Static educational checklist — not a calculator. No punch inputs, no show-up premium engines, no live half-shift / two-hour / three-hour floor math. Spot common state reporting-time and call-in pay red flags across California, New York (hospitality & miscellaneous), New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut (mercantile & restaurant), Rhode Island, Maine, and New Hampshire. Distinct from the FLSA continuous-workday / engaged-to-wait page, split-shift premiums, NY spread-of-hours, predictive-scheduling / fair-workweek predictability pay, on-call waiting time, and OT stub arithmetic pages.
Baseline — what reporting-time / call-in pay is (and is not)
Federal FLSA does not create a general “show up and get paid half a shift” premium. Many states and wage orders do: when an employee reports as scheduled (or is called in) and is sent home early or given truncated hours, a minimum report / call-in payment may still be due — often measured in hours at the applicable minimum wage or regular rate, with order-specific exceptions (acts of God, employee request, bona fide disciplinary send-home, etc.). Reporting-time is not overtime, not a split-shift premium for an unpaid gap between segments, not NY spread-of-hours for a >10-hour first-to-last interval, and not fair-workweek predictability pay for late schedule changes. This page does not compute floors — it only flags compliance red flags.
Checklist — report-time / call-in pay red flags
California IWC reporting-time floor skipped on early send-home. Flag “clock out, go home, pay only minutes worked” when the employee reported as required and the applicable IWC wage order’s reporting-time rule (commonly up to half the scheduled day’s work, with a low/high hour band) may still apply. Longevity of an informal “we always send people home unpaid” practice does not cure the order.
New York hospitality call-in pay treated as optional “courtesy pay.” Flag hotels / restaurants / miscellaneous wage-order employers that cancel or truncate a scheduled shift and pay only actual minutes without checking 12 NYCRR hospitality call-in (and related miscellaneous call-in / split) floors. Call-in is a wage-order duty, not a tip-jar goodwill gesture.
Wrong-jurisdiction macros (CA floor pasted onto NJ / MA / CT / RI / ME / NH, or vice versa). Flag multi-state chains that apply one state’s reporting-time formula everywhere, or that assume “no CA = no report-time anywhere.” New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut mercantile/restaurant, Rhode Island, Maine, and New Hampshire each have their own reporting-time / call-in texts and exceptions.
“FLSA continuous workday already covers it” myth. Flag handbooks that treat Part 785 engaged-to-wait / continuous-workday hours-worked analysis as a substitute for state report-time premiums. Continuous-workday asks whether idle minutes count as hours worked; reporting-time asks whether a state minimum payment is due when the shift is truncated. Both can apply; neither cancels the other.
Split-shift premium or NY spread-of-hours used as a stand-in for call-in pay. Flag payroll that pays a CA one-hour split-shift min-wage premium (or a NY >10-hour spread premium) and then skips a separate call-in / reporting-time analysis for a cancelled second segment or a short show-up. Different triggers; different statutes.
Predictive-scheduling / fair-workweek predictability pay confused with report-time. Flag NYC / Seattle / Chicago / OR / LA / Philly / SF employers that treat advance-notice predictability pay as satisfying state reporting-time when an employee still reports and is sent home, or that skip call-in analysis because a schedule change was “timely.” Fair-workweek and reporting-time are parallel tracks.
Exception abuse — “act of God,” employee request, or discipline wipe-outs without facts. Flag blanket macros that zero every truncated shift as weather / voluntary leave / misconduct without contemporaneous documentation matching the wage order’s exception language. Exceptions are narrow; “slow night” is not an act of God.
On-call / callback / standby mislabeled as report-time (or the reverse). Flag restrictive phone-carry standby paid only if called, when the real question is FLSA on-call hours worked — and the reverse: true scheduled report-and-send-home events coded as “on-call” to avoid a state call-in floor.
Alternative workweek / make-up-time / Belo labels used to erase show-up floors. Flag CA employers who claim an LC 511 AWW or LC 513 make-up arrangement (or a federal Belo guarantee) means truncated scheduled days need no reporting-time review. Schedule-design doctrines do not silently repeal IWC reporting-time.
Stub coding and record gaps on truncated / cancelled shifts. Flag wage statements that never show a reporting-time / call-in line, missing scheduled-vs-worked comparisons, destroyed call-out logs, and time clocks that auto-close early releases without a premium review queue. Record gaps turn every short shift into a he-said / she-said floor dispute.