We catch missed breaks on solo posts, unpaid break premiums, and an empty violent incident log — then chase each one to a documented fix.
MicroForensics™ is built for California private patrol operators running solo posts, where a guard cannot take a duty-free meal without rover relief. 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 post.
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 patrol operator's break record comes up short when a lawyer asks for it.
- 01
The solo post makes compliant breaks structurally hard.
Without rover relief, the lawful fallback is the on-duty meal agreement: permitted only where the nature of the work prevents relief from all duty, set down in a written agreement the officer can revoke in writing at any time. That agreement is only as good as its records, and the per-pay-period attestation is the record.
- 02
A rest break spent on call does not count as a rest break.
Augustus v. ABM Security (Cal. 2016) held that rest periods spent on call — radio on, post covered — are not rest periods. For non-union operators, that exposure attaches shift after shift. When a rest period doesn't fit the post, the question is whether a signed, dated record shows what actually happened.
- 03
The collective-bargaining exception for on-call rest breaks ends January 1, 2027, unless renewed.
AB 1512 abrogated Augustus for security officers under a qualifying collective bargaining agreement — but it sunsets January 1, 2027, and absent renewal in Sacramento the Augustus rules reach union shops again. Either way, the operational question is the record, not the statute.
What we build on, and what we add.
- Back office
Scheduling & payroll
WinTeam, TrackTik's back office, or Gusto and QuickBooks Payroll at the smaller end. MicroForensics reads officer rosters, post schedules, and pay-period boundaries and changes nothing in them, and reconciles the §226 wage statement against the per-period attestation. The attestation runs on a cadence of its own, decoupled from the payroll run, which stays yours.
- Guard tour
Patrol GPS and checkpoint scans
Silvertrac, TrackTik, Trackforce, or another checkpoint-scan system. MicroForensics pairs each pay period's scans with the signed attestation that answers it, so the tour record stops standing alone.
- Compliance records
The on-duty meal record
The written on-duty meal agreement, answered per pay period rather than filed once at hire; the post-Augustus rest-period attestation; and the SB 553 plan acknowledgment, training record, and violent incident log on the same surface, in English or, where the crew needs it, Spanish.
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.
The incidents that belong in a patrol operator's violent incident log are the job: the trespass, the altercation, the subject who won't leave. The gap is rarely a missing plan. It is an incident report never logged with a documented response. None of it is a PAGA argument — these records are owed on their own terms.
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 workplace violence prevention plan and its violent incident log, and the injury and illness prevention program, whatever state they are in
Anything you cannot find is itself a finding.
Contract security questions, answered.
01We already run TrackTik (or Silvertrac). Doesn't the tour log prove compliance?
It proves presence, not wage compliance. Checkpoint scans and GPS place the officer at post through the meal window — which is exactly why unpaired GPS and checkpoint data is the other side's exhibit rather than yours: It shows an officer who worked through the window, with no record that the on-duty meal agreement was honored. MicroForensics reads the tour data you already produce and pairs it with the signed per-pay-period attestation that answers it.
02Our officers signed on-duty meal agreements at hire. Isn't that enough?
The agreement is where the defense starts, not where it ends. The officer can revoke it in writing at any time, so the question is what happened each pay period, not what was signed at orientation. Under Donohue v. AMN Services (Cal. 2021), time records showing missed, short, or late meal periods raise a rebuttable presumption of violation. The per-pay-period attestation is dated, signed evidence about whether the breaks actually happened.
03Break relief depends on client sites we don't control. How do you scope that?
We scope to posts you actually staff and schedule. Where the client contract sets single-officer coverage, the record documents the reality — the on-duty meal agreement, rover relief where it exists, the logged exception when it doesn't. We don't promise a record for site conditions outside your control; the records diagnostic tells you where those boundaries sit before you commit to an implementation.
04We have CBA-covered officers under AB 1512. Does this apply to us?
The calendar matters: AB 1512's exception, set out above, ends January 1, 2027, unless renewed. If it lapses, the record is already in place. Whether your agreement qualifies is a question for your lawyer. 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 wrote an SB 553 plan back in 2024. Isn't that the compliance piece done?
The plan is one of five things Labor Code §6401.9 requires. The others are training, a violent incident log, five-year retention of the log and related records, and production to employees and their representatives within 15 calendar days of a request. Those records are compelled whether or not anyone helps you keep them. MicroForensics routes an officer's incident report into the log, records what was done about the incident, and keeps the log production-ready.
06We 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.