PunchFour 10-Hour Days: How to Run a Compressed Workweek Without Owing Overtime in 2026
Four 10-Hour Days: How to Run a Compressed Workweek Without Owing Overtime in 2026
The short answer: Under federal law, four 10-hour days cost you nothing extra, because the FLSA counts weeks, not days. In California, Alaska, and Nevada, the same schedule owes daily overtime unless you completed a specific process before the first long day. Colorado adds a ceiling that no schedule can vote its way out of. In every one of these states, what saves you is a per person, per day record of the hours actually worked. Punch produces that record every time someone punches in.
Federally, a Compressed Week Is Free
The FLSA has no daily overtime. It has a workweek: one fixed and regularly recurring period of 168 hours, seven consecutive 24-hour periods, which can begin on any day and at any hour. Overtime is owed on hours over 40 inside that period, and nothing about a 10-hour Tuesday triggers it on its own.
So a crew working Monday through Thursday, 6 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. with an unpaid half hour, lands on 40 hours and zero federal overtime. That is why compressed schedules spread through construction, landscaping, roofing, and field service. Four longer days means one fewer round of mobilizing, unloading, and driving.
Two federal rules govern the edges. The workweek stays fixed once you set it, regardless of the hours actually worked. And you can change when it starts, but only if the change is intended to be permanent and is not designed to evade overtime. A workweek that moves whenever a job runs long is not a workweek. It is an audit finding.
California: The Schedule Requires an Election
California pays overtime after 8 hours in a workday, so a 10-hour day owes two hours at time and a half every single day unless the crew adopted a valid alternative workweek schedule under Labor Code section 511.
That adoption is a formal process, not a memo. It requires a written proposal describing the schedule, at least 14 days of advance notice, an informational meeting held before the vote, a secret ballot election conducted during work hours at the worksite, and approval by two-thirds of the affected employees in the work unit. A work unit can be a division, a department, a job classification, a shift, a separate physical location, or a recognized subdivision of one. Results are reported to the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement within 30 days after they become final.
Adopting the schedule does not remove overtime. It moves the line:
- Hours beyond the scheduled day, up to 12, are paid at time and a half.
- Hours beyond 12 in a day are double time.
- Hours worked on a day not in the adopted schedule revert to the ordinary rules.
- The weekly 40-hour trigger still applies.
- An alternative workweek schedule may not require more than 10 hours in a day or more than 40 hours in a week.
Two more obligations follow the crew after the vote. An employer may provide a schedule not exceeding 8 hours in a workday to accommodate an employee hired after the election who cannot work the alternative schedule. And on a petition of one-third of the affected employees, a new secret ballot election is held, where a two-thirds vote reverses the schedule.
The practical failure mode is quiet. An employer runs four tens for a year, never held the election, and discovers the exposure when one person files a claim. The unpaid premium is two hours a day, per employee, back through the limitations period, plus interest and penalties. The schedule was never the problem. The missing ballot was.
Alaska and Nevada: A Signature and a Filing
Both states have daily overtime and both allow a compressed schedule, on paper filed in advance.
Alaska pays overtime after 8 hours in a day and after 40 in a week for employers with four or more employees. The carve-out is the voluntary flexible work hour plan. The employer and the individual employee sign a written agreement, file it with the Department of Labor, and the department issues a certificate approving work of up to 10 hours a day and 40 hours a week. The department issues the certificate or a denial within five working days, and the certificate takes effect the day it is signed. The agreement has to state that participation is voluntary and not a condition of employment, and that hours beyond 10 in a day or 40 in a week are paid at time and a half.
Nevada pays daily overtime after 8 hours to employees earning less than one and a half times the state minimum wage. Nevada's 2026 minimum wage is a flat $12.00 per hour, which puts that line at $18.00. Below it, daily overtime applies unless, by mutual agreement, the employee works a scheduled 10 hours per day for 4 calendar days within a scheduled workweek. The agreement has to be genuinely mutual. An employer cannot assign a 4/10 schedule and declare the daily threshold raised. Weekly overtime past 40 still applies either way.
Colorado is the one you cannot opt out of. Under COMPS Order #39, overtime is owed for hours over 40 in a workweek, over 12 in a workday, or over 12 consecutive hours, whichever produces the most pay. A 10-hour day is fine. A 10-hour day that stretches to 13 because the pour ran late is not, and the consecutive-hours version can run across midnight and across two calendar days. Colorado also prohibits averaging hours across weeks.
