PunchRain Days and Weather Closures: What You Owe a Field Crew When Work Gets Called Off (2026)
Rain Days and Weather Closures: What You Owe a Field Crew When Work Gets Called Off (2026)
The short answer: For hourly crew, federal law pays for hours worked, so a canceled day with no work is generally an unpaid day. For salaried exempt staff, the same closure can cost you a full week of salary. And the moment a crew shows up before you call it, a third set of rules turns on. The deciding fact in every one of those cases is a minute-accurate record of who was where and for how long. Punch records that as the day happens.
Three Different Rules Fire on the Same Storm
A rain day feels like one decision. Legally it is three, and they are decided by three unrelated tests.
- Was the person hourly or salaried exempt? That decides whether "no work" means "no pay."
- Did anyone report to the site before you called it? That triggers state show-up pay, which has its own weather carve-out.
- Did anyone sit and wait on your instruction? Waiting on the boss's clock is usually paid time, storm or not.
Get all three right on the same morning and the day costs what it should. Get one wrong and it surfaces months later as a back-wage claim with no record to argue from.
Hourly Crew: No Work, No Federal Pay
The Fair Labor Standards Act is a pay-for-hours-worked statute. It does not require an employer to pay a non-exempt employee for a day the business closes and no work is performed. A landscaping crew that gets a 5 a.m. text saying "no work today, stay home" is owed nothing under federal law for that day.
Two things narrow that. A collective bargaining agreement, an employment contract, or your own written policy promising four hours of inclement-weather pay is enforceable on its own terms, so if your handbook says it, pay it. And partial days still get paid for the part that was worked. A crew that punches in at 7:00, works through a drizzle, and gets sent home when the wind picks up at 10:20 is owed every one of those hours. Calling it "half a day" is the kind of estimate that fails an audit. Pay the punched time.
Salaried Exempt Staff: The Closure Is On You
This is where owners lose money without knowing it.
Under the salary basis rule at 29 CFR 541.602, an exempt employee must receive the full predetermined salary for any workweek in which they perform any work, and deductions may not be made for absences occasioned by the employer or by the operating requirements of the business. The Department of Labor has treated a weather closure as exactly that kind of employer-occasioned absence.
The practical rules:
- You close for less than a full workweek. The exempt employee who worked any part of that week gets the full week's salary. Two storm days out of five changes nothing about the check.
- You close for a full workweek and no work is performed at all. No salary is owed for that week. In practice this is rare, because a single approved invoice or a few emails counts as work.
- You stay open and the employee cannot get in. That flips to an absence for personal reasons, and a deduction for a full day of no work is permitted under the same regulation. The distinction is whose choice it was.
You may generally require exempt staff to use accrued PTO or vacation for a closure of less than a week, as long as the paycheck for that week still equals the guaranteed salary. Draining the bank is allowed. Shorting the check is not.
Show-Up Pay, and the Exception That Undoes It
If the crew reports before you cancel, some states owe them money for the trip. The rules are state-specific and modest, but they are real.
California. Under Section 5 of the IWC wage orders, an employee who reports to work as required and is furnished less than half the usual or scheduled day's work is paid for half that day, subject to a minimum of two hours and a maximum of four, at the regular rate of pay.
New York. Under 12 NYCRR 142-2.3, an employee who reports for work by request or permission of the employer is paid for at least four hours, or the number of hours in the regularly scheduled shift, whichever is less, at the basic minimum hourly wage. Other New York wage orders cover hospitality and building service separately.
Massachusetts. Under 454 CMR 27.04(1), an employee scheduled for three or more hours who reports and is sent home is paid for at least three hours at no less than the applicable minimum wage.
Now the part that matters for storms. California's wage orders exempt reporting time pay when operations cannot begin or continue because of threats to employees or property, when civil authorities recommend that work not begin or continue, when a public utility fails to supply electricity, water, or gas, or when the interruption is caused by an act of God or another cause outside the employer's control.
So a genuine lightning storm or a county evacuation order is a different legal event than a foreman who overbooked and sent half the crew home. The first can be exempt from the premium. The second is not.
Which means the file needs to show which one it was, on the date it was. A note from six weeks later is not evidence. A punch record that shows nine people on site at 6:52 a.m. and gone by 7:05, on a day the National Weather Service had a warning posted, is.
For the non-weather version of this question, see our guide to reporting time pay when a crew shows up and gets sent home.
Waiting Out the Weather Is Usually Paid
The most expensive weather hour is the one nobody counted.
