Company setup and rule toggles

Settings is where you tell Paidsley what your company actually does. The California defaults are already on, so for most employers the job is confirming rather than configuring. This page explains what each switch changes and when you would ever move it.

The two that must be right first

Timezone. Every punch is stored as an exact moment and converted to this timezone to decide which workday it belongs to. Get it wrong and late-evening shifts land on the wrong day, which moves daily overtime.

Workweek start day. Seven consecutive 24-hour periods beginning on the same day each week. This decides where weekly overtime and the seventh-day rule fall. Changing it later moves those boundaries for future calculations, so settle it before you rely on the numbers.

Both of these are foundations. Everything else can be adjusted as you learn; these two are worth pausing over.

Rules profile

• California — the full set of state rules. This is the default and what Paidsley is built for.
• FLSA only — federal rules alone: weekly overtime over 40 hours, no daily overtime, no meal or rest premiums. Only appropriate if you have no California employees.
• Custom — you control each switch below individually.

Overtime switches

Daily overtime — over 8 hours at 1.5x, over 12 at 2x. Required in California.

Weekly overtime — over 40 hours at 1.5x. Required under both state and federal law.

Seventh consecutive day — 1.5x for the first 8 hours and 2x beyond, on the seventh day worked in one workweek. Required in California and the rule most often missed when hours are added up by hand.

Turning any of these off changes what your employees are paid. There is no ordinary California circumstance in which they should be off.

Break switches

First meal period — required when more than 5 hours are worked, beginning before the end of the fifth hour.

Second meal period — required when more than 10 hours are worked, beginning before the end of the tenth hour.

Rest periods — ten paid minutes per four hours worked or major fraction.

Premium pay — the extra hour owed under Labor Code § 226.7 when a meal or rest period was not provided. Turning this off does not make the obligation disappear; it only stops Paidsley recording it, which means you would be relying on nothing when asked to prove what happened.

Meal waivers — allows the mutual-consent waiver on qualifying short shifts: the first meal on days of no more than six hours, and the second on days of no more than twelve where the first was not waived. Turn this on only if you actually have that agreement with your employees. With it off, Paidsley treats a missing meal on a qualifying short day as a violation, which is the safer default.

See Why Paidsley works the way it does for the reasoning behind all of these.

Split shifts

A split shift is a workday interrupted by an unpaid, non-break period — the classic case being a restaurant shift with the afternoon off. When one occurs, a split shift premium of one hour at the minimum wage is owed, reduced by any amount the employee already earns above minimum wage that day.

Off by default, because most employers do not schedule this way. Turn it on if you do.

Reporting time pay

When an employee reports for work and is sent home early, or given less than half their scheduled shift, they are owed reporting time pay: half the scheduled day, at least two hours and at most four, at the regular rate. A second reporting in the same day that yields under two hours' work is paid two hours.

Off by default. It cannot be calculated from punches alone, because it depends on what the employee was scheduled to work — and a time clock only knows what actually happened. When you turn it on, you record each instance yourself from the Reporting-time pay screen.

Worth knowing: under Ward v. Tilly's, Inc. (2019) 31 Cal.App.5th 1033, requiring an employee to phone in ahead of an on-call shift can itself count as reporting for work, even if they never travel in.

Alternative workweek schedules

Some employers adopt an alternative workweek — four ten-hour days, or a nine-eighty schedule — through a formal secret-ballot election process, which changes when daily overtime begins.

Paidsley does not yet calculate payroll for alternative workweek schedules. If you record one here, Paidsley will tell you plainly that it cannot compute the numbers rather than producing figures that look right and are not. If you run an alternative workweek, talk to us before relying on Paidsley for payroll.

Wage rate mode

Highest applicable — uses the highest minimum wage that applies to the employee, whether state or local. This is the safe default and the correct answer in almost every case, because local ordinances in California frequently exceed the state floor.

Per jurisdiction — applies the specific local rate for where the work happened. Only useful if you operate across several cities with different ordinances and track work location closely.

Sick leave accrual mode

Company-wide, most generous — one policy for everyone, set to the most generous of the rules that apply to any of your employees. Simple, and never underpays.

Per jurisdiction — applies each locality's own ordinance separately. More precise, more to maintain.

California's state floor requires employees to accrue at least one hour per thirty hours worked, be able to use at least forty hours or five days per year, and carry over unused time subject to a cap. Many California cities require more. If you are not sure whether a local ordinance covers you, choose the most generous option.

Check date offset

How many days after a pay period ends your employees are actually paid. Paidsley uses it to set the check date on a closed pay period, which appears on the wage statement.

Pay exempt employees for zero-hour weeks

Whether a salaried exempt employee is paid for a workweek in which they performed no work at all. On by default, which is the conservative reading — an exempt employee's salary is generally not reduced for a week in which no work was performed unless a specific exception applies.

Rest attestation start date

The date from which Paidsley began asking employees to confirm their rest breaks. Shifts before this date will not show missing attestations, so an earlier record does not look retroactively incomplete.

Payroll provider

Which payroll system you send hours to. This changes the labels used throughout the payroll screens and decides which export format Paidsley produces. See Sending hours to your payroll provider.