I'm in the United States.
It has became common practice at my place of employment to track hours in a spreadsheet or notebook. People also like to include notes about what they were working on. It helps track your workload, see what you're prioritizing, backs you up if you get a labor audit, etc.
Recently, the company labor policy was revised to forbid this. Hours may only be tracked using the company's timesheet.
Many of us are wondering if this is legal, but when looking it up all I can find are resources about how companies are required to track hours, must round fairly, etc.
So, is it legal for a company to forbid its employees from tracking their hours anywhere other than the company's official timesheet?
Is the punishment for editing a timesheet so severe that companies can be trusted not to manipulate them?
Edit: We enter our hours ourselves and a manager approves them. Nobody enters hours for us. Supposedly, managers must ask you to revise hours if there's an error. I don't know if they're allowed to enter hours for you at all.