My non-negotiable step is running a complete warehouse location audit 90 days before January 1st, mapping every facility where we have workers against their specific state, county, and city minimum wage requirements. This single step has saved us from six-figure payroll errors multiple times. Here's why this matters so much in logistics: At Fulfill.com, we work with fulfillment centers across dozens of states, and I learned the hard way that minimum wage isn't just a state issue. In 2019, one of our partner warehouses in California got hit with a $180,000 penalty because they correctly applied the state minimum wage but missed that their specific city had passed an ordinance six months earlier adding another dollar per hour. The warehouse operator was blindsided because they were monitoring state changes but not drilling down to the municipal level. I start this audit in early October because it gives us time to catch the sneaky changes. Some jurisdictions announce increases in August or September that take effect January 1st. If you wait until December, you're scrambling. During the audit, I create a spreadsheet with every physical location, the state minimum, county minimum if applicable, and city minimum if applicable. Then I assign someone to verify each jurisdiction's official website, not just rely on third-party summaries. The second part of my non-negotiable is cross-referencing this against our actual worker classifications. In warehousing and fulfillment, we often have a mix of full-time employees, part-time workers, seasonal staff, and in some cases, independent contractors. Each classification might have different requirements. I've seen companies get tripped up because they updated wages for W-2 employees but forgot about their 1099 workers who should have been classified as employees under new state tests. What makes this step truly reliable is building in a verification layer. I have our finance team and our operations team independently confirm the wage requirements for our top ten locations by headcount. When both teams arrive at the same number, I'm confident. When they don't, we dig deeper and usually find something important we would have missed. The logistics industry operates on thin margins. A single misclassification across 50 warehouse workers over a full year can easily cost $100,000 in back wages and penalties.