H-2A Compliance Without the Chaos

Set Your Farm Up for Success

Overview

Struggling to stay on top of H-2A compliance with manual labor tracking methods? You’re not alone—and it’s costing your operation more than you think.

Join FieldClock and Agri-Placements for a no-fluff conversation that pulls back the curtain on what manual labor tracking is really costing your farm—and how a few simple tips and tricks can help you master the chaos and confusion of H-2A labor.

In this session, we'll reveal:

• The #1 mistake farms make with H-2A labor (and how to avoid it)
• How to cut compliance worries in half—without hiring extra staff
• What top farms are doing right now to save time and money on labor

Don’t wait until peak season to catch up—learn what other farmers are doing right now to cut costs, stay compliant, and take back control of their labor program.

FieldClock is the industry-leading time clock for farms, allowing you to record time and attendance in the field as well as piecework.

Transcript

NICO

I see all of our folks emptying out of the waiting room. Welcome. Come on in. Thanks, everyone for joining us today. This is an important discussion that we wanted to put together, especially now. This time of year is things ramp up with harvest season across a lot of different crops. We wanted to discuss H-2a compliance and what farmers can do in 2025 and beyond to really set themselves up for success.

And here at FieldClock we provide a variety of solutions to do that. But we also wanted to invite an expert in the field in Mark Martins from AG Replacements International, who works closely with farmers to make sure that they're they're able to navigate the murky waters of H-2a, which seem to be getting more and more complicated each year.

So, Mark, thanks for joining us today. And we also have Ashley Reese here at 5:00 as well. Just to let folks know, before we get into the meat of what we're going to be discussing. This is obviously a live webinar, but we are recording it. So if you do need to take off early for any reason whatsoever, absolutely no problem.

We're going to send the recording out to everybody right after. And we want questions. We're going to save a little time at the end. Answer your questions. So right down below the Q&A button there in zoom, please feel free and use that to submit any questions to us. So we'll cover a couple of trends. And then we'll get into a bit of a discussion about how those trends affect farmers today, and what they can do to help prevent some of the issues that we're seeing across the board with farmers of all sizes.

So that being said, let's take a look at some of the things that are out of control for farmers, things that they really just have to deal with on a day to day basis in their business. And I'll turn it over to you, Ashley.

ASHLEY

Great. Thank you so much. Yeah. So beyond rising wages, farm space, housing, travel, meals and transportation costs, fines for noncompliance, as mentioned earlier, then they can be substantial and compound quickly over time is now a legal requirement in several states. And adding yet another layer of costs. California, Washington, Oregon, New York, Minnesota, Hawaii and Maryland all have some form of mandatory overtime pay.

And although these laws vary in phase and timelines, they all require close tracking of hours worked, especially for mixed crews. Beige to a program has multiple approval stages, and even small mistakes with those stages can result in delays, denials, just costly mistakes all around. Regulations, as we all know, are strict and often change. And then having tools that, you know, keep your records accurate and audit ready can make a difference between success and fines.

Even language barriers farms are still struggling with effective communication English speaking managers and Spanish speaking crews poor communication. This leads to miss track hours, training and safety issues and morale problems, which again all go back to the cost of doing business.

MARK

Yeah, one thing I note, Ashley, is where the wage is part of the equation. We can see on the slide before that, Nico had that there's a trend of about an average of 6% over the period representative there, which seems sort of manageable, I suppose at first glance, but I think it's worth noting that individual states can see, or groups of states can see, more dramatic swings year over year, as well as a matter of an example, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Florida.

This year saw a 10% jump in the aware from 24 to 25, about $1.40 an hour, which is obviously substantial, while Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota actually saw a 2% drop. So they went from 1850 to 1815. And these this wage statistic accounts for the Farm labor survey results, which is the a where as we know it, it doesn't really account for the Bureau of Labor Statistics wages that can now be assigned to applications.

And so I think the key is that the only certain thing about the wage specifically is uncertainty. And that just drives home the need for employers to make sure they're efficiently utilizing their labor and controlling what they can control, which is a finished in C, since they can't troll the actual wages themselves.

NICO

One thing I will say on this slide, mark, one of the reasons that we put this up in terms of trends, people often think when they think of H-2a as a large group of workers and they feel like, oh, this is just a large problem. This is a large farm problem, but that's not technically the case. We're seeing this across the board with Farm Bureau here with this chart that they put out.

It looks like over two thirds of the H-2a petitions requested fewer than ten temporary workers. So the H-2a program is very much a small farm problem as well.

MARK

Yeah, I think that's true, Nico, and that's what the data shows. I think it's also true that in many cases, delusions are created with the large farm in and really love about field is that it's tailored for the small small farm as well, which as you're demonstrating, is an overwhelming majority of the employers that are using H-2a. So yeah, it's not like large farms are certainly filling the ground.

NICO

Absolutely. And I wanted you to get into a little bit more of the specific wage reporting compliance challenges that farmers are seeing here.

