We catch missed breaks, unpaid break premiums, and open heat items on harvest crews — then chase each one to a documented fix.
MicroForensics™ is built for California growers and farm labor contractors, where harvest crews start before light and the meal break comes due mid-row. A missed or short break is caught the pay period it happens and chased to a documented fix — and when a lawyer's letter demanding records arrives, your custodian of records, the person on your team authorized to produce them, answers it from one place. No app your crews have to learn.
Free · 30 minutes · by phone or video. We tell you whether the records diagnostic, a fixed-fee review of your timecard, break and safety records, is worth doing for you, and what it costs. If it is not, we say so.
What MicroForensics is
MicroForensics reads the payroll and time clocks you already run, and Floburn operates the loop every pay period.
MicroForensics ingests your hourly timecard data, payroll, and related HR documents to flag missed breaks, unpaid break premiums, wage order errors, and open safety items, then chases each one to a documented fix. It is built to work with the existing payroll and timekeeping you already run, and Floburn runs it for you every pay period.
What it does
Five things, every pay period.
- Workers confirm and attest to the accuracy of their hours and breaks, among other labor compliance attestations, via existing tools you have in place that we configure or via custom interfaces we build for you. No one's pay ever depends on it.
- Written rules flag exceptions, such as a missed meal period, a missing rest break, or hours past a limit you set.
- Every flag is answered on the record. The correction is entered next to the original entry.
- When a worker misses breaks repeatedly, they and/or their managers get routed to training.
- Everything goes into one dated record that your designated custodian of records can export to answer a lawyer's letter demanding records from one place.
Three reasons a harvest crew's break record comes up short when a lawyer asks for it.
- 01
The fifth hour lands mid-row.
Under Donohue v. AMN Services (Cal. 2021), time records showing missed, short, or late meal periods raise a rebuttable presumption of violation. A meal break must start before the fifth hour of work ends (Labor Code §512; Wage Order 14). A paper crew sheet with rounded times cannot show exactly when it started.
- 02
Piece-rate and heat are records you already owe.
§226.2 requires piece-rate rest and recovery time to be paid separately and itemized on the wage statement. §3395's outdoor heat rules require a written prevention plan, shade, cool-down access, and training; the IIPP requires records of that training and of each hazard and its correction (8 CCR 3203(b)(1)–(2)). A bucket count shows none of it.
- 03
January 1, 2025 changed the harvest-day math.
AB 1066's overtime phase-in finished: Daily overtime after eight hours now reaches the smallest ag employers, so every long harvest day carries two record events at once — the overtime line and the fifth-hour meal. The workforce is predominantly Spanish-primary (NAWS), so bilingual attestation validity approaches a threshold requirement rather than a feature.
What we build on, and what we add.
- Field timekeeping
Crew & piece tracking
PickTrace, FieldClock, QR-badge scans — or the paper crew sheet the mayordomo still carries. Each stays as it is.
- Payroll
Ag payroll & grower billing
Datatech, Famous, or Gusto at the small end. Grower billing and the payroll run stay yours; MicroForensics reads from them.
- Compliance records
Heat, piece-rate & meal-break records
§3395 heat-plan and training acknowledgment, §226.2 rest-and-recovery acknowledgment, the fifth-hour meal and rest flow, and wage-statement acknowledgment.
We build the connector for your stack — by API where one exists, by export, SFTP, or structured manual entry where one doesn’t — scoped and priced in the records diagnostic.
A §3395 cool-down and §226.2 rest-and-recovery time often cover the same minutes in the row, but they are different obligations. California does not ask you to log each cool-down; it asks you to show the plan, the training, and what you did when the plan didn't hold. One per-period sign-off carries both.
One production package — the export that answers the letter. Hours, not weeks.
A lawyer’s letter demanding records usually arrives before any lawsuit does, and a §2699 PAGA notice after it. When the letter lands, the authorized custodian of records on your team — not Floburn — produces one production package in hours, not weeks. Payroll, timekeeping, HR, and safety are reconciled into one record every pay period, so production is an export from one place rather than a search across several.
- 01The export runs in under a minute.Retrieval from one record, not assembly across systems.
- 02Your custodian of records reviews and validates it.
- 03Your lawyer, an owner, or both review it, if you want them to.
- 04Your side sends it to the lawyer who asked.
The hours in “hours, not weeks” are steps 02 and 03: people you choose, reading it before it goes out. Floburn never reviews, validates, sends, or holds it.
The package exists before the letter does — the timeline is a property of how the record is kept, not a promise about your matter. No outcome is guaranteed; every matter turns on its facts.
What goes in the package, and how it is produced→Why it matters to a California employer
The window for the 15% PAGA cap closes when an employee or their lawyer asks for records, not when the lawsuit does.
The Private Attorneys General Act (Labor Code §2698 et seq.) lets an aggrieved employee — one who personally suffered each of the violations alleged (§2699(c)(1)) — sue for civil penalties on behalf of themselves and other current or former employees affected by the same violations. Penalties run per aggrieved employee, per pay period:
- $100 by default (§2699(f)(2)(A)). These penalties are separate from any wages and premiums owed.
