stipend-wage audit

Audit Training Stipends Against Statutory Minimum Wage Hours — Free

Internships and educational trainee placements often provide lump-sum stipends that sound generous initially but fail to satisfy statutory minimum wage requirements once scheduled hours are totaled. Enter your weekly scheduled hours, periodic stipend payments, and the statutory minimum wage rate to calculate the cumulative wage deficit.

The proof surface

Unpaid commute time tallies audit off-the-clock transit hours; this audit compares lump-sum training stipends against statutory minimum wage thresholds for scheduled working hours.

Inputwork period label | scheduled hours worked | periodic stipend paid ($); statutory minimum hourly wage rate ($/hr)

Rare deviceUnpaid commute time tallies audit off-the-clock transit hours; this audit compares lump-sum training stipends against statutory minimum wage thresholds for scheduled working hours.

Output artifactCumulative minimum wage shortfall with row-by-row context

Cost$0 local calculation · no card, paid key, subscription or signup · proposed filing price is not for sale

Sample, not your facts: Illustrative inputs: Week 1 training and onboarding | 20.0 | 200.00; Week 2 project shadowing | 35.0 | 200.00; Week 3 documentation sprint | 40.0 | 200.00. Statutory minimum hourly wage rate ($/hr) = 15.0. Cumulative minimum wage shortfall: 825 dollars. All records are invented.

Before using the stipend-wage audit

Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and comparable state labor statutes, determining whether a trainee or intern is legally entitled to compensation depends on the primary beneficiary test. When an intern performs routine productive operations that substitute for regular staff or directly benefit the enterprise, the law requires compensation of at least the statutory minimum wage for all hours worked. Paying a modest flat stipend (such as $500 per month) does not exempt an employer from minimum wage compliance if the intern works 30 or 40 hours per week. Enter each work period, the scheduled hours worked, and the stipend paid to audit whether your compensation meets the statutory wage floor.

Why the flat version breaks

Assuming academic credit waives wage laws

Receiving college academic credit does not automatically permit an employer to avoid paying minimum wage if the intern performs primary productive work for the firm.

Treating fixed stipends as exempt salaries

Flat monthly stipends cannot be treated as exempt executive salaries; non-exempt trainees must receive minimum wage for every hour worked.

Failing to log off-site remote working hours

Neglecting to count evening research or weekend email drafting when totaling weekly internship hours severely underestimates your true wage deficit.

How to work the stipend-wage audit

Record scheduled working hours

Enter the total hours spent performing work duties, attending team meetings, and executing operational assignments during each payroll period.

List gross stipend amounts paid

Record the pre-tax periodic stipend or allowance paid for that specific work period. Do not include separate expense reimbursements for approved travel.

Calculate statutory minimum wage baseline

Multiply scheduled hours by the applicable local, state, or federal statutory minimum wage rate to establish the legal minimum gross earnings floor.

Tally cumulative wage shortfalls

Deduct the paid stipend from the statutory minimum baseline for each period. Sum all positive deficits to document the cumulative compensation shortfall.

What the stipend-wage audit separates

Question	Before	Inspect this instead
Assuming academic credit waives wage laws	Receiving college academic credit does not automatically permit an employer to avoid paying minimum wage if the intern performs primary productive work for the firm.	List gross stipend amounts paid
Treating fixed stipends as exempt salaries	Flat monthly stipends cannot be treated as exempt executive salaries; non-exempt trainees must receive minimum wage for every hour worked.	Calculate statutory minimum wage baseline
Failing to log off-site remote working hours	Neglecting to count evening research or weekend email drafting when totaling weekly internship hours severely underestimates your true wage deficit.	Tally cumulative wage shortfalls

This stipend-wage audit replaces a manual count or calculation, not source verification or the responsible person’s review.

Run it on the samples, right here

FIRST-LOAD

HYPOTHESIS / PROTOTYPE — checkout unavailable. Calculation is local. A draft is saved automatically in this browser profile when storage is available; Reset to sample clears it. Optional Pro history stores only five summaries and has its own deletion control. State links encode your inputs and can remain in browser history, clipboard or recipients’ records; share only non-sensitive rows. Optional external AI formatting leaves this device. The required site analytics beacon reports page activity; shared URLs contain encoded inputs. Do not treat an encoded URL as private. The calculator has no input-collection endpoint.

