There's An App for That: DOL of iPhone/iPod/iPad App Helps Many Employees Track and Calculate What They're Owed
Everyone’s an app developer these days, it seems—your poker buddy, your niece in college, the poorly socialized guy in IT, and the would-be software tycoon down the street, for example. Uncle Sam’s gotten into the act, too: the Department of Labor just released a smartphone timesheet app.
The app is designed to allow employees to keep independent track of—and calculate the wages they’re owed for—hours worked, including overtime. The app also has other employee-helpful features, such as break time tracking and links to DOL web resources, such as information about wage and hour laws or how to contact the Department. Users can annotate their work-related information on the app and view summaries by day, week, or month.
Of course, as with most apps, it doesn’t do everything you might want it to. For example, it’s great so long as the employee only has regular and overtime (at time-and-half) wages to track. However, it does not handle more complex or less common wage calculations, including tips, commissions, bonuses, holiday pay, or shift differentials among others. Actually, given how many employees in the hospitality industry receive tips, and how many employees in some sales capacity receive commissions, the DOL app might not work for many employees.
Also, not surprisingly, the federal DOL focused on the federal labor laws, such as the requirements under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Their app does not help you with state variations, such as California’s requirement for double time when working more than 12 hours in a day.
The DOL’s free app is available in English and Spanish and can be downloaded at http://www.dol.gov/whd. You can view screen shots here.
Like other app developers, though, the Department is not resting on its laurels. It’s planning to expand the app’s capabilities—such as adding the capacity to handle tips, commissions, bonuses, etc.—and to also port it to other smartphone platforms, like Android and Blackberry. With employees now able to track their own hours on this app, employers would be prudent to ensure they’ve got their own “app” in place to track employee hours and properly calculate wages that’s compliant with both federal and applicable local wage and hour laws.
