office, or they were, until someone cleared out the office last spring. Another box holds every job application since you opened, next to a folder with a doctor's note and a copy of someone's green card.
Keeping records too briefly and keeping them in the wrong place are both problems. This post gives you how long each kind of employee record is kept under federal and Florida rules, which ones go in a separate file, a personnel file checklist, and a yearly routine for clearing out what you no longer need.
General information, not legal advice. Federal periods are minimums; your state can add its own, and a pending claim, charge or audit means keeping everything related until it's over. Florida periods are included because many of our readers are there.
The retention schedule
Record | Keep for at least | Source |
|---|---|---|
Payroll records (name, pay rate, hours, wages paid), plus sales and purchase records | 3 years. "Each employer shall preserve for at least three years payroll records, collective bargaining agreements, sales and purchase records." | |
Time cards, schedules, wage rate tables, deductions | 2 years. "Records on which wage computations are based should be retained for two years, i.e., time cards and piece work tickets, wage rate tables, work and time schedules, and records of additions to or deductions from wages." | Same |
Employment tax records: W-4s, tips employees reported to you, dates of employment, wages, deposits, returns | "at least four years after filing the 4th quarter for the year" | |
Florida reemployment tax payroll records | "five years following the calendar year in which the services were rendered", including names and Social Security numbers, pay periods, pay, and hire and separation dates | |
Form I-9 | "three years after the date of hire, or one year after the date employment ends, whichever is later" | |
Applications, personnel and employment records | 1 year: "EEOC Regulations require that employers keep all personnel or employment records for one year." After an involuntary termination, one year from the termination date | |
Anything about an EEOC charge | "until the final disposition of the charge or any lawsuit based on the charge" | Same |
FMLA records (employers with 50 or more employees) | "no less than three years" | 29 CFR 825.500(b), coverage in § 825.104 |
OSHA injury and illness logs, if you have to keep them | "five (5) years following the end of the calendar year that these records cover" | |
Proof of age for workers under 18 (Florida) | "during the entire period of such employment": a copy of the birth certificate, driver license, passport or visa, or a school board age certificate |
The simple rule for a Florida restaurant: keep everything payroll-related for five years after the end of the year it covers. That satisfies the 2-, 3- and 4-year federal periods and Florida's five. Work out I-9s by their own formula, and keep anything tied to a claim until it's closed.
OSHA logs: most restaurants don't have to keep them. Full-service restaurants (NAICS 7221) and limited-service eating places (7222) are on OSHA's list of partially exempt industries (Appendix A to Subpart B of Part 1904), and a company that "had 10 or fewer employees at all times during the last calendar year" is exempt by size (29 CFR 1904.1), unless OSHA or the BLS asks in writing. Every employer still reports a death, an in-patient hospitalization, an amputation or the loss of an eye.
I-9s, worked through. A line cook hired on March 1, 2025 who leaves on June 30, 2026: three years after hire is March 1, 2028; one year after leaving is June 30, 2027. The later date wins, so the form is kept until March 1, 2028. You also have to be able to show I-9s "within three business days of an inspection request" (same USCIS page).
What goes in a separate file
Medical information isn't kept in the personnel file. Under the ADA rules, information about an employee's medical condition or history "shall be collected and maintained on separate forms and in separate medical files and be treated as a confidential medical record" (29 CFR 1630.14(c)(1)). FMLA certifications and medical histories are kept "as confidential medical records in separate files/records from the usual personnel files" (29 CFR 825.500(g)).
In a restaurant that means doctor's notes, accommodation requests, workers' comp medical paperwork and illness reports go in a locked medical folder, not with the write-ups. Keep I-9s together in their own binder too, so a government inspection sees the I-9s and nothing else; that's a common practice, not a rule.
The personnel file checklist
One file per person. Check it when someone starts and when they leave.
