We catch missed breaks, unpaid break premiums, and uncovered breaks in ratio-bound classrooms — then chase each one to a documented fix.
MicroForensics™ is built for California childcare operators, where a teacher at ratio can't step out for a meal break until a floater covers the room. 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 teachers 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.
Why a lawyer asks for a childcare center's break record, and why it comes up short.
- 01
When no floater is free, the meal break is what gets cut.
Title 22 sets the ratios — one teacher per four infants (§101416.5), one per twelve preschoolers (§101216.3). At ratio, a duty-free 30-minute meal needs the room covered, so breaks run late, short, or not at all, and the time record shows it. The exposure isn't a policy failure; it's built into the staffing math.
- 02
A missed, short, or late meal on the timecard is presumed a violation unless explained.
Donohue v. AMN Services (Cal. 2021) holds that time records showing missed, short, or late meal periods raise a rebuttable presumption of violation. A center's records can be accurate and still silent on whether breaks were covered, so the explanation has to be built at the time.
- 03
Filings are rising.
The Education & Childcare filing category is up 27.1% year over year — one of only three categories still rising in the Ankura analysis of LWDA notice data through mid-2026.
What we build on, and what we add.
- Center management
Procare & Brightwheel
The app that runs check-in, billing, and parent messaging is where your staff clock in and out, too. We build on that time data and change nothing in the app.
- Payroll
The payroll run
Gusto (where Brightwheel's payroll module hands its hours), QuickBooks Payroll, ADP, or Procare's built-in payroll. MicroForensics reconciles each period's wage statements against the attestation record; the sign-off runs on its own per-pay-period cadence, decoupled from the pay run — the payroll run stays yours, and nothing about the sign-off is a condition of being paid.
- The sign-off
Per-pay-period sign-off
Every pay period, teachers, aides, and floaters sign off that breaks were covered and hours are right.
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.
Naptime has its own rule: Title 22 lets the ratio relax to one teacher per 24 napping children (§101230(c)), but the remaining teachers must stay immediately available at the center; immediately available is not the same standard as duty-free. A meal period logged during naptime still needs documented floater coverage, or it lands in the record as an exception.
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 workplace violence prevention plan and its violent incident log, and the injury and illness prevention program, whatever state they are in
Anything you cannot find is itself a finding.
Childcare questions, answered.
01Our teachers can't leave the room. How does a duty-free break even happen at ratio?
Operationally: A floater covers the room, and the record shows it. A meal break must start by the end of the fifth hour of work (Labor Code §512), so the floater schedule is what makes it happen. MicroForensics documents the breaks that were covered, flags the ones that weren't, and records the floater coverage you already run.
02We're on Brightwheel (or Procare). Doesn't it already track staff hours?
It records them: clock-ins, clock-outs, timesheets. Hours alone don't show whether a break was covered. What we add on top is the per-pay-period sign-off that breaks were covered, the premium recorded when one is owed, and a dated note of what changed in the floater rotation, entered the same pay period.
03Half our staff is Spanish-primary. Does the sign-off work in Spanish?
Yes, where your staff needs it — the records diagnostic scopes Spanish in from your roster, and every attestation then runs in English or, where the crew needs it, Spanish, by the employee's choice. About half of California's ECE workforce is not English-primary at home (CSCCE Early Childhood Workforce Index 2024). A sign-off an employee couldn't read is a weak record; one signed in the language she actually uses is the record you want produced.
04We run four sites and no single center has 50 people. Are we too small?
Count the operator, not the site. MicroForensics is built for small and mid-sized California employers, measured by the hourly W-2 roster across the whole company — and in childcare that's usually a multi-site operator, because single centers rarely get there. One attestation record spans every site; each director keeps her own workflow. The records diagnostic will tell you plainly whether your headcount and the state of your records make the engagement worth doing.
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.