Analysis parameters

Potential premium exposure is the number of premium workdays multiplied by one hour of pay at the case’s average hourly rate. The meal side counts measured workdays — each workday with at least one potential meal violation. The rest side is estimated — a meal-derived rate applied to rest-qualifying shifts:

meal exposure = workdays with ≥ 1 potential meal violation × 1 hour × average hourly rate

estimated rest exposure = estimated rest premium workdays × 1 hour × average hourly rate

Plugged in at the worked example’s $21.00 average hourly rate: 120 meal premium workdays is $2,520.00 of potential meal exposure; an estimated 80 rest premium workdays adds an estimated $1,680.00. Each side is capped at one premium per workday — the two caps are separate — and the rate is a required input with no fallback.

The exposure headline presents these premiums and the penalty estimates as two tracks rather than one fused number. Total potential exposure is the sum of both, shown above a “Damages & premiums” subtotal — the meal and rest amounts above, which are wages under Naranjo v. Spectrum Security (2022) — and a “Penalties” subtotal — the § 226, § 203, and PAGA estimates. The split is not cosmetic: the two tracks rest on different legal theories and carry different limitations windows, so each subtotal states its own basis — the premium track a 4-year lookback, § 226 and PAGA each 1 year, § 203 keyed to separation rather than a filing-date window. Where a window cannot be applied the subtotal says so rather than implying one, and where the windowed read is unavailable the penalties subtotal states that PAGA is not included.

Every per-employee dollar figure — the meal and rest premium amounts and the § 203 daily rate — uses a single average hourly rate for the whole population, set before the analysis runs and fixed for that run. The rate is a required precondition: an analysis cannot run until it is set, and no minimum-wage or other fallback is ever substituted.

One rate across the population is a disclosed simplification of the current scope. A future employee-census upload will supply per-employee rates that refine these figures; the Ferra “regular rate of compensation” adjustment — which can exceed the base hourly rate where nondiscretionary pay exists — is not computed, so figures use the entered rate as-is.

The premium buffer is a display-time sensitivity lever, default 0. Set to a whole number N, it subtracts N from each employee’s meal premium count and, separately, each rest premium count within every pay period — never below zero. It lets a reader test how the figures move if every pay period carried N fewer premium workdays, without changing any formula or re-running the analysis.

Because counts floor at zero, the effect is not linear: a pay period with exactly one premium workday drops to zero and out of the deficient-pay-period count, while a pay period with five drops to four and remains deficient. Buffered counts flow through everything downstream — premium dollars, the § 226 deficient-pay-period count, and the PAGA base count — recomputed from the per-pay-period grain, never scaled.

The default of 0 applies no offset; a non-zero buffer is an explicit, reader-chosen adjustment applied at display time.

The Offsets page prices the rebuttal layer. It starts from gross computed exposure, applies three adjustments in a fixed order, and ends at the net figure the rest of the app reports. Each row states the amount its own step removes.

The order is the arithmetic order, not a presentation choice. The buffer scales amounts the waiver already reduced, and the assumed-paid share scales counts the buffer already narrowed. Pricing the steps in any other order would report a removal that no step performs.

The lines reconcile by construction. Each is the difference between two consecutive positions of the same computation, so the removals sum to gross minus net exactly. There is no residual row and no “other” row. An independent “what would this adjustment alone remove” breakdown would not sum to the total, because the three adjustments interact.

The § 203 waiting-time penalty is identical at every position. It counts in both gross and net, and appears in no removal line.

This page prices the PAGA civil penalty, inside the buffer step. The law charges it per deficient pay period. A pay period the buffer absorbs therefore stops carrying it. The waiver and the assumed paid share leave it alone. The first changes amounts rather than counts. The second scales the wage-statement figure off a different count. Gross and net on this page therefore match the exposure headline at those two lever positions.

Exposure rests on assumptions a reader can dispute. This page ranks them by consequence. It sweeps one assumption across its plausible range. It holds every other assumption at the position the reader selected. It then measures how far the exposure figure travels. That distance is the assumption’s span.

A longer span means the figure depends more on that assumption. It does not rank how likely a party is to contest that assumption. It also takes no view on which end of a range is correct. The page states the span and nothing else.

Every point on the chart is a statute-windowed figure. The same computation that produces the Exposure page reports each one, and there is no all-time path. The § 203 waiting-time penalty is not in these figures. It does not change with any of the three assumptions. It would therefore add the same amount at both ends of every span and leave the ranking exactly as it is.

These figures include the PAGA civil penalty, for the opposite reason. The buffer does change it. The law charges PAGA per deficient pay period, and a pay period whose premiums the buffer absorbs stops being deficient. Omitting PAGA would therefore have made the buffer look less consequential than it is. The other two assumptions leave PAGA alone, so their spans hold either way.

The Valuation page prices a fund the reader proposes against the exposure the analysis computed. Every number on it is one of two things. It is a figure the analysis already computed and this page only divides. Or it is a percentage the reader typed. The page holds no default reduction, no suggested fund, and no recommended figure of any kind. A page opened with nothing entered asserts nothing.

Computed exposure on this page matches the exposure headline for the case, PAGA civil penalties included. The per-employee allocation below it uses a narrower basis. The law charges PAGA per deficient pay period at the case level, so no employee carries a share of it. The page states the PAGA amount, so a reader can reconcile the two bases.

The allocation distribution reports percentiles by nearest rank. Every percentile shown is one real employee’s allocation, never a value interpolated between two of them. That keeps each figure reproducible by hand from the roster.

The arithmetic rounds no figure. Only the display rounds, so the chain from fund to share to allocation carries no accumulated error.