$StateWageCalc
Standard Operating Procedures

Methodology & Verification Protocol

How StateWageCalc extracts legal rules, verifies formulas, tests edge cases, and maintains strict mathematical accuracy.

1. Official Source Hierarchy

To eliminate misinformation and avoid propagating third-party errors, our research team adheres to a strict five-tier hierarchy when extracting wage rules:

  1. 1
    Tier 1: Federal Statutory Law & RegulationsThe federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) establishes the nationwide floor for minimum wage, recordkeeping, and standard 40-hour overtime rules.
  2. 2
    Tier 2: State Labor Departments & Enforcement AgenciesOfficial guidance, enforcement policy manuals, and interpretative bulletins issued by state labor commissions (e.g. California DIR DLSE, New York DOL, Washington L&I).
  3. 3
    Tier 3: State Statutes & Administrative CodesCodified state statutes (e.g., California Labor Code § 510) and wage orders (e.g., California Industrial Welfare Commission Wage Orders).
  4. 4
    Tier 4: Official Municipal & County OrdinancesWhere local city or county laws establish higher local minimum wages or specific scheduling protections.
  5. 5
    Tier 5: Secondary Legal Commentary (Context Only)Law review articles, payroll treatises, and bar association publications are consulted exclusively for context. They are never used as the sole basis of a calculation formula when official government sources exist.

2. Rule Extraction & Isolated Engine Logic

Every state rule is isolated in a typed data registry before code execution begins. Calculation engines are authored in pure TypeScript with zero UI dependencies, guaranteeing deterministic execution.

Statutory constants—such as daily overtime thresholds (8 hours), double-time thresholds (12 hours), and weekly boundaries (40 hours)—are never hardcoded inside React components.

3. Rigorous Unit Testing Protocol

Before any calculator is published, it must pass an automated unit test suite covering statutory standard cases, decimal hour entries, multi-day consecutive shifts, and anti-pyramiding edge cases:

  • Anti-Pyramiding Verification: Ensuring hours already classified as daily overtime are not re-credited toward weekly overtime.
  • Seventh Consecutive Workday: Validating that premium multipliers apply correctly when all seven days are worked.
  • Decimal Precision: Preventing floating-point inaccuracies through money-safe cents arithmetic.
  • Negative & Boundary Guarding: Rejecting negative wages, negative hours, and impossible shifts (>24 hours/day).

4. Effective Dates & Continuous Review

Labor legislation evolves. Every rule record maintains an effectiveFrom date and a verifiedOn date. We monitor legislative updates and agency bulletins to refresh formulas when statutory adjustments take effect.

5. Corrections & Discrepancy Reporting

If you identify a statutory amendment, an agency interpretation update, or a discrepancy in any calculation output, please notify us immediately.

Report a calculation or legal discrepancy →