Personnel file · [name] · [position] · hired [date] · left [date]
Main file
- [ ] Job application or résumé, and the offer letter
- [ ] Job description signed
- [ ] W-4 (federal), and any state form
- [ ] Emergency contact
- [ ] Pay rate history: start rate, raises, position changes (dates)
- [ ] Handbook and policy acknowledgments (signed)
- [ ] Food handler card or food manager certificate (copy, expiry date)
- [ ] Training records (station sign-offs, alcohol service, lockout/tagout)
- [ ] Uniform and key issue records
- [ ] Performance check-ins, coaching notes, write-ups
- [ ] Tip-credit notice, if you take one
- [ ] Under 18: proof of age (Florida § 450.045)
- [ ] Separation: resignation letter or termination notes, final pay date, reemployment notice given
Kept elsewhere
- [ ] Form I-9 and any copied documents: the I-9 binder
- [ ] Medical: doctor's notes, accommodation, workers' comp medical: the locked medical folder
- [ ] Payroll registers, time cards, tip reports: the payroll records, by year
The retention schedule to print
Records retention schedule · [business name]
Record | Where it's kept | Keep until | Who purges |
|---|---|---|---|
Payroll registers, wage records, tip reports, W-4s | [payroll provider + office cabinet] | 5 years after the end of the year (Florida) | [owner] |
Time cards and schedules | [time clock system + export] | 5 years after the end of the year (with payroll) | |
Form I-9 | [I-9 binder] | 3 years after hire or 1 year after leaving, whichever is later | |
Applications from people not hired | [folder by year] | 1 year (longer if a charge is filed) | |
Personnel files of former employees | [cabinet] | [1 year minimum; we keep ……] | |
Medical folder | [locked drawer, owner only] | [as long as the personnel file] | |
OSHA 300 log (if required) | 5 years after the end of the year | ||
Minors' proof of age | [personnel file] | While employed, then with the file | |
Sales and purchase records | [bookkeeping] | [3 years minimum; ask your accountant] |
Litigation hold: when a claim, charge, audit or lawsuit arrives, nothing related is purged until it's closed. Notice to: [owner, manager].
Reviewed: [date]
The yearly purge
Once a year, in [January], after the W-2s are out:
- Pull everything whose "keep until" date has passed.
- Check nobody on the litigation-hold list is in the pile.
- Shred anything with a Social Security number, date of birth or bank details. Don't bin it.
- Note what was destroyed and when: [date, record type, years covered, by whom].
Where Mays fits
- Leaving keeps the history. When you deactivate someone, "their hours, tasks and history stay": past punches, timesheets and pay-period exports stay as they were, and you can reactivate them later. When a team member deletes their own account, their contact and sign-in details are removed after 30 days, but their name and work and pay records stay with you: shifts, punches and hours, breaks, time off, pay and tips, completed tasks and photos, chat messages, certificates and waivers. See Deactivating team members and deleting accounts.
- A copy of each pay period. Export each closed pay period as a Standard CSV (hours, wages, tips and surcharge) and file it with that year's payroll records. A closed period keeps its dates and totals, so a re-export matches what you paid. See Exporting payroll and Timesheets and pay periods.
- Certificates with their expiry. With Labor law compliance on, the Certificates tab on a team member's page keeps food handler cards and other certificates with their dates and a photo or PDF. See Food safety certificates.
- Hire dates. The Employment tab holds each person's hire date and date of birth, which the minor rules and certificate deadlines use. See Add and invite team members.
What Mays doesn't do: it isn't a personnel file. There's no place for I-9s, W-4s, signed policies or medical paperwork on a team member's page, and it doesn't track retention dates or purge anything on a schedule. Keep those documents with your payroll provider or in your own files.
Keep payroll five years in Florida, I-9s by the formula, medical apart
Three habits cover most of it: keep payroll, time and tax records for five years after the year they cover, work out each I-9 from its own hire and end dates, and keep medical paperwork in a locked folder of its own. Then clear out the rest once a year, by the schedule, with a note of what went.
Start your free trial: 30 days, every module, no card needed. Or book a walkthrough and we'll show you where your hours and pay records live in Mays.