California paid sick leave tracking: records staff can see

The California rules your sick leave records follow

California’s paid sick leave law sits in Labor Code sections 245 to 249. It covers nearly every employee, and the Labor Commissioner’s Office says that includes part-time, per diem and temporary staff. Only a few narrow groups are left out, like some workers under union contracts that meet strict terms.

The amounts went up on January 1, 2024, when SB 616 took effect. Before then, an employer could cap use at 24 hours or three days a year. Older guides and payroll settings may still use the old figure, so check yours.

This isn’t legal advice. Confirm your policy with the Labor Commissioner’s Office or an employment lawyer, and check your city. Where a local ordinance is more generous, you follow it. On six points, state law wins over any city rule that says otherwise: lending leave early, the pay stub notice, how sick pay is worked out, advance notice, when it’s paid and payout when someone leaves.

Los Angeles is the biggest example. The City’s Office of Wage Standards covers staff who work at least two hours in a week inside city limits, for 30 days or more within a year. When we checked in October 2026, it listed at least 48 hours front-loaded, or one hour per 30 worked. Carryover can be capped, but at no less than 72 hours, and use can be limited to 48 hours a year. Payroll records must be kept for four years. Other cities have their own rules, so check yours. Today the statewide rules are:

• Who qualifies: anyone who works 30 or more days in California for you within a year of starting.
• Earning: at least one hour for every 30 hours worked, from day one. Staff exempt as administrative, executive or professional employees count as working 40 hours a week, unless their normal week is shorter.
• First use: from the 90th day of employment, then as it’s earned.
• Yearly use: you may cap use at 40 hours or five days a year. The Labor Commissioner reads that as whichever is more, so a worker on 10-hour days can use 50 hours, once they’ve earned or been given them.
• Carryover: earned hours carry over to the next year. You may cap the total balance at 80 hours or 10 days, again whichever is more in the Labor Commissioner’s reading.
• Size of each use: the worker decides how much to take. You may set a minimum, but no higher than two hours.
• What it’s for: diagnosis, care, treatment or preventive care for the worker or a family member, plus set purposes for victims of violence. Jury duty and appearing in court as a witness were added in 2025, and certain court proceedings for crime victims and their families in 2026. Outdoor farmworkers can also use it to avoid smoke, heat or flooding during a declared emergency.
• Pay: no later than the next regular payday after the leave.
• Leaving: unused sick leave isn’t paid out by law. It comes back if you rehire the person within one year, unless it was paid out under a paid time off (PTO) policy.

References: California Legislative Information: Labor Code section 245.5 (opens in a new tab) · California Legislative Information: Labor Code section 246 (opens in a new tab) · California Legislative Information: Labor Code section 246.5 (opens in a new tab) · California Legislative Information: Government Code section 12945.8 (opens in a new tab) · California Labor Commissioner’s Office: Paid sick leave frequently asked questions (opens in a new tab) · City of Los Angeles Office of Wage Standards: Minimum wage and paid sick leave (opens in a new tab)

Accrual or front-loading: choose the method you can track

The law gives you two main ways to provide the leave, and each one creates different records. With accrual, staff earn leave as they work. The standard rate is one hour for every 30 hours worked. Another regular schedule also works. Each person needs at least 24 hours by their 120th calendar day and 40 hours by their 200th.

With front-loading, you give the full amount, five days or 40 hours, at the start of each year. A new hire needs 24 hours or three days to use by their 120th day, and 40 hours or five days by their 200th. If you front-load the full amount each year, no accrual or carryover is required.

You pick the year: the calendar year, each person’s hire anniversary or another 12-month period. An existing PTO policy can count instead, if staff can use it for the same purposes and on the same conditions, and it meets the law’s accrual, carryover and use rules. If you offer unlimited sick leave or PTO, the pay stub can simply say “unlimited.”

Front-loading means fewer numbers to keep: one grant per person per year. Accrual ties leave to hours worked, which suits part-time and seasonal staff. Either way, set each cap in hours and in days. Here’s the math for two hypothetical workers:

• A café server on 20 hours a week earns about 34.7 hours a year at one hour per 30 (1,040 hours ÷ 30). Their balance doesn’t reach 40 in a year, and that’s allowed under the standard rate.
• An HVAC tech on four 10-hour days a week earns about 69 hours a year at the same rate (2,080 hours ÷ 30). Five days for them is 50 hours, so a use cap set at “40 hours” shortchanges them. Ten days, for the balance cap, is 100 hours.

