Reporting Time Pay by State: The Employer's Guide to Sending Someone Home Early

In a handful of states, sending someone home early costs you money, and the amount depends on where they work, not on how long they stayed. If it's a dead Tuesday and you're deciding whether to send two people home, the useful question isn't whether you're allowed to. It's what the call costs, and whether you can make it before they walk through the door.

This guide covers the states where reporting time pay applies, the formulas, what triggers them, and the specific ways employers cut shifts short without owing anything. The state rules below come from the regulation or statute itself. Where I lean on an agency FAQ or fact sheet instead, I say so.

What is reporting time pay?

Reporting time pay (also called show-up pay or call-in pay) is a minimum payment owed to an employee who reports for a scheduled shift and gets less work than expected. The employee doesn't have to work the hours to earn it. The obligation attaches the moment they show up as directed.

It exists because a shift isn't free for the employee. They've arranged childcare, paid for the commute, and turned down other work. The rule puts a price on the manager's change of mind.

Does federal law require reporting time pay?

Not as a general rule. The Department of Labor's FLSA Hours Worked Advisor says that when an employee arrives at the time you directed and is sent home before doing any work, the FLSA doesn't require you to count that time as hours worked or to give show-up pay. It adds that some states do. That's where reporting time pay comes from: a state-law layer, and it varies a lot.

The Department's Fact Sheet 56B on state and local scheduling law penalties treats these payments the same way, as something created by state and local rules, and its guidance is about how to handle them once they exist.

The federal piece that does matter to you is overtime. That fact sheet says these payments can be excluded from the regular rate calculation "as long as they are provided on an infrequent and sporadic basis." Compensation for hours actually worked always stays in the regular rate. I cover how this plays out further down.

How does California calculate reporting time pay?

California's rule is the one most managers have heard of, and it's the most mechanical. Section 5 of the industry wage orders (here's Wage Order 7, which covers the mercantile industry) says that when an employee reports and is either not put to work or gets less than half the usual or scheduled day's work, they're paid for half the usual or scheduled day, but never less than two hours and never more than four hours, at their regular rate of pay (which can't be below minimum wage).

Read that as a three-step formula:

1. Take half of the scheduled shift.
2. If that's under two hours, use two. If it's over four, use four.
3. Multiply by the employee's regular rate.

Here's how it lands for common shift lengths, if the employee is sent home right after arriving.

A second rule sits underneath. If someone has to report a second time in the same workday and gets fewer than two hours of work, they're owed two hours of pay at the regular rate.

The California Labor Commissioner's FAQ adds the practical limits. There's nothing owed when the employee leaves for personal reasons. Employees on paid standby aren't covered, and neither is a regularly scheduled shift of less than two hours. And reporting time pay isn't compensation for work performed, so it doesn't count when you work out whether overtime is due.

The same FAQ's examples show how hours already worked count when someone is sent home part way through a shift: they count toward the half-shift figure, and reporting time pay covers the gap. In one, an employee scheduled for six hours who is sent home after one hour for lack of work is owed that hour plus two hours of reporting time pay, three hours in total. In another, an employee sent home three hours into an eight-hour shift for unsatisfactory performance is still owed one hour of reporting time pay on top of the three hours worked. Sending someone home over performance doesn't switch the rule off.

What do New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Hampshire require?

Each of these states has its own trigger and its own minimum, and they aren't interchangeable. The table below is built from the rule text for each state.

A few details the table can't carry:

