We catch missed breaks, unpaid break premiums, and an empty violent incident log in California senior care — then chase each one to a documented fix.
MicroForensics™ is built for senior care operators, where a caregiver can't leave the floor without relief, so she eats at the med cart and the clock shows a normal shift. 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 care staff.
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 senior living operator's break record comes up short when a lawyer asks for it.
- 01
On a ratio-bound floor, a missed meal needs an answer on the record.
Donohue v. AMN Services (Cal. 2021) held that time records showing missed, short, or late meal periods raise a rebuttable presumption of violation. Answering a presumption takes evidence about the period itself: the exception noted, the premium paid, the relief pattern corrected. That is the catch, the fix, and the entry beside it.
- 02
PAGA filings in senior care are still rising.
Senior living is one of only three categories where PAGA filings have risen since the 2024 reform (Ankura analysis of LWDA notice data through mid-2026). The driver is structural, not a training gap: around-the-clock coverage, thin NOC-shift staffing, relief that moves with census. Exposure like that persists until the record changes, because the schedule can't.
- 03
On a solo visit, nobody else saw whether the aide took a break.
CalEVV, California's Cures Act visit-verification mandate (personal care since January 1, 2022; home health since January 1, 2023), proves where the aide was and when. It is built to answer a billing question, not a wage-and-hour one. Unpaired visit GPS and check-in data is the other side's exhibit; the per-pay-period attestation is what answers it.
What we build on, and what we add.
- Scheduling & timekeeping
The shift board
OnShift or Smartlinx on the schedule; a payroll-bureau timeclock or ADP/Paychex on the punches. MicroForensics reads the schedule and the punches and changes nothing in either — AM, PM, and NOC shifts keep their structure.
- Clinical
EHR & point of care
PointClickCare and its Point of Care tasking are common on post-acute floors, and med-pass documentation proves the aide was working — not that a duty-free meal happened. MicroForensics leaves the clinical record where it is and pairs the operational day with the per-pay-period attestation, which answers the wage question a clinical chart was never built to answer.
- Home health
EVV & visit verification
CalEVV or a certified alternate EVV system on Medicaid-funded personal care and home health visits. MicroForensics runs alongside it and adds a per-pay-period wage sign-off: the aide's own, by SMS in English or, where the crew needs it, Spanish, that breaks happened and hours are right.
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.
Most California employers owe a written workplace violence prevention plan, training, and a violent incident log kept five years, under Labor Code §6401.9 (SB 553); facilities covered by Cal/OSHA's health care standard (8 CCR 3342) owe their own instead. MicroForensics routes a staff incident report into the log and records what was done about it.
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.
Senior living questions, answered.
01Our floors are ratio-bound — a caregiver can't walk away for 30 minutes. How can meal compliance even work?
Ratio-bound staffing makes meals hard to schedule; the exposure is that it also makes them hard to prove. Where relief exists, a missed meal is caught the pay period it happens and the relief pattern is fixed at its source. Where a break genuinely fails, the recorded exception — premium paid, cause noted — is an answer on the record. The third case is the one with no answer: a normal-looking punch and silence. The per-pay-period attestation removes the silence.
02We already run OnShift and PointClickCare. Don't those document staffing?
They document the schedule and the care. Your system may have a sign-off box; what matters is whether anyone acts on what it surfaces. What a caregiver affirms about a duty-free 30-minute meal still has to reach someone who pays the premium, changes the relief pattern, and closes the item. That loop is what MicroForensics adds.
03Our home health aides already clock visits through EVV. Isn't that the record?
It is a record of the visit, not of the breaks. MicroForensics routes a short attestation to the aide's own phone each pay period; that signature pairs the visit data with a wage record, which is a separate document answering a separate question.
04We're an RCFE, not a skilled nursing facility. Does any of this apply to us?
Yes. The meal-and-rest framework and amended §2699 apply to your hourly W-2 staff whether CDSS or CDPH issued your license, and the attestation record is the same either way. What changes by license is the second set of rules: staffing and documentation duties, and SB 525's health-care minimum wage. Where it applies, its phased increases since October 16, 2024, lift the regular rate that premiums are priced at. The records diagnostic maps which rules reach your building.
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.