CO · 4 rules · reviewed 2026-07
Colorado scheduling laws
Colorado's COMPS Order is the most schedule-sensitive wage rule outside California, and for one specific reason: overtime is owed not only past 12 hours in a workday but past 12 CONSECUTIVE hours, whichever produces the higher pay. That second trigger catches overnight shifts that straddle two workdays and cost nothing under a purely daily rule.
This is a reference, not legal advice. Every rule below links to its primary source — a statute, an ordinance, or the enforcing agency — so you can read the law rather than a summary of a summary. Consult counsel before relying on any of it.
3 of these 4 rules apply regardless of industry; 1 bind only certain sectors, and each one says which. Most US predictive-scheduling law is municipal, so where a rule comes from a city ordinance its name says so — a company can easily have one location covered and two not.
Daily and consecutive-hours overtime
7 CCR 1103-1 (COMPS Order #38), Rule 41.5x for hours over 40 in a workweek, over 12 in a workday, OR over 12 consecutive hours regardless of when the workday starts — whichever calculation pays more. The consecutive-hours trigger is the one scheduling software usually misses.
In Weekwright: MAX_HOURS_PER_DAY at 12 catches the daily trigger, and MIN_REST_HOURS_BETWEEN_SHIFTS is what actually protects you on the consecutive-hours one: a rest rule makes a 12-hour-plus continuous stretch across two workdays impossible to schedule in the first place. Both are checked at create, move, and publish.
Meal period on shifts over 5 hours
7 CCR 1103-1 (COMPS Order #38), Rule 5.1An uninterrupted, duty-free 30-minute meal period once a shift exceeds 5 consecutive hours, and — to the extent practical — at least one hour after the shift starts and one hour before it ends. The employee must be fully relieved of duty for it to be unpaid.
In Weekwright: Breaks are recorded as MEAL or REST with a paid/unpaid flag through the clock-in flow, and check_meal_break_compliance reads the actual punch data — reporting how many shifts it checked, so a clean result means the breaks were verified rather than absent.
Paid rest periods
7 CCR 1103-1 (COMPS Order #38), Rule 5.2A 10-minute PAID rest period for every 4 hours worked or major fraction thereof, positioned near the middle of each 4-hour block. A rest break that is interrupted or cannot be taken counts as paid work time.
In Weekwright: Paid rest breaks stay inside the paid total on the payroll export while unpaid meal breaks are deducted, so an interrupted rest break does not silently become unpaid time in the file you pay wages from.
Twelve-hour shifts are legal but expensive
Nothing prohibits a 12-hour shift in Colorado. The consequence is purely financial: cross 12 hours in the day or 12 consecutive hours and the premium starts, so a 12-hour rotation needs the boundary treated as a hard line rather than a target.
Applies to:HealthcareManufacturing
In Weekwright: Set MAX_HOURS_PER_DAY to 12 with BLOCKING severity and the week cannot be published with a 12.5-hour shift in it. For rotations that intentionally run long, preview_week_compliance shows the whole week's exposure before you publish rather than after payroll.
Primary sources
Read the law itself. These are the statutes, ordinances and agencies the rules above are taken from.
Colorado by industry
The same statutes read for one vertical, with the scheduling patterns that vertical actually runs.
Other states
Again, because it matters: this is not legal advice. It is a reading aid over primary sources, maintained by a software company rather than a law firm. It surfaces obvious gaps so you can act on them — it does not tell you whether a specific ordinance applies to your specific business. Consult counsel for that. Found something out of date? hello@weekwright.com — a correction to a primary source is welcome from anyone, customer or not.
Rules your Colorado schedule actually checks.
Weekwright enforces the baseline for where each shift happens, before you publish. Free for a single location, up to 20 employees.