The law requires organizations and individual entrepreneurs to store documents related to the personal data of employees. The reasons are different - calculation of benefits, pensions, salaries, compensation and other payments, provision of other opportunities.
The storage period for sick leave at the enterprise is clearly defined; violation will entail the imposition of administrative sanctions on officials whose contract stipulates this obligation.
Why keep sick leaves?
Certificates of incapacity for work are used to calculate benefits for illness or in connection with maternity. Benefits are financed from the Social Insurance Fund and affect the amount of insurance contributions paid. To confirm the validity of the benefit assignment, the primary document - the sick leave certificate - must remain intact for the period of a possible inspection by regulatory authorities.
How and where sick leave certificates should be stored in the organization is decided by the employer independently. He has the right to develop internal rules to ensure the safety of documentation.
Procedure for storing electronic certificates of incapacity for work
With the transition to electronic document management, accountants and personnel officers have a question about how much sick leave and calculations for them are stored at the enterprise when they are processed electronically. According to the explanations of the FSS, the employer does not need to save electronic certificates of incapacity for work and print out copies of them.
The safety of information is ensured by the unified electronic system “Sotsstrakh”, and the organization can obtain the necessary information at any time.
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What is the shelf life?
The shelf life of certificates of incapacity for work is 6 years.
Controversy arises around how many years sick leave records are kept in an organization. This is due to the fact that the List of standard management documents indicates the storage period for certificates of incapacity for work is 5 years (Article 618 of the List approved by Order of the Federal Archive No. 236 of December 20, 2019). But these documents are used in the calculation and calculation of insurance premiums. For them in paragraphs. 6 clause 3.4 art. 23 of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation establishes a preservation period of 6 years. Failure to destroy documentation in accordance with the deadline established by the Schedule will result in the risk of collection of arrears due to failure to confirm expenses for payment of benefits.
It is necessary to calculate the period for how long sick leave is kept in the organization’s accounting department from January 1 following the year in which the sick leave was issued and disability benefits were accrued.
Basic Concepts
A sick leave certificate is a document that is issued to an employee to confirm the legality of absence from work. Required for citizens who are officially employed. According to Art. 183 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, the employee receives certain guarantees:
- receiving temporary disability benefits;
- retention of official position during the entire period of absence due to illness.
Sick leave and sick leave are identical documents. Regardless of the name, the same rules and regulations apply.
Articles on the topic (click to view)
- Is sick leave considered income?
- What to do if you have extended sick leave for pregnancy and childbirth
- What to do if your employer does not accept electronic sick leave
- What to do if you are not given sick leave
- How many days does it take for sick leave to arrive from the Social Insurance Fund?
- What to do if the place of work is not indicated on the sick leave
- Are sick leave taken into account when calculating maternity leave?
The terms and amounts of payments are fixed by separate federal laws. Strict reporting is required - assignment of serial numbers, fixed registers (journals certified by the seal and signatures of managers, a confirmation with the start and end date of the entries is glued to the back). Cases of sick leave registration:
- Statement of the fact of illness, as a result of which the employee loses the ability to perform official duties;
- The need to look after a close relative (care, including medical care);
- Pregnancy, childbirth, adoption (other similar situations);
- Quarantine;
- Prosthetics in stationary conditions;
- Recovery, sanatorium treatment (up to 24 days);
- Other health-related situations.
Sick leave is issued for dental prosthetics, examination or tests. Usually for one or two days, although a health care provider may provide for longer.
The verdict on a citizen’s temporary incapacity for work is made only by a doctor. Forgery of a document is a violation of current legislation. An employee whose job description specifies the appropriate actions must know the storage period for sick leave in the archive, methods and conditions.
Attention! The company accepts only correctly completed forms, without errors or omissions. Employees need to check the correctness of registration in the medical institution.
How and where to store
To ensure safety, the employer should determine the archive location where sick leave certificates are stored after payment: a safe, a separate room, a closed archive cabinet. Access to documentation is limited to unauthorized persons.
For control, the organization has the right to appoint an employee responsible for the safety of documentation. In this case, it is possible to hold accountable the person responsible for the loss or damage of documents. Selecting the responsible person:
- Indicate the new responsibility in his employment contract and job description.
- Issue an order appointing someone responsible.
In the appointment order, indicate the date from which the person in charge is appointed, the place where sick leave certificates are stored in the organization, what responsibilities are assigned to the employee.
When a certificate of incapacity for work is received, it is processed by the responsible employee and transferred to the archive. Accounting software allows you to create a register automatically after a certain period: month, quarter, year. It is convenient to use as a log book.
FSS told everything about electronic sick leave
The Federal Social Insurance Fund of the Russian Federation has published a reference book on electronic certificates of incapacity for work.
Organizational matters
1. How does the employer find out about electronic sick leave?
After the electronic certificate of incapacity for work is closed, the employee reports its number to his employer. The company requests a document from the FSS UIIS “Sotsstrakh” information system using its number and the employee’s SNILS.