MARK

Yeah. So this is a fun slide Nico H-2a is obviously nuanced. Looks like we got someone saying that they're getting feedback I think it's coming from actually all right that should take care of it. So yeah, what I was saying is the program is obviously very nuanced. And the wage and record retention requirements of the program are no exception when it comes to that.

So one of the foundational obligations of the program is that an employer using H-2a has to pay the highest of a number of applicable wages, which is the federal state minimum, the prevailing wage, if there is one degree upon collective bargaining, wage, if there is one, or the adverse effect wage rate, which we call the A where for short and in most cases is ends up being the A where.

But the key is that you got to ensure that you're paying the highest of the applicable wages. And there's some catches in there, which is that if an employer is paying by piece rate, for example, so by Ben or bucket or load or whatever it is, the employer needs to ensure that in no our did the worker's effective wage rate fall below.

Let's just say the a whereas the controlling wage in this example, regardless of the number of pieces that the worker handled. And so having a record preferably digitized that you can recall of the pieces being handled so that you can compare and ensure that the appropriate wages are being paid for, that ours is very critical. And one of the common mistakes that we see people make is taking the position that they can just pay a bonus at the end of the year and sort of blanket cover whatever shortfalls they might have had during the season.

And while you can pay H-2a workers and bonus, there's nothing that says you can't do that. You want to be very clear in that if there are hours in which a worker was effectively paid below the aware as a result of the piece rate, you want to take a granular approach wage and I will generally look to see, hey, a bonus, you know, a bonus is a bonus.

That's not the hourly rate of pay. And so we want to see in this pay period that this worker for these hours that he or she worked was paid the wage that he or she was supposed to be paid. So you want to make sure that you handle bonuses as bonuses and make sure that rates of pay are handled as rates of pay and that they're crewed up and that they're squared.

Another foundational principle is the three quarters guarantee. And this can be slightly confusing. We'll see if we can make it fairly straightforward here. Essentially, it's that from the first day of work to the contract end date, an employer has to guarantee to offer the worker three fourths of the total hours of the contract period. So unlike HB, there's no weekly guarantee some weeks can have little to no work and other weeks can be much heavier.

The idea is that over the contract period three fourths, those overall contract hours have to be offered to the worker. And I think the distinction here is that it's hours offered. So while many time the systems track hours worked, a lot of them don't account for hours often like FieldClock does. And why that matters is you can't offer more hours than is listed on the job order unless a worker works them and hours offered.

If a worker doesn't work, then and if they're allowed to be counted, count towards a three quarter guarantee. An example is if the job order says that there's going to be seven hours of work Monday through Friday, and the employer actually offers the workers ten hours of work Monday through Friday, and the workers work them all ten hours.

So those 50 hours all count towards the three quarter guarantee. But if in that same example, let's say the job order says it's going to be seven hours Monday through Friday, and a worker takes off Monday and Tuesday because he's sick or got to take care of a loved one or whatever the case may be. The employer can't say that he's offering the worker ten hours on Monday and Tuesday.

He's limited then to the hours that were listed on the job order. Similarly, an employer can't record as hours offered to count towards a three quarter guarantee, hours that fall on a federal holiday or on the worker's Sabbath. And these are just nuances that can be controlled for in software. So in a system like FieldClock this can be handled so that it gives the employer protection and know that they're squared away and that their records are complete and compliant.

The next bullet point sorry Nico. Did you have comment on that?

NICO

No, no, I think those are all all of those little state by state minutiae are the things that people don't often take into account.

MARK

Yeah, exactly. And that's the department is currently looking at different types of job classifications and job duties and assigning wages in some cases differently based on the job duties. Also, there are different wages at play for different states or different groups of states. And so being able to track that and have that in a system where you can defend here was the job being performed.

And here's where they're being performed, is key in defending the wage that you're paying the workers. And sort of the last comment on this slide is a good one. Ashley was sort of noting it earlier on in that individual state or local laws can have precedent. So if there's an overtime requirement or a meal allowance or a deduction restriction, a pay frequency minimum, a sick leave policy, whatever it is, any sort of state law like that generally applies to H-2a workers, and which in our division, in the case of an audit, will take the most stringent of the regulations that are in place.

So an a worker is generally not exempted from any localized regulation like that.

NICO

And that's a good segue into our next slide here. So let's say we we happen to have some violations in in our farm. What what are the most common violations that you see.

MARK

Yeah. So I really like this slide. It kind of summarizes a lot of different violations into a set of categories. I think it's worth noting that there's nine categories on the slide. However, investigators used a document called potential for Violations Checklist. And that thing has 45 different line items essentially that can be violated. So this is like rolling up 45 possible violations into nine.

So it's sort of a generalization I would say there are five. There's a handful that I can think of that are very common, that are low hanging fruit that employers can easily take care of. And it's worth paying some attention to those. One is the earnings records. So in the H-2a regulations, there are certain things that you must maintain in your earnings records.

