Two tools, one compliance record
ComplianceShield is a California payroll calculator and a handbook management system. The calculator gets overtime and meal premiums right and produces the signed notices that go with them. The handbook side gets your policies reviewed, revised and signed for. Both leave behind dated records you can hand to an attorney or an auditor.
The payroll calculator
It follows the same steps a careful payroll manager would work through in a spreadsheet — but the California rules are built in, the math is shown, and every period is saved.
1. Pay period
Name the biweekly period and set the dates. You can copy an earlier period to carry forward your roster, and reopen a finished period if something needs correcting.
2. Employees
Upload your employee list from Excel or CSV — ID, name, base rate, pay type, email, manager name and manager email. Terminated employees are filtered by termination date, and your roster is saved for next time.
3. Hours
Upload your hours breakdown summary straight from your timekeeping export. Each workweek is separated, and anything that does not match your roster is listed for you to add, dismiss or fix — nothing is silently dropped.
4. Earnings & meals
Import commissions, on-call and other spiffs, plus your meal-violation report. Every imported row stays editable in the table, with sortable and frozen column headers.
5. Results & export
See the weekly regular rate, overtime true-up, double time and meal premium per employee, then export the pay entries for your payroll provider.
6. Meal notices
For each employee with a missed meal period, we draft a California-compliant notice they sign by private link and a retraining note the manager confirms by typing their name. Progress shows on every pay period.
- Regular rate, per workweek: Commissions and non-discretionary spiffs are folded into each week's regular rate, so overtime and double time are trued up instead of paid on the base rate alone.
- Meal premiums: Each non-compliant meal period is paid as one hour at that week's regular rate of compensation, counted separately for week one and week two.
- Auditable output: Every pay period keeps its inputs, its calculated results and its notices, so you can show how a number was reached months later.
Employee handbook management
The first thing a new account does. A handbook nobody has signed for is hard to rely on, and one written for another state is worse than none at all.
Review
Upload your handbook as PDF, Word or text — or have us write a California-compliant starter with your company name. We check it against the areas California employers get wrong most often, from meal and rest periods to paid sick leave, harassment prevention, expense reimbursement and final pay.
Tracked changes in Word
Recommendations come back as a Word document with real tracked changes and comments explaining the reasoning. You and your attorney accept, reject or modify each one — nothing is changed on your behalf.
Sign-off
Before the handbook can be sent to employees, an owner signs one of two statements: that it was reviewed by a licensed California employment attorney (strongly recommended), or that they accept full responsibility for any errors, omissions or deficiencies. Either way, ComplianceShield's recommendations are guidance, not legal advice, and we take on no liability.
Employee receipts
Upload the same roster and each employee gets a private link to read the handbook and sign by typing their name. Signatures already collected on paper can be recorded manually with a note. Revised versions need fresh signatures, and the history stays.
ComplianceShield provides compliance guidance only. It is not legal advice, it does not create an attorney-client relationship, and it may not cover every requirement that applies to your business. We strongly recommend reviewing your handbook with a licensed California employment attorney before adopting or distributing it.
The compliance record
Everything the software produces lands in one place: meal premiums paid by period, which employees signed their notices, which managers completed retraining, and which employees have signed for the current handbook version. You can filter by month and print the summary for your file — or for counsel.
PAGA Guard Insurance
Available alongside the software: a specialty policy built for the wage & hour and PAGA exposure that standard EPLI policies typically exclude.
- Coverage: Defense costs and indemnity for PAGA claims, wage & hour class actions and related Labor Code representative actions.
- Trigger: Claims-made; receipt of a PAGA notice constitutes a claim trigger.
- Pricing: Base rate per employee, with premium credit for subscribers who keep their payroll and handbook records current.
Built for the trades
Plumbing, HVAC, electrical and other home-service companies pay commissions, spiffs and on-call pay to technicians in the field — the exact pay structure that makes California's regular-rate and meal-period rules hard to get right by hand. That is who the calculator was built with and for.
See your exposure first
Send us your recent payroll records and we will show you where overtime rates and meal premiums came up short.
Request free audit