References: California Legislative Information: Labor Code section 246 (opens in a new tab) · California Labor Commissioner’s Office: Paid sick leave frequently asked questions (opens in a new tab)

What your records must hold, and for how long

Labor Code section 247.5 is short. Keep records of each employee’s hours worked and paid sick days earned and used, for at least three years. The Labor Commissioner can inspect them. Employees can see them too, the same way they can see payroll records under section 226.

Under section 226, a current or former employee can ask to inspect or get a copy of their records, in writing or out loud. You must comply as soon as practicable, and no later than 21 calendar days after the request. The Labor Commissioner’s FAQ says these records can be kept electronically.

The records carry weight in a dispute. If they aren’t adequate, the law presumes the employee is owed the most hours they could have earned. You can only overcome that with clear and convincing evidence. If sick days were unlawfully withheld, the Labor Commissioner’s penalty includes three times their dollar value or $250, whichever is greater. It tops out at $4,000.

One helpful line: an isolated, unintentional clerical error in payroll or a notice isn’t penalized. Whether you had a compliant policy and followed it can count in your favor, and clean records are how you show that.

What you don’t have to record is the reason. The law says you aren’t obligated to ask why someone uses sick leave, or to write it down. Any health details, or information about domestic violence or sexual assault, that you do hold must stay confidential.

References: California Legislative Information: Labor Code section 247.5 (opens in a new tab) · California Legislative Information: Labor Code section 226 (opens in a new tab) · California Legislative Information: Labor Code section 248.5 (opens in a new tab) · California Legislative Information: Labor Code section 249 (opens in a new tab) · California Labor Commissioner’s Office: Paid sick leave frequently asked questions (opens in a new tab)

A balance staff can see: on the pay stub, then on their phone

Every payday, each employee must get written notice of their available paid sick leave. It goes on the itemized pay stub, or on a separate paper given with their pay on payday. If a payroll service prints your stubs, check that the balance is on them and that it matches your own records.

Two notices come first. Display the Labor Commissioner’s paid sick leave poster where staff can read it. Most new hires also get a written Notice to Employee with sick leave details.

The pay stub is the legal minimum, but it comes every week or two, and some staff never open the PDF. So they call the office to ask for their balance. A phone view answers any time, from the same record that feeds the stub. It sits on top of the pay stub notice; it doesn’t replace it.

The law lets staff ask for sick leave out loud or in writing. So an in-app request is a convenience, not a requirement, and a call or text to the office still has to count. A useful phone view shows:

• Hours available to use today.
• Hours used this year, and how many are left under the yearly cap.
• For accrual, the hours earned so far this pay period.
• For a new hire, the date they can start using sick leave.
• Each past use, with the date, the hours and the payday it was paid on.
• A way to request sick leave, so the request and the balance live together.

References: California Legislative Information: Labor Code section 246 (opens in a new tab) · California Legislative Information: Labor Code section 246.5 (opens in a new tab) · California Legislative Information: Labor Code section 247 (opens in a new tab) · California Labor Commissioner’s Office: Paid sick leave frequently asked questions (opens in a new tab)

Where sick leave tracking usually goes wrong

Most problems come from settings and habits in whatever tracks the hours, not from the law’s big numbers. Watch for these:

• Old caps still set in payroll from before 2024: 24 hours or three days of use a year, or a balance capped at 48 hours or six days.
• A yearly cap of “40 hours” for people who work 10-hour days. Five days is 50 hours for them.
• Accrual counted from the schedule instead of the hours actually worked.
• Balances wiped to zero at the new year under an accrual policy. Earned hours carry over, up to your cap.
• A full day charged for a three-hour appointment. The most you can require per use is two hours.
• Hours lent ahead of accrual with nothing written down. The law allows lending, with proper documentation.
• Attendance points for a sick day the worker had the balance to cover, or a rule that they must find their own replacement.
• An app or plan that doesn’t keep three years of records, or won’t let you export them.

References: California Legislative Information: Labor Code section 246 (opens in a new tab) · California Legislative Information: Labor Code section 246.5 (opens in a new tab) · California Labor Commissioner’s Office: Paid sick leave frequently asked questions (opens in a new tab)

How sick leave tracking looks in different trades

The rules are the same for every business. What changes is where the hours come from and which edge cases come up. These hypothetical examples are a test for your own setup.