Wage and hour arithmetic only, not formal legal counsel or Department of Labor determination. Intern exemption status depends on factual multi-factor primary beneficiary legal standards. Consult a licensed labor attorney or state labor bureau regarding wage claims.

Data note: The stipend-wage audit processes work period label | scheduled hours worked | periodic stipend paid ($) locally. Starter/sample selection and Run compute in this tab; no input is sent by the calculator. A local draft may be saved; explicit state-link sharing or optional external AI formatting can disclose inputs. Use non-sensitive labels.

Go deeper: the companion app files the same reading as a punched ticket stubs

The article demo above runs without limits. The companion app keeps a local history, exports the rows as CSV, prints the stipend-wage audit reading, and holds your drafts on this device — one complete free app run; the proposed $4 one-time filing layer is not for sale.

The stipend-wage audit answer stays complete for free. The proposed $4 one-time filing layer adds row CSV, print and five local reading summaries, not hidden answers. Checkout is unavailable; the article demo remains unlimited.

Open the stipend-wage audit companion

Boundary

What this is built on

Method: Multiply scheduled hours by the applicable local, state, or federal statutory minimum wage rate to establish the legal minimum gross earnings floor.
All sample records, dates, quantities and labels are invented. No outside policy, contract, rate, clock offset, measurement or accessibility standard is represented as verified.
Google’s official pricing documentation, fetched 2026-09-30, says AI Studio is free in available regions. Optional formatting may require a Google account; manual local entry requires none. Limits can change and free-tier content may be used to improve products. Do not send private records.

Before: a fixed training stipend looked like an unquestionable flat allowance. After: scheduled hours and statutory hourly minimum wage rates expose uncompensated labor deficits.

Three worked readings, with different inputs

Sample A — typical inputs

Week 1 training and onboarding | 20.0 | 200.00
Week 2 project shadowing | 35.0 | 200.00
Week 3 documentation sprint | 40.0 | 200.00

Setting: Statutory minimum hourly wage rate ($/hr) = 15.0. Expected summary: 825 dollars.

At $15.00/hr: Week 1 statutory baseline is 20×$15=$300, creating a $100 deficit ($300-$200). Week 2 baseline is 35×$15=$525, creating a $325 deficit ($525-$200). Week 3 baseline is 40×$15=$600, creating a $400 deficit ($600-$200). Cumulative wage shortfall across the three weeks equals $825.00, exposing uncompensated labor under statutory minimum wage standards.

Sample B — changed plan

Short research project week | 10.0 | 200.00

Setting: Statutory minimum hourly wage rate ($/hr) = 15.0. Expected summary: 0 dollars.

Ten scheduled hours at $15.00/hr requires $150.00. Because the $200.00 stipend exceeds the statutory minimum threshold, the wage deficit is $0.00, satisfying fair labor standards.

Sample C — boundary convention

Full-time evaluation week | 40.0 | 0.00

Setting: Statutory minimum hourly wage rate ($/hr) = 15.0. Expected summary: 600 dollars.

Forty scheduled hours at $16.00/hr with zero stipend paid yields an uncompensated wage deficit of $640.00, representing a completely unpaid full-time labor week.

Optional AI formatting, never the calculation

Manual entry completes this stipend-wage audit for free without signup. If available to you, the free AI Studio interface linked in the sources may format fictional or non-sensitive notes; external access may require an account. No API key or AI call is built into this tool. Free-tier content may be used to improve products. Review each cell and transcribe it to the labeled row schema; do not paste the JSON object into the row box.

Format only these fictional or non-sensitive notes for a stipend-wage audit. Return strict JSON shaped as {"rows": [{"label": "string", "cells": ["string", "string"]}], "setting": "string"}. The columns are work period label | scheduled hours worked | periodic stipend paid ($); the setting is Statutory minimum hourly wage rate ($/hr). Keep all supplied strings and quantities exactly; do not calculate, infer missing entries, invent dates or add advice. If any required value is missing, return an empty rows array and ask me for it separately. I will verify every cell against my source and manually transcribe rows using vertical bars before running the local calculator.

An AI response is not executed, fetched or trusted as a result. Missing values remain questions; the strict local parser checks the rows you actually enter.