Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), employers must maintain records of hours worked by each nonexempt employee. That means companies bear the ultimate burden of showing that records of hours worked are in fact accurate. If an employer is sued by an employee, a group of employees, or the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) for off-the-clock work or unpaid overtime, it must have defensible record-keeping practices. If it doesn’t, the employee’s own—typically inflated—estimate of hours worked will likely control.