• New York splits by industry. Miscellaneous industries fall under 12 NYCRR 142-2.3: four hours, or the hours in the regularly scheduled shift, whichever is less, at the basic minimum hourly wage. Hospitality falls under 12 NYCRR 146-1.5, which is three hours for one shift, six for two shifts totaling six hours or less, and eight for three shifts totaling eight hours or less, again capped at the regularly scheduled shift. Time the employee is actually there is paid at their regular or overtime rate, and the unworked balance at the basic minimum hourly rate with no tip credit. A "regularly scheduled shift" there means a fixed, repeating shift the employee normally works on the same day each week. If the hours on that day change from week to week, there isn't one.
• New Jersey is the lightest touch. N.J.A.C. 12:56-5.5 requires one hour at the applicable wage rate, and doesn't apply if you've made available the minimum hours you agreed with the employee before work began that day.
• Massachusetts ties the rule to the schedule. Under 454 CMR 27.04, an employee scheduled for three or more hours who reports at the time you set and isn't given the expected hours gets at least three hours at no less than the basic minimum wage. Organizations with charitable status under the Internal Revenue Code are excluded.
• Rhode Island prices the failure at a multiple. R.I. Gen. Laws 28-12-3.2 requires at least three hours of work or pay of "not less than three (3) times the regular hourly rate," even when no work is offered at all. Shifts shorter than three hours are allowed only when they're entered into voluntarily and agreed by both sides.
• New Hampshire requires at least two hours' pay at the employee's regular rate when they report to work at your request. RSA 275:43-a also says no employer who makes a good faith effort to notify an employee not to report is liable to pay wages under that section.

Notice how different the escape hatches are. New Hampshire's is notice. New Jersey's is a prior agreement about minimum hours. Rhode Island's is a voluntary agreement to a shorter shift. California's exceptions are mostly external events. If you run locations in more than one state, one policy for "sending people home" is a compliance problem waiting to happen.

What actually triggers reporting time pay?

Showing up as directed. That's the trigger in most of these states, but in California "showing up" has turned out to mean more than walking through the door.

In Ward v. Tilly's, Inc., a 2019 decision, a California Court of Appeal held that a call-in requirement triggered reporting time pay. Tilly's scheduled employees for on-call shifts and required them to phone the store two hours before the shift to find out whether they were needed. Employees told not to come in received nothing. The court rejected the argument that "reporting for work" means being physically present, and read it as presenting oneself as the employer directs. The court held that the telephone call was itself the report.

For a manager, the implication is uncomfortable. An on-call shift in California, where you tell someone to be available and call in, can cost you reporting time pay even though nobody set foot in the store. If you lean on on-call shifts to manage a slow week, that practice needs a hard look.

The same logic runs the other way in your favor. Reporting time pay is about the direction you gave. An employee who decides to leave for their own reasons hasn't been shorted by you, and California's Labor Commissioner says so directly.

How do you cut a shift short without triggering reporting time pay?

Almost every legitimate method comes down to one thing: decide early, and tell people before they're on their way.

• Notify before they report. In New Hampshire this is written into the statute. Elsewhere it works because the obligation attaches when the employee reports as directed. A text at 6 a.m. for a 9 a.m. shift is a different situation from a conversation at the time clock. Keep a record of when and how you sent it, and don't assume a text was read.
• Schedule shorter shifts up front. In California, a regularly scheduled shift of less than two hours isn't covered. In Massachusetts, the rule only bites for shifts of three hours or more. If you know Tuesday afternoons are slow, schedule for the demand you expect instead of scheduling long and trimming.
• Agree the minimum in advance. New Jersey's exception works when you've made available the minimum hours you agreed with the employee before work began that day. Rhode Island allows a shorter shift when both sides agree to it voluntarily. The statute doesn't say when that agreement has to happen, but one reached at the door on a dead morning is the hardest kind to defend as voluntary. Put it in writing at hire or when the schedule is published, not on the day.
• Give them enough work to clear the threshold. California only triggers when the employee is furnished less than half the usual or scheduled day. If a six-hour shift gets three hours of real work, the reporting time rule isn't triggered.
• Know the outside-your-control exceptions. California excludes interruptions from threats or civil authority recommendations, utility failures, and acts of God or other causes outside the employer's control. A slow day doesn't count. A utility outage does.

What doesn't work: telling someone at the door that they can stay for an hour and then go. That's the case the rules were written for.

Can you dock a salaried exempt employee you send home early?

No. Federal rules on the salary basis are strict here. Under 29 CFR 541.602, an employee is paid on a salary basis if they regularly receive a predetermined amount that isn't subject to reduction because of variations in the quality or quantity of the work performed. The regulation is explicit that if an exempt employee is ready, willing and able to work, deductions may not be made for time when work isn't available.

