The Letter No Business Owner Wants — DOL Audit

Department of Labor audit rarely arrives with a warning, and the businesses that weather them best are the ones that got their house in order long before the letter showed up. Most DOL audits zero in on the same fundamentals: worker classification, overtime and wage calculations, and whether your recordkeeping can actually back up your payroll.

The good news is that these are all areas you can shore up right now, while there’s no auditor sitting across the table from you. If you can’t quickly produce clean records on hours worked, pay rates, and your employee-vs-contractor decisions, that’s exactly where I’d focus on.

So here’s my question: would your business survive a DOL audit, or just hope to never get picked?