Final Pay and the Record of Employment in Ontario: Employer Deadlines

Ending someone's employment doesn't end an employer's paperwork obligations — it starts a fresh set of them. Two of the most important, and most commonly rushed or overlooked, are getting the employee's final pay right and issuing a Record of Employment so they can access Employment Insurance if they're eligible.

Both come with deadlines that Ontario and federal rules don't leave to an employer's normal payroll schedule. Missing them, or getting the contents wrong, causes real problems for the departing employee and can create liability for the employer.

What Has to Be in the Final Pay

A departing employee's final pay generally needs to account for:

• [ ] All outstanding regular wages earned up to the last day worked
• [ ] Accrued but unused vacation pay
• [ ] Any public holiday pay owed under the ESA
• [ ] Statutory termination pay, if it's being paid as a lump sum rather than worked as notice
• [ ] Only those deductions the employer is legally entitled to make

Missing any one of these is a common source of after-the-fact complaints to the Ministry of Labour, even in terminations that were otherwise handled reasonably.

When Final Pay Is Due

Ontario law sets a specific window for issuing final wages after employment ends — it does not simply wait for the employer's next regular payday to roll around by default. Because the exact timing rules can be technical and can change, confirm the current requirement before you set a payment date, rather than defaulting to your normal payroll cycle out of habit.

What a Record of Employment Is and Why It Matters

A Record of Employment, or ROE, is a federal document filed with Service Canada that records an employee's earnings and the reason their employment ended. It's the document Service Canada uses to determine whether, and for how long, a former employee can access Employment Insurance benefits. An inaccurate or late ROE can delay or jeopardize an employee's EI claim, and complaints about ROE handling are a routine source of friction with former employees. Employers who get this wrong sometimes hear about it only when the former employee, or Service Canada itself, follows up months later — by which point correcting the record is far more work than getting it right the first time.

When You Need to Issue One

An ROE is triggered whenever there's an interruption of earnings, which a termination almost always is. As with final pay, there is a filing deadline that runs from the interruption of earnings, and it can differ depending on how you file — electronically versus on paper — and your normal pay period structure. Verify the current deadline for your specific filing method rather than assuming; this is not an area where "we'll get to it next payroll run" is a safe approach.

Common Mistakes Employers Make

1. Treating final pay as something that can wait for the next regular pay run
2. Filing the ROE only when the former employee asks for it, rather than proactively
3. Selecting a reason code that doesn't accurately reflect why the employment actually ended — this isn't just paperwork, since it affects the departing employee's EI eligibility and can be scrutinized if there's a later dispute
4. Failing to reconcile vacation pay and other accrued amounts before calculating the final cheque
5. Assuming a severance or termination pay lump sum eliminates the need for a properly completed ROE

Coordinating these two obligations helps avoid compounding a small error into a bigger one. If the final pay calculation is still being sorted out when the ROE filing deadline approaches, don't let one delay the other — file the ROE using your best current information and correct it later if the final numbers change, rather than missing the filing deadline while payroll finishes its calculation.

Frequently asked questions