We catch missed breaks, unpaid break premiums, and unexplained late meal punches at the checkstand — then chase each one to a documented fix.
MicroForensics™ is built for independent grocers running open-to-close stores, where one call-out at the front end pushes a checker's meal break late or cuts it short. 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 at the checkstand.
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 an independent grocer's break record comes up short when a lawyer asks for it.
- 01
A meal break comes due nearly every operating day.
Department shift work — checkstands, deli, meat, receiving, night crew — runs full eight-hour shifts, so nearly every operating day has shifts that pass the fifth hour of work, by the end of which California requires a meal break to have started (Labor Code §512).
- 02
A late or short meal punch is presumed a violation.
Donohue v. AMN Services (Cal. 2021) held that time records showing missed, short, or late meal periods raise a rebuttable presumption of violation. The legacy POS-linked clocks independents run keep every punch and capture no explanation. A late punch stands unanswered until the record shows what the employee said happened and what the store did.
- 03
Retail's filing volume, a Spanish-primary workforce.
Grocery folds into Retail, a top-3 PAGA category by notice share (Ankura analysis of LWDA data through mid-2026) — no grocery-only trend line exists, but the category pressure is real. The Hispanic and ethnic independents that make up most of California's single-store grocers run heavily Spanish-primary crews, so the language workers attest in matters.
What we build on, and what we add.
- Timekeeping
POS-linked time clocks
Whether the punches live in TimeForge attendance riding on ECRS Catapult, in the payroll bureau's clock, or in the standalone wall clock at receiving, MicroForensics reads the punch data and changes nothing at the clock.
- Scheduling & payroll
TimeForge & the payroll bureau
TimeForge — or whatever builds the week's coverage grid — plus the payroll bureau that cuts the checks. MicroForensics reconciles the §226 wage statement against the per-period attestation, which runs on a cadence of its own, decoupled from the payroll run. The pay run, the schedule, and the bureau relationship stay yours.
- Compliance records
The per-pay-period sign-off
Per-pay-period attestation on breaks, hours, and pay-match. Adaptive courses document the training leg of "all reasonable steps." Wage Order 7's meal-period rules are the frame the whole record answers to.
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.
AB 647, effective January 1, 2024, expanded California's grocery-worker retention law — a preferential-hiring list for successor employers, a 90-day retention obligation, and now a private right of action. For an independent acquiring a divested store, the workforce arrives with a paperwork history you didn't write; the record you can produce starts the day the store becomes yours.
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.
Grocery questions, answered.
01Our time clock runs through the POS stack. Doesn't it already keep the record?
It keeps the punches — clock-ins, clock-outs, schedules, labor-to-sales. California requires that record and requires it to be accurate. What MicroForensics adds is the closing half: the employee's own contemporaneous affirmation that breaks were taken, hours are accurate, and pay matches expectation, and the entry showing what was paid or changed when it came back wrong.
02What happens when a call-out leaves one checker on the front end through the fifth hour?
A late or missed break at the checkstand is caught the pay period it happens, and the fix is made where it starts: the coverage plan for the front end. When coverage genuinely fails, MicroForensics documents what happened contemporaneously: the late or missed break, the §226.7 premium it triggers, and the employee's own account in the attestation. The caps, and what a court decides, are set out above.
03Most of our crew reads Spanish first. Can they sign in Spanish?
Yes. The attestation runs in English or, where the crew needs it, Spanish, scoped in the records diagnostic from your roster, with the Spanish produced by a retained translation professional. Each employee signs in whichever of the two they actually read, so the record shows what the checker, the deli lead, or the night-crew stocker understood and affirmed, per pay period, with a timestamp.
04We're picking up a store in a chain divestiture. Which stores does AB 647 reach?
AB 647's retention rules for successor employers, set out above, reach stores over 15,000 square feet; whether a given store qualifies is a question for your lawyer. Make starting the attestation record a closing item, not an afterthought.
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.