Where the 15% PAGA cap meets flag time.
MicroForensics, built for California dealership service departments and independent repair shops — operators whose job clocks track billed efficiency, not meal periods. Runs on top of the CDK, Reynolds & Reynolds, Tekmetric, Shopmonkey, or Shop-Ware records you already produce, and the payroll behind them. No new software for the techs or the service lane. Reviewed by named California labor counsel.
Request a discovery call→For the full MicroForensics walkthrough — statute math, cap delta, four-pillar architecture — see the parent page. This page covers the industry-specific shape.
Three structural reasons the exposure in a flag-time shop is the record, not the pay plan.
Flag-hour pay is piece-rate law.
Gonzalez v. Downtown L.A. Motors (2013), a dealership technician case, is the reason Labor Code §226.2 exists: California treats flag-hour pay as piece-rate work, with rest and recovery periods and non-productive time separately compensated. The statute this industry's own litigation produced now governs flat-rate pay across the state — and it is enforced through records, not intentions.
The job clock is not a time clock.
Tekmetric, Shopmonkey, and Shop-Ware — and the DMS job clock in a dealership — track billed efficiency against flag hours, not payroll time, so meal punches are frequently absent in flag-time shops. Under Donohue v. AMN Services (Cal. 2021), time records showing missed, short, or late meal periods raise a rebuttable presumption of violation. A record that is simply silent has nothing to rebut it with.
Mora: the clocked-hours record carried the defense.
Mora v. C.E. Enterprises (Cal. Ct. App. 2025) upheld a dealership's hourly-plus-flag pay plan. What carried the defense was the record of clocked hours and breaks, kept independent of flag time. Amended §2699 runs on the same logic: the 15% penalty cap turns on documented reasonable steps taken before a notice arrives, and the court decides whether the steps were enough. No record, no cap.
The shop stack we orchestrate.
Job clocks & repair orders
Tekmetric, Shopmonkey, or Shop-Ware in an independent shop; the CDK or Reynolds & Reynolds DMS in a dealership. MicroForensics consumes the clocked hours and repair-order segments those systems already produce — read-only, by API where one exists, by export where one doesn't. Techs, advisors, and porters see no change in the tools they actually touch.
Wage statements & flag pay
Gusto, QuickBooks Payroll, Paylocity, or ADP — whichever runs the pay plan. MicroForensics reconciles the §226 wage statement against the per-pay-period attestation, including the separately paid rest and recovery periods §226.2 requires for flag-hour techs. We don't replace the payroll run.
Attestation & fifth-hour alerts
Per-pay-period sign-off, English or Spanish — every tech, advisor, porter, and detailer confirms breaks and hours — plus real-time alerts to the service manager before the §512 fifth-hour window expires. The clocked-hours-and-breaks record the Mora defense turned on, built deliberately rather than by accident.
§226.2 is the overlay specific to this vertical. Because Gonzalez made flag-hour pay piece-rate work, rest and recovery periods and other non-productive time must be paid separately from flag hours — a requirement that lives or dies on records. The same per-pay-period attestation carries that record: each flag-hour tech's sign-off confirms the rest periods behind the §226.2 pay actually happened.
What these buyers ask first.
- 01
We pay our techs on flag hours. Is the pay plan itself the exposure?
Not by itself. Mora v. C.E. Enterprises (Cal. Ct. App. 2025) upheld a dealership's hourly-plus-flag pay plan; what carried the defense was the record of clocked hours and breaks, kept independent of flag time. The exposure in a flag-time shop is the record that isn't there. MicroForensics builds the clocked-hours and attestation record on the pay plan you already run — it doesn't ask you to change the plan.
- 02
Our DMS (or Tekmetric) already clocks every job. What does MicroForensics add?
A job clock produces flag hours and billed efficiency — it does not produce meal punches or the per-pay-period employee attestation that amended §2699 and the Donohue v. AMN Services presumption turn on. MicroForensics sits on top of Tekmetric, Shopmonkey, Shop-Ware, or the dealership DMS as a read-only consumer and routes the bilingual sign-off that turns clock data into evidence. Your shop-management system stays exactly as it is.
- 03
Does this cover porters, detailers, and lube techs, or just the flag-hour techs?
The whole hourly roster. Flag-hour techs carry the §226.2 piece-rate overlay, but the meal-and-rest record matters for every W-2 hourly employee — and bilingual attestation matters most in the detail, lot, and lube crews, and across independent and body shops. Everyone signs the same per-pay-period record, English or Spanish, on a phone or on paper; both flow into the same audit trail.
- 04
We're one store in a dealer group. Are we the right size for this?
MicroForensics is built for employers with roughly 25–250 hourly W-2 California employees, counted at the actual W-2 employer. A NADA-average store runs about 65 employees — squarely in the band on its own — but a store inside a multi-store group may not be its own employer, depending on how the group papers employment. That's the first screen in the discovery call; if the group is the employer, we'll say so and take the conversation to the group level.
Free 30-minute discovery call.
A fit conversation, not a sales call. Tell us about your timekeeping and payroll stack, your headcount, and what’s prompting the conversation. We’ll tell you whether the diagnostic makes sense, which engagement structure fits your situation, and what to expect if you proceed.
Request a discovery call→MicroForensics is reviewed by named California labor and employment counsel. Counsel does not represent your company; you should retain your own counsel for advice specific to your situation.