Budget-Aware Calibrated Cascades for E-Commerce Customer Assistants: A Cost–Quality Routing Benchmark

Abstract

Introduction: Many organizations allow employees to use paid time off (PTO) before they have fully earned it. This helps improve employee satisfaction and retention. However, when employees leave the organization with a negative PTO balance, employers face challenges recovering the overpaid amount while following federal and state payroll laws.

Objectives: This paper introduces the Intelligent Time-Off Recoupment System (ITORS), a framework designed to automate the recovery of advanced PTO. The goal is to improve payroll compliance, reduce financial losses, and create a consistent process for managing PTO recoupment across different states.

Methods: This study uses a design science research approach to develop the ITORS framework. The system was designed after reviewing current PTO recoupment practices, payroll regulations, HR technology capabilities, and compliance requirements. The framework includes five connected components: the HR Policy Engine, Absence and Balance Monitor, Consent Workflow Module, Payroll Recoupment Engine, and Compliance Reporting Hub. The compliance framework was built through a systematic review of wage deduction statutes across all 50 U.S. states, identifying three distinct regulatory patterns that the system must handle at runtime.

Results: The proposed system provides an automated process for tracking negative PTO balances, collecting employee consent, calculating payroll deductions based on state-specific rules, and generating compliance reports. The framework addresses common problems found in manual PTO recoupment processes, including missing consent records, non-compliant deductions, delayed recovery actions, and limited reporting visibility. ITORS can also integrate with major ERP and HCM platforms such as Workday, Oracle HCM Cloud, SAP SuccessFactors, ADP Workforce Now, and other enterprise systems.

Conclusions: ITORS provides a practical and scalable approach for managing PTO recoupment in organizations operating across multiple states. By combining compliance automation, payroll integration, employee consent management, and reporting capabilities, the framework helps organizations reduce risk, improve compliance, recover overpaid PTO more effectively, and maintain transparency with employees