We catch missed breaks, unpaid break premiums, and auto-deducted meals your room attendants never took — then chase each one to a documented fix.
MicroForensics™ is built for independent and franchise hotels, where checkout overlaps the fifth hour of work, by the end of which California requires a meal break to have started (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 app for housekeepers 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 hotel's break record comes up short when a lawyer asks for it.
- 01
A room attendant works through her meal break, and the time clock deducts it anyway.
Under Donohue v. AMN Services (Cal. 2021), time records showing missed, short, or late meal periods raise a rebuttable presumption of violation. A deducted 30 minutes, or a rounded punch, can't show the break happened, so the record gives the hotel nothing to rebut it with.
- 02
Missed-break premiums are paid at the regular rate, not base hourly pay.
Ferra v. Loews Hollywood Hotel (Cal. 2021) — itself a hotel case — set that rule, and every step up in the wage floor mechanically raises what a missed or unprovable break costs.
- 03
An English-only handbook acknowledgment from a Spanish-primary crew is a weak exhibit.
Housekeeping runs 52% Hispanic nationally (BLS 2023) and heavily Spanish-primary in California's urban markets — and housekeeping and banquets are the departments generating most break exposure. The per-pay-period attestation runs in English or, where the crew needs it, Spanish, so the departments carrying the exposure are the ones building the record.
What we build on, and what we add.
- Payroll & time
ADP/UKG-class systems
Hotel payroll and time clocks — ADP and UKG-class platforms, frequently configured with auto-deduct or rounding — plus labor tools like Hotel Effectiveness. Your systems stay exactly where they are. The per-period sign-off runs on a cadence of its own, decoupled from the payroll run.
- The house
Boards, banquets, and the night audit
Housekeeping boards assign room credits across checkouts and stayovers; the banquet calendar drives F&B staffing; the night audit closes the day. MicroForensics reads the shift as actually worked — not as scheduled — department by department.
- The record
Per-pay-period sign-off
Every pay period, room attendants, banquet crews, and desk agents sign that breaks were taken and hours are right, on a timestamped record.
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.
Covered Los Angeles hotels — 60 rooms and up — have one more wage floor, with its steps on the calendar: the citywide hotel-worker wage schedule, $25.00 an hour today, reaching $30.00 by January 1, 2030 (ordinance amendment effective June 29, 2026). We scope the ordinance in the records diagnostic — and never assume it covers a property it doesn't.
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.
Hotel questions, answered.
01Our timekeeping auto-deducts the 30-minute meal break. Doesn't that cover us?
It's the opposite: An auto-deducted meal is recorded whether or not it was taken, so the time record can't show the break happened. What answers a presumption of violation is evidence about the period itself: the room attendant's own account, the §226.7 premium where one was owed, and a dated note of what changed on the board. The caps, and what a court decides, are set out above.
02We're a franchise property run day-to-day by a management company. Does MicroForensics fit us?
It depends on who the W-2 employer is, and that's the first thing we work out with you on the call. If your entity employs the staff — owner-operator or franchisee — that's the employer we build for. If a third-party management company is the employer of record, that's chain employment in effect and outside what we build for; we'll tell you on the call rather than sell you a records diagnostic that can't fit.
03Half our housekeeping department is Spanish-primary. Do they need a new app?
No new app, and no English-only paperwork. The sign-off runs through SMS or a short link each pay period, in English or, where the crew needs it, Spanish — the room attendant keeps the board, the cart, and the workflow she already has. Spanish is scoped in where the department needs it, in the records diagnostic: The record is only as strong as the crew's ability to read what they signed.
04We run ADP (or UKG) with Hotel Effectiveness for labor. Do you integrate off the shelf?
No. Hotel stacks need custom connector work per property — we scope and price it in the records diagnostic, before you commit. ADP and UKG-class systems in a hotel configuration — auto-deduct rules, rounding, department splits — are where that work goes. MicroForensics reads from your payroll, time clocks, and labor tools and adds the attestation layer on top.
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.