Under 29 CFR 785.15, an employee who is engaged to wait is working. When waiting periods are unpredictable, short, and controlled by the employer so the employee cannot use the time for their own purposes, that time is hours worked. A crew told to sit in the truck for 40 minutes to see if the cell passes is on the clock. So is a tech waiting in a shop bay for the road to reopen.
The flip side is real too. An employee who is completely relieved from duty, told in advance they are free to go, and given a definite time to return is not working during that gap.
The line between the two is documentation. If you release the crew, release them clearly, and let the record show a punch out and a punch back in. If you hold them, pay it. What you cannot do is hold people and call the hours a delay.
How Punch Handles a Rain Day
Punch is built so the record exists before you need it.
Every punch in and punch out is timestamped to the minute and tied to a job site, so a half day cut short by weather is a fact with a start, an end, and a location instead of a number someone reconstructs on Friday. A day with no punches is equally a fact, which is exactly what proves a closure. Lunch is its own tracked event, so a long weather hold in the middle of the day does not disappear into a paid block. Split shifts are supported, so a morning that gets rained out and a crew that returns at 2 p.m. reads as two real segments on one day.
Punches work offline. This is the whole point on a storm day. A basement, a rural site, a truck under a canopy of trees with no bars still records a real punch that syncs when service returns. The crew is never asked to remember a time later, which is where reconstructed timesheets come from.
Owners and managers review the whole week in one place and approve or reject in bulk, and every decision is recorded against the shift, so a weather day that needed a judgment call carries a documented one. Time off requests live in the same app, so PTO used against a closure is logged rather than remembered.
Overtime is applied automatically against your fixed workweek using Punch's overtime presets covering more than 60 countries, including state daily overtime rules. That matters more than it sounds on a storm week, because crews that lose Tuesday to rain often make it up on Saturday, and the makeup day is where unexpected overtime lands. When the pay period closes, weekly or bi-weekly, 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: 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 your crew stood in the rain should not require a camera in their face. Trust beats surveillance.
Why Punch Beats the Per-Seat Alternatives
Weather is a seasonal-headcount problem. You add hands for storm restoration, snow removal, and the catch-up week after a washout, and per-seat software bills you for every one of them. ClockShark, Connecteam, Buddy Punch, QuickBooks Time, and Homebase all charge by the user, and the overtime handling, job-site reporting, and exports you need to price a weather week 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 offline punching to bulk approvals to QuickBooks Online export, and owners are always free. Add six temporary hands for a two-week cleanup and your software bill does not move.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you have to pay hourly employees when you close for weather?
Not under federal law. The FLSA requires pay for hours worked, so a closed day with no work performed is generally unpaid for non-exempt employees. A contract, union agreement, or your own written policy can still require it, and any hours actually worked that day must be paid.
Do you have to pay a salaried employee for a snow day?
If you close for less than a full workweek and the employee performed any work that week, yes, the full salary is owed. Deductions are not permitted for absences occasioned by the employer or by the operating requirements of the business.
Can you make an exempt employee use PTO for a weather closure?
Generally yes, provided the total pay for that week still equals the guaranteed salary. Requiring accrued leave to be used does not by itself violate the salary basis rule.
Does show-up pay apply when the weather causes the cancellation?
It depends on the state. California's wage orders exempt reporting time pay when the interruption is caused by an act of God, a threat to employees or property, a recommendation by civil authorities, or a public utility failure. Other states set their own terms, so confirm the rule where the work is performed.
Is time spent waiting for a storm to pass paid?
Usually yes for non-exempt employees. If the wait is unpredictable, short, and controlled by you so the employee cannot use it for their own purposes, it is hours worked. Time is only unpaid when the employee is completely relieved of duty, told they are free to go, and given a definite return time.
Record the Day, Then the Rain Costs What It Should
A washed-out day is not a payroll mystery. It is three questions with clear answers: who was hourly, who was salaried, and who was on the clock when the call came.
The reason rain days get expensive is not the law. It is that nobody wrote down what happened while it was happening, so months later the only version of the day left is the employee's.
Fix the workweek once. Record every punch honestly, even the seven-minute one at a site the crew left before the tools came out. The storm stops being an argument and becomes a number you already have.
Start with Punch and let the day prove itself.
This article is general information, not legal advice. Weather closure, show-up pay, and salary basis rules vary by state, industry, and contract, and they change. Confirm your obligations with your state labor agency, or with a qualified professional, before setting an inclement weather pay policy.