Classifying an office manager as "salaried exempt" when their salary falls below the $58,656 federal threshold — or their duties don't meet the exemption test — is an overtime liability that accrues every week until it's fixed. We find it in nearly half the practices we review.
Office managers, billing coordinators, and front-desk leads are frequently classified as exempt when they don't meet the salary basis test ($58,656/yr in 2024) or the duties test. Every overtime hour worked is an unpaid liability building on your books.
Part-time RNs, dental hygienists, and medical assistants who work at multiple locations often exceed 40 hours across the practice — triggering overtime liability that centralized payroll misses when hours aren't aggregated.
Many practices carry undisclosed PTO liability — accrued but untracked paid leave owed to staff. In states with mandatory PTO payout on separation (California, Illinois, Colorado, others), this is a direct balance-sheet liability.
Yes, if they're classified as exempt. The current FLSA salary threshold for exempt employees is $58,656 per year ($1,128/week). Anyone classified exempt below that threshold is legally non-exempt and entitled to overtime for every hour worked above 40 per week. The clock started ticking when they crossed the threshold going the wrong direction.
Yes, if it's the same employer entity. A dental hygienist who works 20 hours at location A and 22 hours at location B in the same week has worked 42 hours for one employer — 2 hours of overtime. If your payroll is run per-location rather than per-employee, this gets missed consistently.
Practice management software (Dentrix, Athena, Epic) handles scheduling and billing — it doesn't audit wage-and-hour compliance. Your payroll processor runs math on what you give it. Neither tool has a compliance layer that flags misclassification or improper overtime calculations.