Enhancements to Overtime Rules: Auto Deduct Breaks

Hello everyone, on today's post we will talk about an updated feature our developers have created for the existing Overtime Rules. Our system is now capable of deducting Breaks automatically and you can utilize different user types if you want these deductions to be applied to employees depending on their role in the company. This is very useful for companies that need to enforce Meal & Rest Rules and want to avoid employees forgetting to punch them with the application.

To set this up, we need to make sure that there are User Types already created, then go to the Administration tab and select "Manage Overtime Rules" from within the Payroll section:

Once inside, use the dropdown menu to select the desired User Type you wish to create the rule for, in this example, we will be working with the "Marketing" profile:

Then, we click on the "Add New" button to create the new rule:

First we tick the checkbox for "Deduct Auto Breaks?", then we add the value in minutes of the total time that should be deducted; we want this to be 60 minutes for this example, make sure to adjust it according to the needs of your company. We want this hour long break to be deducted only if the employee has worked at least 5 hours without taking one, so we set the next value to 300 minutes, then go to the bottom and click "Save":

Of course, we are only focusing on this setting for the sake of this post, but you will find that this is the same screen where you would setup Overtime Rules for the specific User Type. Make sure you have configured that accordingly and set a start day to apply the rule that makes sense, as anything before that date will be ignored.

Now let's go ahead and view an example for a Marketing user, we have "Darrin Schneider" here who will be helping us illustrate how the rules are applied.

Let's check the Timecard Detail Report and see that he worked from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM and clocked a total of 9 hours, this is before creating the rule:

Next, after applying the rule above of deducting 60 minutes if the employee has worked at least 300 minutes, we can see the difference in the total hours. Notice how the Clock In and Clock Out times are the same for the original report but we have a total of 8 hours instead:

That's it for now! As you can see, it's very straightforward and the changes are applied immediately. Let us know in case you have any questions or comments below.

--Econz Team