California
California split-shift premium for field crews
The hardest state in the country to get right, and the one where getting it wrong is most expensive. California layers daily overtime, double time, a seventh-day premium, meal and rest periods and a split-shift premium on top of the federal weekly rule, and it lets employees enforce most of it themselves.
What the law requires
One hour's pay at minimum wage when a workday is interrupted by an unpaid, non-meal break, offset by any amount the employee already earns above minimum.
What it means on a crew
Common in field service when a crew is sent home mid-afternoon and called back for an evening job. The offset is the part vendors get wrong in both directions: it is not an automatic extra hour, and it is not nothing.
What Punchless does
Computed including the minimum-wage offset. No competitor in our 2026 market research implements this premium at all.
Every rule we enforce is published with the statute behind it and the test that checks it, so this is a claim you can verify rather than take on faith.
Where we fall short
The premium is calculated but does not yet appear as its own column in the payroll export, so it has to be carried across by hand.
If you are relying on this, ask us before you buy. We would rather lose the sale than have you find out at a hearing.
Other California rules
Verified against primary sources on August 3, 2026. Statutes and wage orders change, and some of this is genuinely unsettled - re-check the source before relying on it. Punchless is not a law firm and this is not legal advice.