How long you must keep payroll records and payslips, why a retired payroll system still has to retain them, and how a secure archive satisfies the rules. General guidance, not legal advice.
Employment-tax records are generally kept for at least four years after the tax is due or paid.
Federal wage-and-hour rules generally require payroll records for about three years, and records used to compute pay for about two years.
Sarbanes-Oxley generally requires audit and accounting records — which can include payroll — for seven years.
State law, unemployment, workers’ comp and benefit rules add their own periods, often longer.
The practical result: after you switch payroll systems, most of the old records must remain intact and retrievable for years — which is why you archive rather than delete. Confirm the exact periods with your payroll, tax and legal teams.
A read-only archive keeps payroll records intact for the full window and reconciles to source to prove nothing was lost.
Role-based read-only access with full audit logging.
Retrieve any employee’s pay history or payslip for a notice, audit or dispute.
Meet retention on a low-cost archive instead of keeping UKG/Kronos alive for read access.
It depends on the rule: the IRS generally expects employment-tax records for at least four years; FLSA generally about three years for payroll (two for wage-computation records); SOX generally seven years for public-company audit/accounting records; and state and benefit rules add their own, often longer, periods.
Extract the historical payslips and pay data from your payroll system into a secure, read-only archive, reconcile it to source, and provide self-service search — so payslips remain retrievable for the full retention window without keeping the old system running.
Yes — archive the payroll history and payslips to a compliant read-only store, then retire the system. The archive satisfies retention while you stop paying for the legacy license.
Tell us the system — UKG Pro, UKG Pro WFM or Kronos Workforce Central — and whether you’re migrating or archiving. We’ll scope the HR, payroll and time data move.