Under the 2024 reform (AB 2288 and SB 92), Labor Code §2699(g) caps those civil penalties at 15 percent where the employer took all reasonable steps before the PAGA notice, or before a records request under §226, §432 or §1198.5, which usually comes first; §2699(h) caps them at 30 percent for remediation within 60 days after the PAGA notice. A court judges whether your steps were reasonable, looking at all the circumstances, including your size and resources. A court may also go above either cap if keeping to it would be unjust, arbitrary and oppressive, or confiscatory (§2699(e)(2)). No outcome is guaranteed; every matter turns on its facts.
The law rewards finding and fixing violations early, and being able to prove you did. The statute names four examples of reasonable steps (§2699(g)(2)):
- periodic payroll audits with action taken in response
- lawful written policies
- supervisor training on Labor Code and wage order compliance
- corrective action as to supervisors
MicroForensics keeps a dated, exportable record of all four. The audit, policy and training records speak to the cap. Worker sign-offs speak to whether breaks were taken.
How we work with you
A free call, a records diagnostic, and then only what you choose.
The call is free. The records diagnostic is a fixed fee, quoted on the call, and its report is yours whatever you decide next. Every paid step after it is written down in a document you sign before it starts.
- 01
Free 30-minute call, by phone or video
The screening pass: one question per exposure area, with you and whoever runs payroll. No records, nothing to prepare. If the records diagnostic is not worth doing for you, we say so.
- 02
Records diagnostic, a fixed fee, quoted on the call
A half- or full-day working session with your records open. Within fourteen calendar days of the working session, a written report: what your records show, item by item; a roadmap sorted into what you can fix yourself, what needs a process change and what needs a lawyer; and a practice records request answered from your own records. We walk you through it, directly or through your lawyer.
- 03
Implementation, only if you choose it, a separate agreement, signed and priced then
Two to four weeks to go-live, on the payroll and timekeeping you already run.
- 04
Ongoing service, every pay period
Floburn runs it: a weekly digest, a monthly report and a quarterly review. Billed monthly per active worker, on an annual term.
- 05
If you leave, at any time
Your record goes with you in a closing export, as structured files your lawyer or a successor vendor can use without us. It is yours throughout, and never held back over money.
Could you find these records today?
- Two weeks of time records exactly as the system exports them, unrounded if the system can do it
- One pay stub for someone who worked a normal week
- Whatever serves as the employee handbook, even if it is three years old
- The written heat illness plan and the injury and illness prevention program, whatever state they are in
Anything you cannot find is itself a finding.
Agriculture questions, answered.
01We still run paper crew sheets. Do the crews have to move to an app first?
No. Paper is a first-class path: The mayordomo keeps the sheet, and structured entry flows into the same audit trail with the same chain-of-custody integrity. Where a field app already runs, we read its export instead. Paper isn't the risk; the risk is no contemporaneous affirmation from the crew that breaks were taken and hours are right, and no record of what was paid or fixed when they weren't. The caps, and what a court decides, are set out above.
02Our harvest crews are on piece-rate. Does the attestation cover §226.2 rest-and-recovery pay?
Yes. The attestation captures the employee's affirmation that rest and recovery periods were taken, and MicroForensics reconciles it against the separately itemized §226.2 lines on the wage statement — so the piece-rate record and the break record stop contradicting each other.
03We're an FLC and the grower sets the schedule. Whose record is this?
The record follows the W-2: the attestation flow runs under whoever issues it, so under the FLC when the FLC is the employer of record — and the records diagnostic maps joint grower–FLC arrangements, starting from DIR's public FLC license registry, before anything is built. Ongoing service is billed monthly per active worker, on an annual term, so the bill moves with seasonal headcount the way FLC grower billing already does.
04Most of the crew is Spanish-primary, and not everyone carries a smartphone. How does the attestation actually reach them?
Attestations go out in English or, where the crew needs it, Spanish, scoped in the records diagnostic from your roster. The Spanish is produced by a retained translation professional, never a machine translation, because an attestation the worker couldn't read invites exactly the challenge the record exists to answer. Delivery flexes to the crew: SMS, a short link the mayordomo shares, a kiosk, or paper for crews without phones. Every path lands in the same timestamped record.
05We already have a lawyer’s letter or a PAGA notice. Can we still start?
Yes. Call your lawyer first: What the letter or notice means for you, and what to do about it, is for them to decide. Then book a free 30-minute call, and bring them if you like; tell us the date it arrived. With a matter open, your lawyer decides whether the records diagnostic runs through them or directly with Floburn, where its findings are discoverable. The sooner the record starts, the more pay periods it covers.
Free 30-minute call.
Tell us what you run and what prompted the call. The records diagnostic can run directly with Floburn or through your lawyer.
Free · 30 minutes · by phone or video. We tell you whether the records diagnostic, a fixed-fee review of your timecard, break and safety records, is worth doing for you, and what it costs. If it is not, we say so.
Floburn Inc. is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice. Counsel advises Floburn on system design and does not represent your company; retain your own counsel for advice specific to your situation.