If your company rounds employee work time up or down as part of its record keeping and time tracking procedures for calculating hours and pay, a recent California appellate court provided additional support for the general practice, but noted that rounding employee wages is legal only under certain circumstances.

In See’s Candy Shops v. Superior Court of San Diego (10/29/12), a former employee sued for wage and hour violations and two of the affirmative defenses raised by the company brought the issue of rounding into play.

See’s routinely rounded time cards up or down to the nearest tenth of an hour. The 4th District Court of Appeal in See’s recognized that employers throughout the country have used the practice of rounding for many years, but noted that “there is no California statute or case law specifically authorizing or prohibiting this practice.”