• Cafés and restaurants. Part-time hours change week to week, so accrual has to follow actual punches. Turnover is high, so the 30-day and 90-day dates come up often. If you track meal periods too, our guide to meal-break records for crews covers them.
• HVAC and plumbing. Long days mean five days of use can be 50 hours or more. For techs paid at more than one rate, the law gives you two ways to work out hourly sick pay. Pick one and use it every time, so the math is easy to check.
• Landscaping. Seasonal crews leave in winter and come back in spring. If someone returns within a year, their unused balance comes back too, unless it was paid out under a PTO policy.
• Contractors and trades. Some union construction workers are exempt, but only under contracts that meet specific terms. Office staff and non-union crews are still covered. Ask your lawyer which group each person falls in.
• Shops and showrooms. Someone who works at two of your stores has one balance with you, not one per store, as long as both stores are the same employer. If a store sits in a city with its own sick leave ordinance, flag that location.
• Property managers. Salaried office staff who are exempt as administrative, executive or professional employees accrue as if they work 40 hours a week. Hourly maintenance techs accrue from their timesheets.

References: California Legislative Information: Labor Code section 245.5 (opens in a new tab) · California Legislative Information: Labor Code section 246 (opens in a new tab) · California Labor Commissioner’s Office: Paid sick leave frequently asked questions (opens in a new tab)

Payroll app, time clock app or your own system?

If your payroll service already tracks accrual, applies your caps and prints the balance on each stub, keep it. When we checked in October 2026, QuickBooks’ payroll product, now called QuickBooks Workforce, listed time off balances and vacation and sick leave among its reports. Homebase listed PTO policies that track accruals and balances automatically on its Plus plan, at $70 per location a month billed monthly, or $56 a month billed annually.

For a café or shop where staff work shifts in one place, a time clock app plus payroll is often all you need. Our guide to choosing an employee scheduling app covers what to check.

It gets harder when hours live somewhere else. Crews clock in on jobs in a job app, the office retypes hours into payroll, and sick leave sits in a third place. Then nobody’s sure which balance is right. Time clock apps vs time tracking built into your job software walks through that split. Whatever you use, ask each vendor:

• Does it accrue on every hour worked, and apply a cap of 40 hours or five days, whichever is more?
• Does it restore a balance when someone is rehired within a year?
• Does it print the available sick leave balance on every pay stub, or “unlimited” if that’s your policy?
• Can staff see their balance on their phone, and does it match the pay stub?
• How long are records kept, and can you export all of them yourself?

References: QuickBooks: Payroll services (QuickBooks Workforce) (opens in a new tab) · Homebase: Pricing (opens in a new tab) · California Legislative Information: Labor Code section 246 (opens in a new tab)

A checklist for your sick leave records

Use this list to set up a system or audit yours. Pick three employees, pull a year of their records, and check each line.

• The policy each person is on: accrual or front-load, the year you use, and the caps in hours and in days.
• Hire date, the day they reach 30 days of work and their 90th day. For front-loaded new hires, their 120th and 200th days too.
• Hours worked each pay period, from timesheets, not the schedule.
• Every hour earned and used, with the date, who entered it and the payday it was paid on.
• Any hours lent ahead of accrual, written down when they’re lent.
• A designated person, if a worker names one to care for. You may limit that to one person per 12 months.
• Separation and rehire dates, so balances come back within a year.
• An edit trail: who changed a balance, when and why.
• The worksite city, where a local ordinance may apply.
• At least three years of all of it, or four for payroll records in the City of Los Angeles, exportable, with a way to give a worker a copy within 21 days.

References: California Legislative Information: Labor Code section 245.5 (opens in a new tab) · California Legislative Information: Labor Code section 246 (opens in a new tab) · California Legislative Information: Labor Code section 247.5 (opens in a new tab) · California Legislative Information: Labor Code section 226 (opens in a new tab) · City of Los Angeles Office of Wage Standards: Minimum wage and paid sick leave (opens in a new tab)

How we build sick leave balances into a job system

We build custom business software for service businesses, and sick leave fits inside it. Hours from approved timesheets feed each person’s balance, and staff see it in the crew phone app, where they can also request time off. Payroll still prints the stub, so we make sure one place does the math and the other shows the same number. We connect to QuickBooks Online. For the payroll side, including QuickBooks payroll, we check what your payroll app can send and accept before we quote.

If your payroll service already handles this well, we’ll say so. Our typical prices: a focused fix, like a three-year sick leave export or a balance report, or a balance screen added to custom software you already have after we review it, is $750–$3,000 over 1–⁠2 weeks. One business system, such as scheduling, time tracking and sick leave for a crew of 5 to 10, is $6,000–$18,000 over 6–⁠10 weeks. A full system with jobs, quotes, invoices, payments and a crew app is $18,000–$40,000 over 10–⁠16 weeks. These are our prices as of October 4, 2026; what custom software costs explains what moves the number.

You own the code we write once the project is paid in full. Hosting runs on our account, and you can take it over after payment. Every launch includes 30 days of fixes. This isn’t legal advice, so have an employment lawyer check the policy itself. The first call is free, and you get a fixed price in writing within 48 hours of it.