The 9/80 Trap
The cousin of the 4/10 is the 9/80: eight 9-hour days, one 8-hour day, and every other Friday off. Run naively, it produces a 44-hour week followed by a 36-hour week, and the 44-hour week owes four hours of overtime forever.
The fix is the workweek definition. The workweek is designated to begin midway through the 8-hour day, four hours after that shift's start time, with the day off falling on the same weekday in the following week. Each defined week then contains exactly 40 hours: four hours from the short day, four 9-hour days, and the first four hours of the next short day. Federal regulations permit designating workweeks for individual employees, so people with different start times on their short day can carry different workweek boundaries.
None of that helps in California, where a 9-hour day triggers an hour of daily overtime every cycle unless the 9/80 was itself adopted as an alternative workweek schedule.
What Actually Breaks a Compressed Schedule
The rules are static. Field work is not. Compressed schedules break in the same four ways:
- The fifth day. Someone comes in Friday to finish a punch list. That day sits outside the adopted schedule and is priced differently in every state above.
- The eleventh hour. A 10-hour day that runs to 11 is a premium hour under an adopted California schedule and under an Alaska plan.
- The swap. Two people trade days. The schedule on file no longer matches the schedule worked.
- The missing punch. Nobody recorded a real start and stop, so the timesheet says "10" because that is what the schedule says, not because that is what happened.
That last one is the dangerous one. A timesheet that repeats the schedule instead of recording the work is the first thing an investigator discards, and once it is discarded, the employee's recollection becomes the record.
How Punch Handles It
Punch is built so the proof is a byproduct of the day rather than a Friday reconstruction.
Every punch in and punch out is timestamped to the minute and attached to a job site, so a 10-hour Tuesday is a recorded fact with a start, an end, and a location. Lunch is a separate tracked event, so the unpaid meal never disappears into the paid block and the ninth hour is not an accounting guess. Split shifts stay two clean segments on one day.
Punches work offline. A basement, a rural site, or a canyon with no signal still records a real punch that syncs when service returns, which is exactly where compressed crews spend their long days.
Overtime is applied automatically against your fixed workweek using Punch's overtime presets covering more than 50 countries, including the state daily overtime rules that a compressed schedule has to be reconciled against. Your workweek stays one fixed 168-hour period, so a 9/80 boundary or a Sunday-start week is honored instead of approximated.
Owners and managers review the week in one place and approve or reject in bulk rather than one shift at a time, and every decision is recorded against the shift, so the fifth day and the eleventh hour surface before payroll instead of after a claim. Pay periods run weekly or bi-weekly. When the period is approved, Reports export to Excel or a QuickBooks CSV, or push straight into QuickBooks Online, so what you pay matches what was punched.
For crews without company phones, a shared iPad in the shop or trailer becomes a punch station with a PIN. Verification stays private throughout: Punch confirms an on-site punch-in with a job-site geofence on iOS, never facial recognition and never a photo at the punch. Proving a crew started at 6 a.m. should not require a camera in anyone's face. Trust beats surveillance.
Why Punch Beats the Per-Seat Alternatives
Compressed schedules are a crew-size decision, and crew size is exactly what per-seat billing taxes. ClockShark, Connecteam, Buddy Punch, QuickBooks Time, and Homebase all charge by the user, and the overtime handling and reporting that would price a 4/10 correctly tend to sit one tier up or behind an add-on.
Punch charges a flat price per organization. Every plan includes every feature, from geofenced punch-in to kiosk mode to bulk approvals to QuickBooks Online export, and owners are always free. Put the whole crew on four tens and your software bill does not move.
The Bottom Line
Four 10-hour days are free under federal law and conditional everywhere with daily overtime. California requires a two-thirds secret ballot election reported to the state. Alaska requires a signed plan and a certificate. Nevada requires a genuine mutual agreement and only matters below $18.00 an hour in 2026. Colorado caps the day at 12 no matter what anyone agreed to. Do the paperwork once, then record the hours honestly every day, because the schedule you filed only protects you to the extent the punches match it.
Start with Punch and let the schedule prove itself.
This article is general information, not legal advice. Wage and hour rules vary by state, city, and industry, and they change. Confirm your obligations with the enforcing agency in your state, or with a qualified professional, before adopting a compressed schedule.