Breaks and Lunches
It is becoming increasingly important to ensure and document that employees have taken adequate breaks and lunches.
In addition to documenting breaks and lunches, ShopClock allows specification of the maximum length of paid breaks and the minimum length of lunch breaks.
Breaks and Lunches are special time card sessions that:
- Are not included in any of the Hours Worked totals (i.e. They are not “Payable” hours).
- Do not contribute to overtime.
- And are ignored by the accrual wizards.
For the most part they are treated as if the employee were not clocked in at all.
Using defined Break and Lunch Sessions clearly documents that the employee has taken the required breaks and lunches. You can, also tell who is on a break or at lunch – even when the left. And it formalizes and enforces your Break and Lunch policies.
Tracking Breaks and Lunches is optional. The break and lunch tracking features are configured via the 7th task (Misc/Lunch/Break Settings) of the Admin window. Open the Admin window by clicking on the Gold Padlock and entering the Admin Password.
Any or all of the break and lunch tracking options can be used at the same time. If any of these options have been enabled, the employee is asked when clocking out to indicate why they are clocking out by choosing from a list of the enabled options.
UnPaid Breaks
Paid Breaks are treated by ShopClock exactly as if the employee were not clocked in. They are not included in any total of Hours Worked; they are not used when calculating overtime, and are ignored by the accrual system. They are started when the employee indicates that he is clocking out for an Un Paid Break, and ended when the employee returns and clocks back in. The number of Unpaid Breaks per day is not limited.
Paid Breaks
Paid Breaks are treated by ShopClock exactly as Hours Worked sessions. Paid Breaks are included in all hours worked totals, are used when calculating overtime, and are counted by the accrual system as hours worked.
The maximum acceptable length of can be set to any number of minutes. The length of the paid break will not exceed this limit no matter how long a break the employee takes. The number of Paid Breaks per day is not limited.
AtLunch Sessions
Lunches are treated by ShopClock exactly as if the employee were not clocked in. They are not included in any total of Hours Worked; they are not used when calculating overtime, and are ignored by the accrual system.
An AtLunch session is started when the employee indicates that he is clocking out for lunch, and ended when the employee returns and clocks back in. The number of lunches per day is not limited.
If the Minimum Lunch Duration is set to anything greater than zero, the employee will not be allowed to clock back in until that number of minutes has elapsed. This is important in states like California that require that lunches be taken and documented.
Auto Lunch (Lunch/Break) Sessions
Lunch/Break sessions are special type of time card session that subtracts a certain amount of time from each day the employee works over a certain number of hours without taking a lunch break. Lunch/Break sessions are automatically inserted at the beginning of the qualifying day either when the employee clocks out or when the administrator applies auto lunches.
Auto lunches (Lunch/Break) sessions are often used as a failsafe since they are only applied to days when the employee failed to take a lunch. They can be individually edited and/or deleted by the administrator.
Employee can attach a note to the Lunch/Break session indicating the actual length of the lunch and get the administrators attention by turning on the Call Light the Administrator can if they choose insert an AtLunch session into the middle of the day and delete the Lunch/Break session.