Sending an exempt manager home at noon on a slow day and docking a half day puts their exemption at risk if you do it as a practice. Cut their hours only through a schedule change that leaves the salary alone, or leave the pay whole.

Our guide to salary vs hourly covers how that classification works in more depth.

How does reporting time pay affect overtime?

Less than most managers fear, but it isn't nothing. Two separate questions are hiding in here.

The first is whether reporting time pay counts as hours worked. In California, the Labor Commissioner says it doesn't, so it doesn't push someone toward an overtime threshold by itself. New York's hospitality rule says the same about the unworked balance of call-in pay. Check your own state before assuming the same, since each state defines this separately.

The second is whether the payment goes into the regular rate, which is what overtime is calculated from. The DOL's Fact Sheet 56B says reporting pay can be excluded from the regular rate if it's infrequent and sporadic. The catch is the word "infrequent". If reporting pay becomes a feature of how you run the schedule, the exclusion gets harder to defend. For predictive scheduling pay, the same fact sheet uses a different test: the payment can be excluded as long as it wasn't prearranged, and it may count as prearranged if the scheduling issue behind it was anticipated and could reasonably have been scheduled in advance. I'd assume the same instinct applies to reporting pay you can see coming.

Put plainly: paying reporting time pay a few times a year is an accident. Paying it every slow Tuesday is a scheduling habit, and both your wage-and-hour exposure and your overtime math will treat it that way. Our overtime policy guide shows how the regular rate feeds into overtime calculations.

What should you decide on a dead Tuesday?

Here's a scenario. You've got two people scheduled for eight-hour shifts, one at $21 an hour and one at $19. They arrive for a 10 a.m. start and the floor is dead. What does it cost to send both home before they've done any work?

• California. Half of eight hours is four, which is also the cap. You owe four hours to each: $84 and $76, $160 in total, for no work.
• New Hampshire. Two hours at the regular rate: $42 and $38, $80 in total. If you'd made a good faith effort to notify them not to come in, nothing.
• Rhode Island. Not less than three times the regular hourly rate: $63 and $57, $120 in total.
• New Jersey. One hour at the applicable rate: $21 and $19, $40 in total, and nothing if you'd agreed a minimum in advance and made those hours available.
• New York, miscellaneous industries. Four hours at the basic minimum hourly wage each, since the shift is longer than four hours.

These are illustrations built from the formulas above, at made-up rates. The point is the spread. The same call costs $40 in one state and $160 in another, and in all five the cost comes from making the call after people have reported.

If you'd rather not pay for nothing, the better question on a slow day is whether there's useful work you can hand over: inventory, cleaning, training, a task that's been waiting. In California, four hours of real work on an eight-hour shift costs the same as four hours of reporting time pay and leaves you with something to show for it.

How does this connect to predictive scheduling laws?

Reporting time pay is the older, simpler cousin of predictive scheduling. Fair workweek laws in cities like New York City, Chicago and Seattle add advance-notice requirements and limits or premiums on short-notice changes, and some carry their own version of reporting pay. Under Seattle's ordinance, for example, a covered employer that sends someone home early from a shift owes pay for half the hours not worked, according to the city's Office of Labor Standards. In New York City, retail employers can't cancel a scheduled shift with less than 72 hours' notice, per the city's Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, and that sits on top of the state's call-in pay rule, so both layers can apply at once. Our guide to predictive scheduling laws covers where they apply and what they require.

Where else do reporting time rules apply?

The table covers six states, and they aren't the only ones. Connecticut's wage orders guarantee four hours' earnings at the regular rate to mercantile trade employees who report for duty (Conn. Agencies Regs. § 31-62-D2) and two hours at not less than the minimum rate in restaurants (§ 31-62-E1). The District of Columbia's attorney general summarizes its rule as four hours' pay for each day an employee reports, with the unworked balance at the minimum wage, unless the employee regularly works a shift of less than four hours (Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia). A number of states have no general reporting time rule at all.

Check your state labor department before you rely on this table, and check again before you add a new location. These rules change, and a legal claim is worth verifying against the statute rather than a summary.

This article is general information, not legal advice. Reporting time rules vary by state, city and industry and can change, so check the current rule text or talk to an employment attorney in the state where your employees work before you build a policy around them.