The route clock logs every arrival — not the break between sites.
MicroForensics, built for the landscape maintenance and tree-care operators whose crews clock job to job across a route — where the time record captures every arrival and no meal break between them. Runs on top of the BusyBusy, ExakTime, ClockShark, LMN, or Aspire data you already produce. No new software for crew leaders. 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 landscaping records fail when a PAGA notice tests them.
The break between sites never gets logged.
A field time clock is built to log job starts and stops. A crew hits five sites; the app records every arrival — and the meal break between site two and site three shows up nowhere. Under Donohue v. AMN Services (Cal. 2021), time records showing missed, short, or late meal periods raise a rebuttable presumption of violation. The route log can’t rebut it; the per-pay-period attestation can.
Piece-rate tree work carries §226.2.
Tree crews paid per tree or per job fall under Labor Code §226.2: rest and recovery periods and other nonproductive time must be paid separately — rest and recovery at an average hourly rate — and itemized on the wage statement. That defense turns on the record too: a per-period attestation that the separate line items match the breaks the crew actually took.
Spanish-primary crews, English-only paperwork.
Landscaping crews run 50% Hispanic nationally (BLS 2023) and heavily Spanish-primary in California. An attestation signed in a language the employee reads is stronger evidence than one signed in a language they don’t. MicroForensics routes every per-pay-period sign-off bilingually — English or Spanish, the employee’s choice — so the signature reflects something the employee actually understood.
The landscaping stack we orchestrate.
Route clocks
BusyBusy, ExakTime, or ClockShark — the clock your crews already carry job to job. We integrate as a read-only consumer: MicroForensics ingests the job-start and job-stop data and routes the attestation on top of it. Crews see no change in the tool they actually touch.
LMN & Aspire
Where the operation runs on LMN or Aspire for estimating, scheduling, and job costing, we read crew and route structure from the platform you already pay for. The attestation follows the crew, not the office — and the record stays queryable by crew, route, and pay period.
Payroll and the wage statement
Gusto, QuickBooks Payroll, ADP, or Paylocity. MicroForensics reconciles the §226 wage statement against the per-period attestation — including the separate §226.2 line items on piece-rate tree work — and carries the heat attestation on the same surface. Bilingual (EN/ES) by default. We don’t replace the payroll run.
The heat overlay runs at full strength here: landscaping is one of the five industries Cal/OSHA §3395 names in its high-heat provisions, which activate at 95°F. Cool-down recovery periods are recordable events — every cool-down a crew member takes belongs in the record, dated — and the per-pay-period sign-off is the cleanest place to show it.
What these buyers ask first.
- 01
We’re on BusyBusy (or ExakTime, or ClockShark) with GPS on every truck. Doesn’t that record protect us?
It does the opposite of what most owners assume. GPS and geofence data prove where the crew was, minute by minute — which makes a missing meal break easier to see, not harder. Under Donohue v. AMN Services (Cal. 2021), time records showing missed, short, or late meal periods raise a rebuttable presumption of violation. MicroForensics rides on the clock you already run, reads the route data, and routes the per-pay-period attestation that can rebut the presumption.
- 02
Most of my crews are Spanish-first. The crew leader translates — does that count?
Verbal translation is exactly the gap: the crew leader explains, the crew nods, and the system captures none of it. In court, that conversation never happened. MicroForensics routes every attestation bilingually — each employee signs in English or Spanish, their choice, on their own phone or a shared device at the yard. Crews run 50% Hispanic nationally (BLS 2023) and heavily Spanish-primary in California; the record is built for that from the start.
- 03
We pay tree crews by the tree. What does §226.2 change about our record?
Labor Code §226.2 (effective 2016) requires piece-rate workers to be paid separately for rest and recovery periods — at an average hourly rate — and for other nonproductive time, each itemized on the wage statement. Time data alone won’t show any of that. MicroForensics reconciles the §226.2 line items against a per-period attestation that the rest and recovery periods were actually taken. No piece-rate work? We drop the module rather than charge you for it.
- 04
Our install crews are signatory to a Laborers agreement. Does PAGA even reach us?
Possibly not for those crews. Labor Code §2699.6 exempts certain construction-industry work performed under a qualifying collective bargaining agreement, and landscape-construction crews under Laborers CBAs can sit outside PAGA at the margin. Maintenance and tree-care crews outside the agreement generally don’t. Which side of the line your mix falls on is a screening question — one of the first things we work through on the discovery call.
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.