Most of them are going to be pretty common across all time and attendance solutions. But as we discussed in the three quarter guarantee, one that's not is the daily hours offer. So it's an obligation that an employer record the daily hours offered in addition to, you know, time clocked in and out and daily hours worked and all the other normal data points.

But you got to have the hours offered on there. And wage and hour will routinely cite employers and assess the sum of money penalty for not having the the hours often recorded kind of going hand in hand with that, when you agree to use a program, you agree to provide them hours and earnings statement to workers on or before each payday, and there's a set of eight items or data points that have to be on that earnings statement.

Most of them, again, are pretty common. You know, employer name out to pay total earnings for the pay period. You know no sweat. They're the ones that stick out are the employer Finn has to be on that statement. So you know many systems don't have that. And then you also have to have the summarized hours offered for the pay period on that statement as well.

Again, these are things that FieldClock knocks out immediately if you're using the system. And they're also things that wage and hour looks for because they know they're so commonly overlooked by employers. A few more I think are worth noting is the disclosure of the work contract. So the obligation is that an employer must provide to an aide to a worker no later than at the time they're applying for the visa, and a US worker in corresponding employment no later than at the time work begins.

A copy of the employment contract or disclosure of the terms and conditions of employment. In most cases, what we see is a US worker doesn't get the contract, particularly where the farm has the worker employed on year round basis. You know, the thing is like, well, Bob works for me 12 months out of the year. So Bob knows the job, he knows our operation, and he's not applying for this, you know, eight month H-2a contract.

So he doesn't need to see that. Well, the truth is, Bob, in that case is likely a corresponding worker during the contract period. And as such, he needs that same disclosure as the H-2a worker, even if he doesn't really care about it. Again, we will assess a violation for it if you don't do it. So you just got to make sure it's done.

The there is an obligation that an employer reimbursed for inbound and outbound transportation. So the worker's transportation from their home in their home country to the farm and then back to their home once they complete the contract with you, any costs associated with applying for the visa and traveling over must be reimbursed to the worker as well, which includes the concept fee.

The most common thing we see overlooked here is subsistence. So the department maintains a a minimum and a maximum subsistence rate each year that must be reimbursed to workers currently at $16.28 per day. If no receipts are provided by the workers, up to $68 per day if they do provide receipts. What we see as the most common violation here is a worker comes in, it just provides no receipts.

And so the employer reimburses for the plane ticket or the bus ticket and the concert fee. And they just don't reimburse anything for the subsistence. So it's a $16.28 per day in most cases reimbursement that it should that should occur, which is minor, but they don't do it. And then they get a several money penalty of $1000 to $2000 or something.

So something very small just to look for. Lastly, I would say it's sort of a catch all violation. In fact, we actually have an investigator say that to us audibly recently that this is a catch all violation that we can assess. And it's called the misrepresentation of the need. And what wage and hour looks for is basically anything in the real world to not line up with what was put on paper on the job order.

So one of the examples is the hours per week. So if an employer puts out, the workers are going to average 40 hours per week. And over the contract period they actually average 70 wage and hour will frequently say you misrepresented the need. That wasn't accurate. You know, that's a violation. Or if you applied for extra workers as some do, well, you shouldn't do that.

You should only apply for the exact number of workers that you need, or if you staggered. Workers in applied for six workers on March 1st start date and then staggered in their arrival. That's a misrepresentation of the need. So again low hanging fruit. Just make sure the job order is accurate. In our in our opinion, if these five things are square in most cases and employers are going to be able to get through an investigation worry free.

ASHLEY

That's great. I definitely can't wait to talk a little bit more about the earnings records, earnings statements and even your catchall a little bit later. Hey Mark, how has the H-2a program changed in recent years?

MARK

Yeah, so it's changed.

Pretty dramatically. I mean, it's not the 80s anymore, right? When the program rolled out. So I actually pulled the numbers. And in 2014. So going back ten years, there was 136,000 worker positions certified. If you roll that for ten years to 24, that jumps to 384,000 worker positions. So really a tremendous increase in demand for the program. And I think part of or what comes along with that, it has been more political and social oversight of the program.

So we've seen more regulations from the agencies. You know, think of the A rule, the farm worker protection rule, DHS, recent modernizing H2 program requirements rule, and and those are kind of coupled with increased compliance measures as well. You know, we see wage and hour being more targeted in their approach, less random audits and more specifically kind of premeditated audits.

We think recently of the Delta Task Force in Mississippi, where as a result of one farm being a bad actor and mistreating its workers wage an hour went to an effort to investigate every single H-2a employer in Mississippi. So I think it's a lot has changed. There's a lot of oversight. I think we should be clear, though, that bad actors should be caught and they should be prevented from employing people.

But what we see is that good actors are often getting tripped up over minor violations.

