Unpaid Overtime Claims: Off-the-Clock and Rounding

The FLSA doesn't ask whether work was assigned, approved, or even wanted — it asks whether the employer suffered or permitted it. If a non-exempt employee works and you knew or should have known, the time is compensable: pre-shift boot-ups and equipment checks, post-shift closing tasks, donning safety gear, working through lunch, answering evening email. A no-unauthorized-overtime policy changes none of this; it gives you a discipline path, not a pay exemption. The claims that follow are computed with the regular-rate math across a two-to-three-year lookback, usually doubled.

The FLSA puts the recordkeeping duty on the employer — hours worked each day and week, wages paid, the data behind the regular rate — and the Supreme Court's Mt. Clemens rule makes the records the whole game: where the employer's records are inadequate, the employee's reasonable estimate of hours carries, and the employer bears the burden of negating it. Practical translation: a company with clean punch data litigates about specific weeks; a company with gaps litigates against a memory. Keep time records at least three years, and treat timekeeping-system configuration — rounding rules, auto-deducts, edit trails — as a legal decision, not an IT default.

Pay to the punch and kill rounding. Replace auto-deducts with recorded breaks, or add a one-tap 'my lunch was interrupted' correction. Give non-exempt staff a way to log after-hours minutes — then pay them and manage the behavior separately. Audit punch-edit logs quarterly; supervisor edits shaving time are the willfulness evidence that extends the lookback to three years. And when an employee complains about pay, treat it as protected activity — the retaliation guide explains why the response to a wage complaint is often costlier than the wage claim itself.