The article
The need for HR compliance services usually shows up on an ordinary day: the first hire in a new state, a former employee's lawyer asking for time records, or a handbook nobody has opened since it was printed. Two questions follow. What do the rules require of us? And do our systems actually do it?
The first belongs to your employment lawyer or HR advisor; the second is ours. I have been building software for 18 years, and since 2017 my team of 70+ specialists has delivered 150+ projects. Here is how we review the way hiring, pay, records and training run in your systems, fix the gaps and set up HR software that keeps doing it, plus a table of federal record minimums worth forwarding to whoever keeps your files.
HR compliance services for small business: the short version
| What | With us |
|---|---|
| Our part | The systems: how hiring, pay, records and training run in them, the gaps fixed, HR software set up or built |
| Your counsel's part | The rules: what applies to you, how each role is classified, what the handbook says |
| Where we look | Hiring, Form I-9 and E-Verify, pay and overtime, personnel files, the handbook, training and posters |
| Ongoing | Rule changes in your states become tasks; the systems change once your counsel confirms them |
| Price | Estimated before work starts; the first call and the rough estimate are free |
| Who it fits | Small and growing businesses, and teams in several states |
Who decides the rules, and who makes the systems follow them
HR compliance has two halves, and trouble starts when each side assumes the other has it covered: a perfect policy no software follows, or a clever system that follows the wrong rule.
- Your employment lawyer or an HR compliance consulting firm decides whether a role is exempt from overtime, whether a person is an employee or a contractor, what the handbook says, which trainings and posters each location needs and how long each record is kept.
- We make the systems follow those decisions: onboarding that collects every form on your counsel's list, timekeeping that applies the overtime rules you set, access limits on pay data and personnel files, deletion dates for records and reminders before a training expires.
Legal advice on HR is not ours to give, and we do not run payroll or employ your people. If you want a company to help with HR compliance from both sides, pair your counsel with us: they write the rules, we make them run.
Where we look first
The review follows a new hire's path, from the job posting to the day their records may be deleted.
- Hiring. Where postings, applications and background check results are stored, who can open them and for how long.
- Form I-9, and E-Verify where required. USCIS requires a Form I-9 for each person you hire; we check that each one is complete and can be found. E-Verify is required of federal contractors on contracts covered by the FAR E-Verify rule; ask your counsel whether a state where you hire requires it too.
- Pay. Each person's classification recorded, overtime counted the way your counsel set it, pay records kept.
- Personnel files. Who can open them, and how long they are kept.
- Policies and the handbook. Which version each employee signed, and when.
- Training and posters. Who completed which training and when it is due again; which posters each location needs, from your counsel's list.
Federal record minimums, in one table
How long to keep each record is where HR rules and software meet: delete too early and you cannot prove anything, keep everything forever and you hold personal data nobody needs. Below are the federal minimums as the agencies publish them, read on their sites in October 2026. Ask your counsel whether a state where you hire asks for longer; your counsel sets the schedule, and the last column is what we build.
| Record | Agency | Federal minimum | What the system does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Form I-9 | USCIS | 3 years after the date of hire, or 1 year after employment ends, whichever is later | Recomputes the date when the end date is entered |
| Payroll records | Department of Labor, under the FLSA | At least 3 years | Keeps each pay period with the date it may be removed |
| Time cards, wage rate tables, work schedules | Department of Labor, under the FLSA | 2 years | Keeps punches and schedules, then queues them for deletion |
| Personnel and employment records | EEOC | 1 year; after an involuntary termination, 1 year from that date | Starts each clock at the right event |
| Records tied to a discrimination charge | EEOC | Until the charge and any lawsuit based on it are finally resolved | A hold that stops every deletion for that person |
The I-9 row shows why a spreadsheet struggles. Its date depends on the day employment ends: someone who leaves after six months keeps the three-year date, someone who leaves after ten years gets a date one year after leaving. A system recomputes it the moment HR enters the end date, and the hold overrides every date at once.
Of the five company pages Google showed among its first ten results for "HR compliance services" in October 2026, none published a price and none said how long a single record must be kept. A small sample, but that second gap decides what your software deletes and when.
Compliance built into your HR tools
Much of the table, your HR software can already do once someone sets it up; the rest is custom code. We set up or build:
- Onboarding that collects the right forms for the state and the role, and shows HR what is missing before the start date.
- Timekeeping that applies the overtime rules your counsel set. The Department of Labor accepts any timekeeping method that is complete and accurate, so the method is your choice.
- Records deleted on schedule, with the hold above and a log of what was deleted and when.
- Access limits on pay data and personnel files, so a manager sees their own team, not the company's salaries.
When your tools do not talk to each other, the connections are code. Evidence pulled for an audit is compliance automation; deletion across many systems is data management compliance; a tool of your own is custom software, and a web application starts from $5,000 for its first version. Payroll taxes by state follow the same split: see tax compliance.
Rule changes, as tasks with an owner
Ongoing HR compliance monitoring, on our side, is a tracker, not a newsletter. We track rule changes in the states where you have employees, and each one becomes a task with the state, the date it takes effect and an owner. Your counsel confirms what it means for you; we change the forms, the timekeeping rules or the retention dates, and the task closes with a note of what changed.
There is no HR system among the cases on our site yet. The closest is PBM Source, compliance software for pharmacy benefit managers: new laws and guidance arrive on a dashboard as tasks with a summary, a jurisdiction and a date. The hard part was relevance, so every requirement is marked by line of business and a team sees only its own rules; for HR, the marking runs by state and by group of employees.
What the price depends on
The review has no starting price: it is estimated before work starts, after the first call. The estimate depends on:
- the number of states and locations, each with its own forms, posters and dates;
- the HR, payroll and timekeeping tools you use, and whether they connect;
- whether those tools can do the job once set up, or a custom tool is needed;
- how many years of records, on paper or in old systems, have to come in;
- whether you want the ongoing tracker after the first pass.
Who it fits, and who it does not
It fits a company that has outgrown spreadsheets and shared folders for HR: a small business past its first hires, or a team in several states whose tools disagree.
It is not for you if:
- You need to know whether you can let someone go, or how to answer a complaint. That is your employment lawyer.
- You want a provider to run HR, payroll and benefits included. HR compliance outsourcing services of that kind exist; they are not what we do.
- You have a handful of employees in one state. A payroll provider and your counsel may be all you need for now; come back when the second state arrives.
What stays yours
The data stays in your HR systems and accounts, and the code we write for you is yours once it is paid for. Every access we receive is listed, so it can be revoked in one pass when the work ends, and we sign an NDA before you share any details.
Tell us where your people work and which HR tools you use. We reply with what we would review first and a rough estimate, free; a new request gets an answer within 30 minutes on weekdays, 9 am to 6 pm Miami time. The rest of our work on rules and records is on the compliance services page.