ASHLEY

That actually leads me to my next question. You know, we all know that the majority of our farmers are just doing the right thing and are doing their best. What would you say to some of the farmers out there that are handling all this on their own? And why work with an agency such as yours?

MARK

I think it's a great question, Ashley. You know, I guess I'm biased being a part of agri placements, but we've been in business for almost 30 years now and our roots are farming. The company was founded by farmers and it's still operated by farmers today. And so I think we have a unique competitive advantage in that way and that we understand our customer and we understand their needs.

You know, there are people to us, not just a number to us. And so there's a relationship side of it. But beyond that, a good agency, whether it's us or another, should have relationships with the entities that are in control of the process. So Department of Labor, state work, the various state workforce agencies, congressional offices, etc. there should be relationships in existence so that if your case hits a snag along the way, which is relatively likely that it will, the agency can get in contact with someone and get that thing taken care of.

Obviously, the key at the end of the day is that the employer gets his or her workers. Otherwise none of the process works. And I think in the case of replacements, we really have unparalleled data because we file so many job orders annually. Essentially, if there's trouble, we know about it, and we can help employers mitigate that trouble before it comes to their doorstep.

And an example is job disclosures. I mean, we've we have a tremendous set of job disclosures that are included with each job order and their fire testing. You know, they've been through ways in our investigations, they've been through legal services lawsuits. And so we can kind of keep a refined, you know, ideal state set of disclosures that our customers can use.

And the similar principle applies if Department of Labor is going to issue a notice of deficiency, or USCIS is sending out a string of requests for evidences or whatever it is, and agency with a lot of volume is going to know that those are coming and know how to handle them. Will they do? And I think the last thing I would note on that is, in my opinion, if you're working, if you're handling the process yourself, but you're struggling with the management of it and agency can help you with implementing technology.

So in our case, you know, we have a software that we've partnered with, software company that we partnered with called Croft, where all of our job orders are in their live. So employer can log in, they can see their job orders, they can see live case statuses, they can see all the numbers associated with the job orders. They can onboard workers in there through WhatsApp links and manage the workforce in there.

And it has the capacity to play well with existing softwares that the farm may use, including softwares like build clock. And so I think that's super important going forward, obviously to make the program manageable for the for the company that's using it, and we can help accomplish that.

ASHLEY

That's great. I mean, this process is hard enough. It's really nice to be able to have a resource or a place to go to be able to ask questions and, and utilize you guys in that way. Just going back to audits and that process, would you be able to just explain the different types of audits that are out there, and maybe what some of our farmers could expect to see?

MARK

Yeah.

So when we think of audits or compliance investigations, we tend to think of the investigator walking on site. But there are also paper audits or some people call them desk audits, where the Department of Labor sends an email asking for records. The former creates the most sugar in, I would say, and the latter being a little bit more benign.

But in most cases, our experience is that if you're prepared for a walk on investigation, you're going to be able to handle a paper audit, no sweat. So we tend to focus on the walk on investigations primarily. And the idea in both cases, though, is to be compliant before the audit ever begins. So if you got peace of mind when it does.

ASHLEY

That actually is to my next question and final question, that walk on inspection or again, I'm using the wrong word. But if you can kind of give us an idea of what that looks like, what it entails, maybe the things that they'd need.

MARK

Yeah. So like.

I noted earlier, the walk on investigations being random seem to have become more infrequent. And they're more generally they're targeted. So there's been a complaint or ours targeting a certain area or type of employer or something. And so where are they used to be random. We would see wage and hour often letting employers know, hey, we're going to be at your place at this day, this time, you know, be ready for us.

Now we see that less commonly and they just show up. So I will just show up at the farm. They'll start looking around for you, you know, they'll try to find the point of contact with the form that they need to be communicating with. And while they're there, when they do show up, they'll ask to look at the vehicles and the equipment, maybe the facilities.

They'll want to walk through, the housing, they'll want to interview some workers, and they'll provide you a document that that asks for a number of things from you. Normally it's 25 things or so that they want to see from you. Some of those they'll ask you to provide while you're there, but generally they'll give you some runway. They'll say, you know, here's we've talked to your workers, they've looked at your stuff on site here.

Here's a document of things we need you to get to us, get it to us by this day in the future, whatever that day is. And so then once they leave, you can start providing those documents to them. That's where, you know, we would be involved in that process, getting them what they need, helping you understand. What do you need to provide to them, what are you not obligated to provide to them, and so on.

And that can drag out for a while. Commonly, the investigator will reach back out to you and say, hey, I need this, or I don't find this, or they need clarification on something. So it kind of is this ongoing dialog where they show up, they look at things, they ask for records, and then you have email or phone call conversation with them for a period of time prior to them closing out the investigation.

ASHLEY

Thank you so much.

NICO

And I wanted to bring a slide back up here. Let me pull that back up, because I think it really makes sense when we're talking about some of the violations that you guys were saying, and some of the different types of audits that you're getting here. Because I think when people think of audits, we put the slide up earlier.

