Florida $15 Minimum Wage Payroll and Poster Checklist

If your pay period includes September 30, 2026, the Florida minimum wage change is a payroll setup task. The effective date lands inside pay periods, so the work belongs in payroll before the first affected run. Treat it as a deadline with several moving parts: regular rates, tipped cash wages, and the posted wage. Finish the payroll changes before that run, then verify the poster and the 2027 calendar note.

The checklist is short because the duties are narrow

The list below is the one to keep. Each item is testable quickly, and each one should be done before the pay period that includes the effective date. The items are ordered by payroll impact, not by urgency. A manager can assign the rate and tip items to payroll and the poster and calendar items to HR or facilities. Assign an owner for each line before the deadline.

• Set the regular cash rate to at least $15.00 per hour for hours worked beginning September 30, 2026.
• Set the tipped cash wage to at least $11.98 per hour beginning September 30, 2026, using the $3.02 tip credit.
• Build a tip shortfall make-up so cash wage plus tips reaches $15.00 per hour.
• Employers must put up the state minimum wage poster in a visible, easy-to-access spot.
• Calendar the September 30, 2027 inflation calculation, and note that Florida will calculate inflation-adjusted minimum wage rates each September 30.

If an item fails, fix it in payroll before the affected hours are paid. The poster is separate from payroll, but it belongs in the same deadline. A quick test is to pull a regular paycheck and a tipped paycheck for a pay period that crosses the effective date. If either one is short, the setup is not finished. The rates, the make-up, and the poster are legal duties; the rest is good practice.

The regular and tipped items are separate legal duties

The regular rate is the baseline because it attaches to hours worked. Payroll should not simply raise every September rate by a fixed amount. The change applies to the hours that cross into the new rate, so a mixed pay period may need separate rate lines. If the system cannot split the rate by date, the manager should know that before the first affected run. A clean audit trail is better than a last-minute manual correction.

The tipped rate has two parts: a cash floor and a make-up test. A system that only checks the cash rate is missing the make-up test. The tip credit does not disappear, but it does not let the employer ignore the full wage. Payroll should keep tip records detailed enough to show the cash amount, the tip amount, and the make-up amount for each employee. If the make-up is calculated after the fact, the pay period should still show the correction clearly.

The poster and the 2027 note are the easy misses

The poster is a display duty, not a payroll calculation. It should be updated before the last September pay periods, not after the first wage claim. The location should be a place employees actually see. If the old poster is still visible, the new one should replace it in the same spot. The poster is the visible record of the current floor.

The 2027 calendar note matters because the next adjustment is not a scheduled dollar jump. The calculation date is not a guaranteed dollar amount. The $15.00 level marks the end of the phased schedule established by Florida's Amendment 2. The practical move is to calendar the calculation date and assign someone to check the published rate. That keeps the next payroll change from becoming a surprise.

The penalty is the reason to finish early

The exposure is not just a bad pay period. An employer found liable for an intentional violation of Florida's minimum wage requirements can be subject to a $1,000 fine per violation. That penalty makes the payroll setup worth doing before the deadline, not after a complaint. Keep the setup in the payroll file.