Static educational checklist — not a calculator. No punch inputs, no minimum-hours engines, no live show-up / call-back / regular-rate math. Spot common FLSA § 778.220 “show-up” or reporting-pay red flags: payments for reporting when little or no work is provided that should stay out of the regular rate, hours padded into the overtime divisor, show-up amounts wrongly credited toward FLSA OT, and mixups with state report-time floors, call-back pay, unused-leave / idle payments, and schedule guarantees. Distinct from the multi-state report-time / call-in, unused-leave / forgone-holiday, continuous-workday, and premium-credit cheat-sheet pages.
Baseline — what § 778.220 covers (and does not)
Under 29 CFR § 778.220, payments to an employee for reporting for duty when work is not provided or when insufficient work is provided — often called show-up or reporting pay — may be excluded from the regular rate when they are in addition to the employee’s compensation for hours actually worked, and generally may not be credited toward overtime compensation due under the Act. Closely related: § 778.221 (call-back pay for extra trips after the employee’s regular hours) and § 778.219 (payments for unused leave / similar non-hours payments, including some “failure to provide work” patterns). This page does not compute state reporting-time floors (California IWC, NY hospitality, etc.) — those live on the report-time / call-in checklist — and it does not compute regular rates.
Checklist — show-up / reporting pay red flags
Minimum show-up / reporting amounts stuffed into the regular-rate numerator. Flag payroll that folds contractual or handbook “2-hour show-up,” “4-hour report,” or “minimum call” payments into the FLSA regular-rate when those dollars are true § 778.220 payments for reporting when little or no work is furnished, rather than compensation for hours actually worked. A “everything goes into RR” macro does not cure the exclusion.
Show-up hours padded into the overtime hours divisor (or treated as “hours worked”). Flag worksheets that add the full contractual show-up block (e.g., 4 hours) into the hours-worked denominator used for half-time / regular-rate math when only a fraction of that time was actually worked, or that treat unworked show-up hours as FLSA hours for the § 7(a) 40-hour gate. § 778.220 payments are generally not compensation for hours of employment; padding distorts both the rate and the overtime threshold.
Show-up / reporting pay wrongly credited toward FLSA overtime due. Flag stubs or settlement sheets that apply minimum report payments, short-shift make-whole dollars, or “no work provided” show-up amounts as a credit against overtime premiums owed for hours actually worked over 40. Exclusion from the regular rate and non-creditability toward OT are parallel § 778.220 consequences — one without the other is a common underpayment pattern.
State report-time / call-in floors collapsed into a single “§ 778.220 show-up” code. Flag multi-state employers that treat California IWC reporting-time pay, NY hospitality / miscellaneous call-in, or New England reporting floors as if they were only an FLSA regular-rate exclusion question — or that export a federal show-up exclusion into every state’s wage-order floor. Timing, dollar floors, and exemptions are mostly state wage-payment / wage-order law; regular-rate exclusion is a separate FLSA question.
§ 778.221 call-back pay mixed with § 778.220 show-up (or the reverse). Flag one-line “callback / show-up” codes that never separate (a) reporting at the start of a shift when little work is provided from (b) being called back for an extra trip after the employee’s regular hours or after leaving the workplace. Different triggers; different stub lines; different regular-rate worksheets.
§ 778.219 unused-leave / idle / “failure to provide work” payments rebranded as show-up. Flag handbooks that relabel vacation cash-outs, unworked holiday banks, or broader idle-hours payments as “show-up pay” (or the reverse) to force a different regular-rate result. Substance controls: leave liquidations and true reporting-when-no-work payments are easy to conflate on the same stub.
“Guaranteed hours” / schedule-assurance rebrands that wipe out the § 778.220 analysis. Flag policies that call every short-shift top-up a “guaranteed weekly wage,” “Belo,” or “FWW salary” so payroll never classifies (or excludes) true show-up dollars — or that treat predictive-scheduling predictability pay as if § 778.220 automatically answered the regular-rate question. Schedule-design and fair-workweek doctrines do not silently rewrite § 778.220.
Continuous-workday / on-call myths that treat waiting as unpaid “show-up only.” Flag operations that send employees home after a short punch, pay a token show-up amount, and then keep them engaged to wait / respond without asking whether the waiting time is hours worked under Part 785 / continuous-workday rules. A § 778.220 label does not convert controlled waiting into non-hours.
Split-shift / spread-of-hours stand-ins for show-up shortfalls. Flag stubs that skip a contractual or state reporting minimum and instead “cover” the early send-home with a split-shift premium or spread-of-hours add-on — or that treat a show-up payment as satisfying a separate split/spread wage-order duty. Different statutes; different triggers; different lines.
Stub coding and record gaps on show-up vs hours actually worked. Flag wage statements that never show a show-up / reporting line separate from wages for hours worked, missing “work provided / not provided” notes on early send-homes, destroyed call-in logs, and regular-rate worksheets that omit or misfile large report payments. Record gaps turn every short-shift week into a he-said / she-said regular-rate and state floor dispute.