And one thing that we missed on that was 39% of investigations that found H-2a violations also segue into other violations. And that's something that people don't always take into account. They may show up for one reason, and it dovetails into a variety of other reasons that they didn't possibly account for. So let's skip over here. Ashley, I wanted to talk.

We've talked about the trends. We've talked about what some of the common problems are, specifically when we talk about how you're recording that labor, what does it look like when people are just using outdated manual processes like pen and paper?

ASHLEY

Absolutely. And, you know, just just like what Mark was talking about, a lot of our farmers are really doing their best with what they have. And oftentimes these small farms are just farms across the country, you know, are calculating time, recording hours on time, sheets, pen and paper, Excel spreadsheets. This is all manual tracking and and possibly outdated systems.

And the cost of pen and paper we consider to be one that's compounding. So I mean even taking.

The catch all from earlier actually no it was your this 1628 per day that maybe some farms aren't paying their employees. You know, you have ten employees a contract for 90 days. Your records are off by $15,000. Easy mistakes for manual entry really result in a lot of downstream problems. So take labor tracking. You're clocking your people in and out or writing on the paper.

You go to run payroll at the end of the week and you realize, hey man, Nico didn't fill out his time card. You send him a text, you ask him, now you're ready to run it. You've got to get it in because your people need to get paid. Oftentimes, you'll inflate their hours as an insurance policy because you don't want to hear it on the back end.

But when it comes to compliance, that time stamp isn't available. What happens if you just pay him until the end of the day and he doesn't actually fill out the time card? Black. Fast forward, you have an onsite inspection. They're asking for that specific day. You go to pull their time cards and that our is missing again, costly mistake, but having to actually write your information down.

Your employees time their production. It doesn't matter. Manual entry and then having to enter that into some sort of system is is going to have a lot of human error. If you are doing piecework and have minimum wage adjustments, if you have to calculate break, great, bake, break pay, those are all very, very complicated equations, especially for farmers who have quite a number of employees.

Now you have to take this information that you then put into an Excel spreadsheet. Now you have to pay your people. So now your formalized records are now off. You go to run your taxes or have an onsite inspection. All of your information may not be as accurate as you like to. So what we what we say here is that the cost of pen and paper is compounding.

And oftentimes a simple mistake is going to be way more expensive the longer you wait to fix it.

FieldClock was created by farmers for farmers. So we are a time keeping system that makes it really easy for your employees to clock in and clock out, or for your staff to be able to clock in all of your employees. We capture exact timestamps of when your employees are coming in, when they're taking their breaks. And because this is a digitized process, we make it really easy to be able to pull those reports.

One of the things that I love about FieldClock again is not only was it created by farmers for farmers, but we actually have a number of farmers on staff who really understand your unique operation and needs that help walk you through streamlining your operation.

So FieldClock is an app based system. One of the things I'm proud of is because we're an app based system, we really are able to keep our barrier to entry low. We want to be very mindful that the majority, I actually believe that 95% of farmers across the country are small farms. And again, we want to keep that price point low and give all farmers access to a system that is ultimately going to be able to help with their H-2a process and compliance.

The way that we streamline this process is by offering a mobile app. So a mobile app can be used by just an employee. Let's say you have an employee that works independently. Sometimes they don't stop at the shop to have a cup of coffee. Coffee. They start their day elsewhere. They can actually use their device to be able to clock themselves in and out.

For those of you who have production are recording piecework or large proofs, this same mobile app can be used by a supervisor or a pro boss that it's very easy to be able to capture that time and time out. Capture production. We offer offer multi-user access, so if you have a larger team where you have someone who's recording production and a ticket or downstream, this is really going to work well.

Circling back to that small family farm. So you're out there right alongside your people. You're able to see exactly where everybody is, be able to move them around and really be able to manage your team effectively. We offer a kiosk. We offer a kiosk app, which allows you to clock in and clock out from a standardized location. So at your packing facility, your shop, wherever you have people coming in and staying for the majority of their day.

And then we have our admin site where you put it all together. You run your reports, pay your people, and to be able to provide transparency. We have a primary employee portal that allows your employees to have access to see their time and their production, to be able to help prevent any mistakes. We want to catch it again before you actually go run payroll.

So the FieldClock advantage, by digitizing this process, you're going to have the accuracy of the timestamps. You're going to know exactly where your people are when they clock in and clock out. That real time data, I think, is one of the biggest things here. So now you have a walk in inspection where they want to know a record from April 15th of last year.

You're able to, in real time go to field, find April 15th, pull all that information. Not only that, but you can email those records. You can print them out, you can export them however you need to, but you have the ability to pull information when you need it, how you need it. And to be quite honest with you, if I had an inspector walk on my farm, I would want to be able to get them out as quickly as possible, and that's really going to help you do it.

