We catch missed breaks, unpaid break premiums, and open heat-plan items on California jobsites — then chase each one to a documented fix.

MicroForensics™ is built for contractors whose crews take breaks on-site, where a meal break must start before the end of the fifth hour of work (Labor Code §512). 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 new software for the foremen. No HR department needed.

Book a free 30-minute call What the records diagnostic finds→

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 the construction record is harder to keep

Three structural reasons the construction record is hard to keep complete.

Crews take meal breaks on the jobsite, far from the office.

Donohue v. AMN Services (Cal. 2021) holds that time records showing a missed, short, or late meal period raise a rebuttable presumption of violation. The California Supreme Court described an employer system of the same per-period design and said that, without the rounding, it “would have ensured accurate tracking of meal period violations.” No court has yet held that an attestation rebuts the presumption. We don’t round: Attestation prompts fire on unrounded punch times.

California requires a written heat plan for outdoor crews.

Cal/OSHA §3395 requires a written heat-illness prevention plan, and the training documentation runs through the IIPP at 8 CCR 3203(b)(2). The employer owes those records whether or not anyone helps keep them, and Cal/OSHA enforces it.

Cyclical layoffs at the project end.

When a project ends and you lay the crew off, final pay is due that day, and late final pay can carry a penalty (Labor Code §§201–203). The lawyer’s letter that follows a layoff asks for the pay-period record.

Three construction workers in hard hats and high-visibility orange vests, seen from behind, rest on a bench under a mesh shade canopy beside an orange ten-gallon water cooler on a folding table at a dusty jobsite. — Fig. 01 — Water, shade, and cool-down rest under §3395. The written plan behind them, and the training documentation, are records California already requires.

On top of what you already run

What we build on, and what we add.

Timekeeping
BusyBusy, ExakTime, Time Rack, or another field clock — the clock your crews already punch. MicroForensics reads the punches and changes nothing in it.
Payroll
Gusto, QuickBooks Payroll, Paylocity, or ADP; the payroll run stays yours. MicroForensics reconciles your wage statements (§226) against the per-period attestation, which runs on a cadence of its own, decoupled from the payroll run.
The records California already requires
The §3395 outdoor heat plan and its training documentation, the SB 553 violent incident log and hazard records, the meal and rest attestation flow, and per-cycle wage-statement acknowledgment. In English or, where the crew needs it, Spanish. Every short break or open heat item gets a line for what was done about it, and stays open until that line is filled.

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.

When a lawyer’s letter demands records

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.

The cap, and what a court decides.

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.

Each step in full→

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.

Construction-specific questions

Construction questions, answered.

Will our foremen have to learn new software?

No. The attestation flow runs through SMS or a single short link the foreman shares with the crew. The foreman keeps his existing workflow — the notebook, the truck, the conversation. MicroForensics captures the record alongside it, not in place of it.

We’re already on BusyBusy (or ExakTime). What does MicroForensics actually add?

BusyBusy and ExakTime produce time data — clock-ins, clock-outs, GPS, geofencing. That is where the record starts, not where it ends. MicroForensics sits on top of BusyBusy or ExakTime, ingests the time data, routes the per-period attestation, and requires a correction entered alongside every exception. Where your timekeeping rounds punches, deployment turns the rounding off; where unrounded punches can’t be supplied, we say so rather than prompt off rounded data.

We’re a union shop. Does the meal-period piece even apply to us?

Labor Code §§512(e)–(f) and 514 exempt qualifying construction employees covered by a valid collective bargaining agreement from the meal-period and overtime provisions, and §2699.6 removes qualifying construction work performed under such an agreement from PAGA. Whether your agreement qualifies is a question for your lawyer. The heat plan and training documentation, the IIPP hazard and correction record, and the wage statements are owed either way. We shape MicroForensics to the terms your agreement sets, and on the free 30-minute call we’ll tell you whether it fits yours.

What about crews that cross into Nevada or Arizona?

MicroForensics is California-specific today. For multi-state crews, the California attestation runs on California-side shifts; we add Nevada or Arizona rules for the shifts worked there. Most construction operators don’t need that; we’ll tell you in the records diagnostic whether yours does.

We don’t have an HR department. Does this work without one?

Yes. Floburn runs the loop, and the office manager or operations lead reviews the exceptions. MicroForensics keeps a dated, exportable record of the four examples of reasonable steps that §2699(g)(2) names, set out above.

We 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.

From the journal

Two field notes.

Field note: the foreman who refused the tablet.

Construction-tech adoption friction is almost never resistance to change. It's a tool that destroyed a working trust ritual nobody on the vendor side noticed.

Read the post→

Field note: the PAGA notice that arrived on a Friday.

Four days of a 33-day clock disappeared between Friday afternoon and Tuesday morning. A short note on the operational shape of receiving a PAGA notice the wrong way.