Guides · The traps

Hour documentation boards actually accept

Every eligibility rule on this site ends in the same footnote: hours count when the board can verify them. This is the verification layer — what to keep, in what shape, from your first year.

The log

Weekly, contemporaneous, boring: dates, employer, the supervising licensee's name and license number, the work performed in the board's vocabulary (category states want category words), and hours. A log reconstructed the week of application reads like what it is.

The affidavit

Boards ask employers to attest to your hours. Get signatures while relationships are warm — at job changes, not years later when the shop has closed or the owner has died. A signed affidavit in your file is worth more than a decade of pay stubs alone.

The W-2 fallback

Employers sometimes refuse or vanish. Indiana's system states the fallback plainly: your own affidavit supported by W-2s and pay records can carry the proof. Other boards weigh similar packages case by case — the package has to exist to be weighed.

The eligibility checker assumes your hours are documented; making that assumption true is this page's whole point.