We also help with payroll. I'll expand on that a little bit later and even our our earnings record sheets. But because all this information is digitized, we make it really easy to pay your people, whether it's through our payroll powered by ADP or your own system. We're going to make that process really, really easy and reduce the manual entry and errors.

Now, because we've streamlined this process all the way through, reporting is going to be easier. Compliance is going to be easier to pull reports handling your taxes. You're going to have accuracy with your information.

So calculating the true cost of labor. One of the things that we make very easy again is not only capturing your employees start time, end times, but we can actually help track them throughout the day as they switch from task to task. Which means you're going to have a really great overview of your operation. Where exactly is your labor expense going?

And we all know that the cost of labor could not get hired, but it probably will by 6% next year. Sorry guys, but what we want to do now is really maximize on our existing labor force. So now if you're handling production, if you're capturing that, you can actually create historical data. What are some standards that you should have in place?

What are your expectations? Once you create your expectations now you can hold your staff accountable. So if you have an employee that's coming out back year after year, that maybe is is not pulling their weight instead of feeling or thinking that they're not, you're actually going to be able to see it and do something about it and have constructive conversations.

We have a really great custom report library, and the first thing I think of is the farmer that either works off farm because they need to have that secondary off farm job or the farmer that is working right alongside their employee, or perhaps even your your. You have multiple locations. With our custom report library, you can tell us determine what information you want to see and when you want to see it.

We'll set it up so that you can automatically get a report sent to you. Send to a supervisor, whoever it needs to be sent to, and you tell us when it needs to be there. And they're going to have that custom report right in their inbox. One of the things that I was thinking about is we were talking about, I believe we were talking about a yes, we were talking about the catchall.

We used an example of a misrepresentation of 40 hours on your contract, and your employees are constantly working 70 hours. One of the things that you can do is you can have you can have a catch all in our system, which will send you a report that when your employees reach this many hours within the week, you'll be notified.

It can help you maybe manage them a little bit more effectively. It can help you forecast for how much money you need for payroll that week. Or, you know, again, maybe send them home earlier if you need to, but it certainly will help with that.

Now again, going back to Mark and some of the top mistakes that we're making, we have a new wage companion statement. And this really is to be able to have a additional piece of paper that will go to your employees, that breaks down, hours offered, hours worked. It shows where the employees are. It shows their movement day to day, and it provides all of the necessary document that can go alongside your pay stub to ensure compliance.

So this is something that all of is included with FieldClock And as you go to capture all of your hours, those statements are generated and available for you.

NICO

Thanks, Ashley. Lots of tools available to folks. And I think going back to the wage statement there, Mark, I was going to pose it to you when you see somebody that goes from doing it manually into digitizing their records, what type of impact are you usually seeing? Almost immediately.

MARK

It's tremendous. And I would say it's twofold. One is the efficiency of the system and implementation. So it makes the process of getting those statements to the workers easier, you know, immediately and then on the back end, just pulling from records and being able to have that data available to you so that you can make you can analyze it and make decisions based on it is super helpful as well.

NICO

Excellent. Well, I want to get to I want to save some time. We have a lot of questions coming in from folks. I'll just start. We have some in chat, some in Q&A. Let's start with some of the chat ones. So Ashley, I saw that you answered this. I'm going to say it to the folks just so they all see it here.

Adrian was asking, does your app allow for overtime pay for certain states while not applying those rules for other states?

ASHLEY

Yeah, that's a great question. And absolutely, we're certainly able to to handle those multi-jurisdictional needs. Absolutely.

NICO

Love it. Robin is saying we use labor contractors and they track time with pen and paper in the field. Then they send those paper time cards to the contractors. Contractors process the payroll, they pay the employees and invoice us for any money that's due. So because we'll fill clock work with that scenario as well.

ASHLEY

Yeah, absolutely. So if they're tracking time with pen and paper, simply just switch over to FieldClock And what we're going to do is make it really easy for you to share that information with the contractor. So instead of having to take the time to do all those calculations, create a report, send it over. It's simply finalizing your employees hours, generating that report, and emailing it because it's already in a shareable form.

So we make that process a whole lot easier.

NICO

And the transparency that it provides is beneficial not only for the farmer, the employee, but the FLC as well.

So Mark, I'm going to post this one here. Going back to your discussion about the catchall. Marcus is asking us about departures. So if workers depart at different times, does that fall under the catchall?

MARK

That's a really good question. And the key and something in instance like that is why is the departure occurring or who's making the departure occur. So if the employer is telling the workers, hey, you know, you go home, your season is over with and the three quarter guarantee has been met, or it'll be the employer can do that.

But if there becomes a pattern where wage and hour can come in and take a look at a three year history, let's say, and see that, okay, looks like every year you sent for workers home two months early and for more workers home a month early, and then the balance at the end. And it looks like there are different periods of need.

That's where they'll say, hey, you should be filing separate contracts for each one of those needs, under the premise that if a US worker had known that he could have worked or could have ended the job two months early, he would have applied for the job. But he thought he had to work to the end, and so he didn't apply.

