Static educational checklist — not a calculator. No punch inputs, no leave-accrual engines, no live vacation-cashout / forgone-holiday / regular-rate math. Spot common FLSA § 778.219 payments for unused paid leave and similar non-hours payments red flags: cash-outs that should stay out of the regular rate, leave hours wrongly padded into the overtime divisor, payouts wrongly credited toward FLSA OT, and mixups with holiday premiums, gifts, bonuses, and state final-pay rules. Distinct from the holiday / Sunday / special-day premium, discretionary-bonus, final-paycheck timing, and premium-credit cheat-sheet pages.
Baseline — what § 778.219 covers (and does not)
Under 29 CFR § 778.219, certain payments for occasional periods when no work is performed because of vacation, holiday, illness, failure of the employer to provide sufficient work, or other similar cause — and similar payments not made as compensation for hours of employment — may be excluded from the regular rate. Those amounts generally also may not be credited toward overtime compensation due under the Act. Forgone holiday pay (pay for a holiday the employee works while still receiving holiday pay) is a classic § 778.219 pattern, separate from a true § 778.203 time-and-one-half special-day premium. This page does not compute payouts or regular rates — it only flags compliance red flags.
Checklist — unused leave / forgone holiday payout red flags
Unused vacation / PTO / sick cash-outs stuffed into the regular-rate divisor. Flag payroll that folds lump-sum vacation buyouts, annual leave cash-outs, or accrued PTO liquidations into the FLSA regular-rate numerator when those payments are true § 778.219 payments for periods of absence (or cash in lieu of leave) rather than compensation for hours actually worked. Longevity of a “everything goes into RR” macro does not cure the exclusion.
Leave hours padded into the overtime hours divisor (or treated as “hours worked”). Flag worksheets that add 8 hours of “vacation” or “holiday off” into the hours-worked denominator used for half-time / regular-rate math, or that treat paid leave days as FLSA hours worked for the § 7(a) 40-hour gate. § 778.219 payments are generally not compensation for hours of employment; padding leave hours distorts both the rate and the overtime threshold.
Leave / holiday payouts wrongly credited toward FLSA overtime due. Flag stubs or settlement sheets that apply vacation cash-outs, unused-sick buyouts, or unworked holiday pay 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 § 778.219 consequences — one without the other is a common underpayment pattern.
Forgone holiday pay labeled as a § 778.203 special-day OT premium (or the reverse). Flag policies that treat “holiday pay + hours worked on the holiday” as automatically excludable / creditable under § 778.203 without checking whether the extra is a true time-and-one-half premium for hours worked on the special day versus a § 778.219-style payment for the holiday itself. Mislabeling moves money between regular-rate buckets.
§ 778.212 “gift” or § 778.211 “discretionary bonus” rebrands of leave cash-outs. Flag handbooks that relabel contractual vacation payouts, accrued PTO liquidations, or formula holiday banks as “discretionary gifts” or “spot bonuses” to force a different regular-rate result. Substance controls: promised leave cash-outs are not cured by a gift/bonus sticker.
Show-up / idle / “failure to provide work” payments collapsed into leave cash-outs. Flag one-line “idle pay” or “reporting pay” codes that mix § 778.219-adjacent payments for failure to provide sufficient work with state reporting-time / call-in floors or § 778.220 show-up patterns without separating the doctrines. Different triggers; different stub lines; different regular-rate questions.
State vacation-payout / final-pay overlays ignored (or pasted onto FLSA RR math). Flag multi-state employers that assume § 778.219 alone answers whether accrued vacation must be cashed out at separation, when it is due, or whether waiting-time penalties attach — or that export a California / Maine / New York vacation-payout rule into every state. Timing and penalty doctrines are mostly state wage-payment law; regular-rate exclusion is a separate FLSA question.
“Use-it-or-lose-it” / forfeiture myths that wipe out earned leave without a payout analysis. Flag policies that forfeit accrued vacation at year-end or at quit and never ask whether state law requires payout of vested leave, while payroll still treats any partial cash-out inconsistently for regular-rate purposes. Forfeiture fights and § 778.219 exclusion fights are easy to conflate on the same stub.
Belo / FWW / salary-basis stacking that “absorbs” leave cash-outs into the guarantee. Flag fixed-salary or fluctuating-workweek arrangements that never separately classify (or exclude) vacation buyouts because “the weekly guarantee already covers everything,” or that dilute the regular rate with large leave liquidations in the wrong week. Schedule-design doctrines do not silently rewrite § 778.219.
Stub coding and record gaps on leave cash-outs vs worked hours. Flag wage statements that never show a vacation/PTO cash-out line separate from wages for hours worked, missing accrual balances at payout, destroyed leave ledgers, and regular-rate worksheets that omit or misfile large buyouts. Record gaps turn every separation week into a he-said / she-said regular-rate and final-pay dispute.