We catch missed breaks, unpaid break premiums, and open heat items on the dock — then chase each one to a documented fix.
MicroForensics™ is built for distributors whose waves run through 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 pickers 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 distributor's break record comes up short when a lawyer asks for it.
- 01
A truck at the door pushes the meal break late.
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 the punch data doesn't carry: the employee's own account, the §226.7 premium where one was owed, and a dated note of what changed on the dock.
- 02
The statutes now name the warehouse.
AB 701 (effective January 2022) bars quotas that prevent meal and rest compliance and requires written quota descriptions, at 100 or more employees at a single DC, or 1,000 or more statewide. Cal/OSHA's indoor heat standard (8 CCR §3396, effective July 2024) reaches un-air-conditioned warehouse space and requires a written plan, cool-down access, and training.
- 03
The punch data is there; the sign-off isn't.
Your time clocks already hold the punches, but not a sign-off unless someone has switched one on. MicroForensics adds the sign-off every pay period. And warehousing runs 37.7% Hispanic nationally (BLS CPS 2024), with Inland Empire and Central Valley crews heavily Spanish-primary: A sign-off the crew couldn't read isn't much of a record.
What we build on, and what we add.
- System of record
Timekeeping & payroll
ADP, Paychex, UKG Ready, or QuickBooks Time — whichever runs your pay cycle today. MicroForensics reads the punches and changes nothing in them, reconciles the §226 wage statement against the per-pay-period attestation, and routes the sign-off — in English or, where the crew needs it, Spanish — on its own per-pay-period cadence, separate from the pay run. The payroll run stays yours.
- Warehouse
Distribution ERP & WMS
Prophet 21, Epicor Eclipse, or the house system that drives your waves, will-call counter, and cycle counts — it stays untouched.
- Compliance
The records the statutes name
AB 701 quota-description delivery and acknowledgment where the DC headcount threshold applies; the §3396 indoor-heat plan acknowledgment and documented training for un-air-conditioned dock and storage space; the meal-and-rest attestation flow and per-cycle wage-statement acknowledgment.
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.
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.
Distributor questions, answered.
01Half the dock comes from a staffing agency. Whose record is this?
MicroForensics runs on your W-2 roster — the crews on your payroll sign the per-pay-period attestation. Agency temps attest through their employer of record, not through you. Heavy temp use does two things worth knowing: It shrinks the W-2 roster the engagement is scoped around, and it adds joint-employer complexity the records diagnostic maps before the implementation is priced.
02We're under 100 employees at the DC. Does AB 701 even reach us?
The quota provisions apply at 100 or more employees at a single warehouse distribution center or 1,000 or more statewide — and staffing-agency workers whose terms you control can count toward those numbers. Below the thresholds, AB 701's disclosure duties don't attach; the meal-period rules still do. A late, short, or missing meal punch raises a rebuttable presumption of violation at any headcount, and answering it takes evidence about the period itself.
03We're already on ADP (or UKG Ready). Doesn't it have an attestation feature?
It may: Several products in this category can capture a signature. What matters is whether anyone acts on what the sign-off surfaces. MicroForensics adds a sign-off on its own per-pay-period cadence, separate from the pay run; and exception capture when a sign-off is declined or a break is flagged, each chased to a documented fix — on top of the ADP or UKG data, not in place of it.
04PAGA filings in wholesale are down since the reform. Why do this now?
They are — filings attributed to warehousing are down 27.4% since the reform (Ankura), and we'd rather tell you that than not. You already owe most of the record: the time record, the wage statement and, where AB 701 applies, the written quota description, whether or not filings rise. A lawyer's letter demanding records usually arrives before any PAGA notice, and the record cannot be assembled after it arrives. The caps, and what a court decides, are set out above.
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.