So the idea is just getting accurate. But if a worker comes to the employer and says, hey, I got to go home, my family needs me or whatever, and the employer just consents to it. That's now not going to be something that creates a pattern. And so that's not going to be the employer misrepresenting the need. Rather, that's the employer allowing the worker to go do what the worker needs to do.

NICO

I think that's a perfect answer to Marcus's follow up question. He says he has some guys that like to leave early before the end of term, due to things like a children's birthday or heading back home. So he was asking if that was a violation, but it sounds like not.

MARK

Generally, no, unless there's a really substantial pattern.

NICO

Excellent. Anna Leon asking us. She's she wants us to discuss the timeline in terms of reimbursement for traveling costs.

MARK

Okay. That's a good question. So that is out of 20 CFR six 655. 120 2H1 in case anyone wants to look it up. I just pulled it up here. It says if the worker completes 50% of the work contract period, the employer must pay for reasonable costs incurred by the worker, etc., etc. however, if you go to the bottom of that provision, the regulation handily leaves a reference to the Labor Standards Act and how that can apply independently of the regulations.

And so where the regulations say to reimburse by the 50% point in the contract, there is a separate discussion around reimbursing in the first week or in the first pay period, because the argument has been made that if a worker is not reimbursed those costs in that initial period, there is a deduction against the earnings for that period, and that deduction results in the worker's effectively effective hourly rate falling below the federal minimum.

And so there becomes a Fair Labor Standards Act violation. So most of the time wage and hour is looking explicitly at the 50% point. But if an employer chooses to reimburse the 50% point rather than earlier on, they run the risk of of a worker being able to make a claim against them later for not being paid the appropriate minimum hourly rate.

NICO

All the more reason to be tracking this to the second.

MARK

Absolutely.

NICO

Oh, anonymous. I guess they didn't want to put their name. That's okay. Anonymous attendee they're asking on the 1628 meal allowance. Is that only during travel or is that every day of the contract.

MARK

So in the way I was discussing it, it's just on their travel to the farm and then back home. Once they complete the contract. However, that same minimum allowable meal charge is used where employers are providing meals to workers during the contract period. So let's say an employer is keeping workers in a hotel that doesn't have kitchenettes or doesn't have kitchen and cooking facilities, and instead they elect to provide three workers per day to the meals they can disclose on the job orders there that they're going to make it charge from the worker's pay a daily charge for providing those meals.

And that's also the same number. So that's $16.28 per day. However, the key there is that it's got to be clearly disclosed on the job board that that deduction is going to occur, the amount needs to be disclosed. And the fact that they're going to be providing meals needs to be disclosed.

NICO

Excellent. Oh, interesting question here from Tracy. She's asking on the weekly pay paperwork. Do we only need to provide the earnings statement in that workers language, or do we also have to provide it in the pace of as well?

MARK

Let me read the where do you see that question at is in the Q&A.

NICO

In the Q&A. Yeah. So it's an interesting one. I, I haven't heard of needing to provide it. The statements in their specific language. The good thing with FieldClock though, is we also provide all of our apps in English and Spanish as well.

MARK

What I can say is that's 20 CFR 655, 122 K hours and earnings payments. And it just says that the employer must furnish to the workers on or before each payday and one or more written statements, the following information. So it doesn't say in a language understood by the worker. I've never seen wage now or question that, although I would say it would be a best practice to provide it in a language understood by the worker, if anything, so that the worker can interpret what they're looking at.

Yep.

NICO

And that's one of the reasons why we chose to provide our app in both English and Spanish as well.

Jennifer is asking, how can farmers get more than one contract H-2a contract?

MARK

So that could be a more complicated conversation that we might have to have offline. But generally, there's no limitation on the number of contracts that in to a employer can file. So you essentially get filed for as many contracts as you want. Generally that question arises out of the question of can and employer have contracts that in the aggregate go beyond the ten month seasonality threshold.

The way to sell that down is that a single employer can have distinctly separate seasonal needs, that have different job classifications, that can have their own seasons, even if when combined, they encompass more than ten months out of the year. Hopefully that answers your question. It's more it's a complicated topic, so I'm happy to have a conversation offline if that's what we need to do.

NICO

Yeah, and that's really what this discussion today is all about its resources. We want to provide our attendees, our clients, anyone that we speak with, the resources that they need to succeed here. Kelsey is asking, can hours offered, mere hours worked on, days the employee worked? Or do the hours offered have to match the work contract? Hours, right?

MARK

So yeah, on the days that they work, essentially if they work more hours than what's on the contract, those the hours worked can be the hours offered. That's fine. And if they worked less hours and what's on the contract because the employer awkward less hours on that day than those hours work can be the hours offer that's totally acceptable.

ASHLEY

That is something that we record in field and capture on the wage statement.