Next, you need to fill out information about the employee, company, as well as data on length of service and earnings and send them to the Unified IIS “Sotsstrakh”, certified by qualified digital signatures of the chief accountant, manager and employer-legal entity. Citizens can provide their electronic sick leave number by phone, e-mail, or provide a coupon with the number.
However, the FSS of the Russian Federation notes that the coupon with the number itself is not a document on the basis of which insurance payments are assigned. It serves only to let citizens know about the generated leaflet.
2. How and where is the authenticity of a sick leave certificate verified?
To check the electronic sick leave, you can contact the territorial office of the Federal Social Insurance Fund of the Russian Federation at the place of registration of the company or the regional office at the address of the medical organization whose details are indicated on the sick leave.
3. Why switch to electronic sick leave?
Electronic sick leave cannot be lost, damaged or faked. All information about it is stored in the social insurance system, and the policyholder can request it repeatedly. Electronic sick leave does not need to be presented during inspections by the Federal Social Insurance Fund of the Russian Federation. It is also worth noting that when using electronic sick leave, the employer can interact with the social insurance fund through accounting programs.
4. Is it possible to get sick leave retroactively?
Following the procedure for issuing certificates of incapacity for work, approved by the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation, sick leave is issued by a health worker after examining the citizen and recording his health in the patient’s card. If citizens are treated in a clinic, then sick leave is issued on the day of treatment. If treatment takes place in a hospital, the citizen receives a certificate of incapacity for work on the day of discharge. In exceptional cases, sick leave can be obtained for the past time.
5. What is required to replace foreign medical documents with a Russian sick leave?
Foreign documents that confirm a citizen’s illness must be translated into Russian, and the translation must be notarized. Also, in order to replace such papers with a Russian sick leave, they must be legalized, and the entries in them must confirm the citizen’s state of health. The only formality to certify the authenticity of a document is the affixing of an apostille by the competent authority of the state in which the document was issued.
To replace a foreign document with a Russian sick leave, the applicant can contact the medical organization either personally or by proxy.
6. Does the Federal Social Insurance Fund of the Russian Federation plan to completely switch to electronic documentation in the future, and collect fines for refusal to issue digital sick leave?
Now electronic sick leaves are equivalent to paper ones. If an employer has the technical ability to accept a document in digital form, but refuses to do so, then this is considered a violation of the employee’s rights. However, there is no obligation to switch to digital only in the legislation of the Russian Federation.
Features of working with electronic sick leave
7. What should be indicated in the “Place of work” field if the organization has separate units or branches?
In the field “Place of work - name of organization” indicate the name of the employing company registered as an insurer in the regional branch of the Federal Social Insurance Fund of the Russian Federation. If the unit is not the employer of the insured person, then the name of such unit is not indicated on the sick leave. If the employee has an agreement with a department, then the name of the department is entered.
8. Do I need to print and store digital sick notes along with traditional medical records?
Since electronic sick leave has legal force and is stored in the information system of the Federal Social Insurance Fund of the Russian Federation, the employer does not need to print out and store a copy of the electronic certificate of incapacity for work.
Information for citizens
9. Where can a citizen find out his sick leave number or whether it has been paid?
Data on electronic sick leave is available in the personal account of service recipients on the website of the Federal Social Insurance Fund of the Russian Federation. To enter your account, you can use your login and password from the government services website. If a citizen’s employer is located in the region in which the “Direct Payments” project is taking place, then in his personal account the person can receive information about the calculation of benefits and their payment.
10. Can an unemployed person receive electronic sick leave?
The insurer, policyholder and medical organizations participate in the formation of electronic sick leave. Since unemployed citizens do not have an insurer, they are issued a regular, paper sick leave.
11. What to do if an electronic sick leave has been issued, but the employer requires a paper one?
The FSS of the Russian Federation reminds that electronic and paper sick leave are equivalent, and the form is chosen by the patient. Electronic sick leave is issued only with his written consent. However, if the employer is not technically ready to accept an electronic certificate of incapacity for work, then the sick leave is issued in paper form.
If the document has already been prepared digitally, then using the fund’s special program “Preparation of calculations for the Social Insurance Fund” you can print a paper copy. In addition, employers working with a number of accounting programs have been able to work with electronic sick leave since the middle of last year.
How to destroy after expiration of storage period
Upon expiration of the storage period, the company has the right to destroy the documentation. The destruction rules are set out in the Storage Rules approved by Order of the Ministry of Culture No. 526 of March 31, 2015, and the Methodological Recommendations thereto. To identify documents to be destroyed:
- Conduct an inventory of documentation to identify primary documents with expired shelf life.
- Based on the results of the inventory, draw up an act on the allocation of certificates of incapacity for work to be destroyed.
- Submit documents for liquidation and draw up an act of destruction.
