We catch missed breaks, unpaid break premiums, and open heat items on landscape crews — then chase each one to a documented fix.
MicroForensics™ is built for landscape maintenance and tree-care operators whose crews clock job to job, where the time record captures every arrival and no meal break between them. 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 crew leaders.
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 landscape crew's break record comes up short when a lawyer asks for it.
- 01
The break between sites never gets logged.
Under Donohue v. AMN Services (Cal. 2021), time records showing missed, short, or late meal periods raise a rebuttable presumption of violation. Answering it takes evidence about each period: the crew’s own account, the premium paid where one was owed, and the correction recorded beside it. The time record carries none of the three.
- 02
Paying tree crews by the tree doesn’t cover their rest breaks.
Labor Code §226.2 requires rest and recovery periods and other nonproductive time on piece-rate work to be paid separately — rest and recovery at an average hourly rate — and itemized on the wage statement.
- 03
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 the sign-off in English or, where the crew needs it, Spanish, so the signature reflects something the employee understood.
What we build on, and what we add.
- Field time
Route clocks
BusyBusy, ExakTime, or ClockShark — the clock your crews already carry job to job. We build on its job-start and job-stop data and change nothing in the clock.
- Business management
LMN & Aspire
Where the operation runs on LMN or Aspire for estimating, scheduling, and job costing, we build on its crew and route structure, so the record stays queryable by crew, route, and pay period.
- Payroll & compliance records
Payroll and the wage statement
Gusto, QuickBooks Payroll, ADP, or Paylocity. MicroForensics reconciles the §226 wage statement against each worker’s attestation and carries the heat attestation on the same sign-off. The sign-off runs on a cadence of its own, decoupled from the payroll run, which stays yours.
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.
Landscaping is one of the five industries under Cal/OSHA §3395’s high-heat provisions, which activate at 95°F. The standard requires a written plan, shade, cool-down access, and training; the IIPP requires the training documented and each hazard recorded with its correction (8 CCR 3203(b)). California does not ask you to log every cool-down. On a route, the correction goes missing.
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.
Landscaping questions, answered.
01We’re on BusyBusy (or ExakTime, or ClockShark) with GPS on every truck. Doesn’t that record protect us?
It can do the opposite. GPS and geofence data prove where the crew was, minute by minute, which makes a missing meal break easier to see, not harder. Unpaired, route GPS is the other side’s exhibit rather than yours. MicroForensics builds on the route data and pairs it with what GPS can never contain: the crew’s own account of each break and the correction entered beside it.
02Most of my crews are Spanish-first. The crew leader translates — does that count?
Not as a record. Verbal translation is exactly the gap: The crew leader explains, the crew nods, and the system captures none of it. MicroForensics routes each attestation in English or, where the crew needs it, Spanish, and each employee signs in the language they read, on their own phone or a shared device at the yard. Which crews need Spanish is scoped in the records diagnostic.
03We pay tree crews by the tree. What does §226.2 change about our record?
Labor Code §226.2 requires separate, itemized lines on the wage statement for rest and recovery periods and other nonproductive time, and time data alone won’t show whether the rest and recovery periods were taken. MicroForensics reconciles those lines against each worker’s attestation that the periods were taken. No piece-rate work? We leave the §226.2 check out rather than charge you for it.
04Our 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. 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.
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.