NICO

Absolutely. Amy is asking. Oh, interesting one. She says, I know we reimburse consulate fees, but do we also need to reimburse for the workers traveled to the consulate because it sounds like it's quite a journey for some of hers.

MARK

Generally, yes. That has been something that has that that the department has kind of changed their position on over time. But currently their position is the reimbursements need to occur from the place of recruitment, which is the worker's home. In most cases, the employer wouldn't be obligated to reimburse for things that are primarily for the benefit of the workers, such as a passport.

So the worker having to renew the passport and undergoing, you know, incurring expenses. Renewing the passport is not something that the employer would need to reimburse for. But anything related to the H-2a visa if they have to stay in a hotel, you know, in Monterrey for a couple of days before they get their visa, those costs need to be reimbursed to the worker by the employer.

NICO

Ashley, we have one here. Oh, good. One payroll. So, Marsha, sorry. Marcy is asking, what payroll programs do you suggest to work best with FieldClock I guess we could start with FieldClock payroll.

ASHLEY

Yeah, absolutely. So for smaller farms, we certainly offer FieldClock payroll. It's a one stop shop right in the same place. However, we work with over two dozen payroll systems. I can certainly be a resource for you as well. It really just depends on what your needs are. If you are doing a lot of production and piecework, there are other.

There are certain, and how many employees you have. There are certain systems I would recommend over others for a list of them, and I don't know if we can share this in the chat. We can show our payroll systems that we currently work with. However you're interested in one that's not there, by all means let us know and we can certainly do that as well.

NICO

Absolutely. Just going through chat to make sure I didn't skip anything here. Ashley is asking, is it enough to have the hours offered in the job contract, or do we have to keep that for every single day? For each person? She's asking, how are people documenting that?

MARK

Yeah. So as far as the obligation goes, that goes back to the earnings records. And it does say that there has to be a record of the hours offered each day. It's specifically calls out each day, generally in the case of an investigation, when we see wage and hour asking for evidence of the hours offered, normally they're looking at the earnings statement that actually showed on her screen earlier at the workers would get that show the per pay period, hours offered.

So normally that's what they're looking for. But they do occasionally look for the daily hours offered. And it is an obligation to maintain the daily hours offered. And that's where one more common on that, that's where FieldClock can basically help control for that. It knows that the time that the worker clock in and clocked out, and there could be rules set up for what can be offered.

You know, what does the job will allow to be offered and what day is it, what what hours can be offered on that day. So a lot of that management of the hours offered can be taken off of your hands.

ASHLEY

There's actually a question in in the chat that I think goes along with this. Nico, if you could I don't know if you see it too, but it talks about can you prevent them from clocking in early the fencing portion? But do you have any thoughts or feelings about preventing your employees from clocking in, or really say they get there half an hour early and clock in?

MARK

You're asking me.

ASHLEY

Yes.

MARK

Yeah. So definitely any work that is performed by the worker is compensable. So whether you allow them to work or not, I mean, if they perform work, you've got to pay them for the time that they work. The idea of disallowing workers from clocking in early, I think, is acceptable, as long as there's a policy around it that's evenly and equitably applied to the workforce.

So if you have a policy that says you can't, you know, you can't clock in early and someone repeatedly clocks in early, that could be cause for termination. Currently, the farm worker protection rule is enforced. So in certain states, you might have to undergo progressive discipline and follow a set of procedures before you actually terminate the worker. But ultimately, I think that would be the sort of the solution for the employer is have a policy that it can't be done.

And if it does happen, that can be cause for termination or at the minimum, a cause for reprimand.

ASHLEY

Yeah. And then to speak to the time stamps and geofencing. So FieldClock currently right now does not prevent your employees from clocking in at a specific time. However, because we do geofence, we create those boundaries. We have a restriction that you can use or not use if you want to prevent them from clocking in unless they're physically there.

So we can certainly help with that. And then also what I do like about the time stamp is, like Mark was saying, if you have a policy in place, you can document how many times they're doing it and possibly be able to add them if you're allowed to adjust it, but you can certainly adjust their time on the back end extremely easy.

MARK

On something like that, where there's an error made, you know you can adjust the time. I just mean to be saying that you couldn't basically take time away from the worker if the worker worked that period.

NICO

Excellent final question in the Q&A is an easy one for me to address. So Silvia is asking, well, we will we be able to get this presentation by paper so we can discuss with others at our workplace? We don't like paper here at Fill Clock, but I can provide a PDF slides. When we send out the recording, I can easily provide a PDF that you can share with your employees as well.

So I want to thank Ashley for joining us today and Mark as well. And I think we'll have to get together again and discuss maybe in a few months, any changes to the system. There's always going to be changes to the program, and we love getting on board with all of our partners here at FieldClock And thanks again, Mark, for your time, and thanks for everyone who joined in today.

MARK

Thanks, Ashley. Thanks, Nico.

ASHLEY

Thank you. Bye bye.