Paid Breaks

Use this forum to discuss desired new features for TimeTrex
jmartin235
Posts: 13
Joined: Tue Feb 19, 2008 8:56 am

Paid Breaks

Post by jmartin235 »

Hello,

I found a post regarding paid breaks in the Help section, and the poster was told to post it in this forum, however I didn't find a post in here requesting it.

For hourly employees, my company allows either 1 or 2 15 minute paid breaks during the day, depending on how long they are scheduled to work. The rounding rules would apply, and if they take more than their allotted breaks, all the time for each additional break would be taken from their paid work time.

Could this be included in a future release?

Thank you!
shaunw
Posts: 7839
Joined: Tue Sep 19, 2006 2:22 pm

Post by shaunw »

You may be able to use the meal policies to work around this limitation for now.

For instance if you setup an Auto-Add meal policy to add 15 or 30 minutes of time to their day, when they punch out for breaks they will be re-reimbursed for either 15 or 30 minutes, so if they go over that time they won't be paid for it.
jmartin235
Posts: 13
Joined: Tue Feb 19, 2008 8:56 am

Post by jmartin235 »

shaunw wrote:You may be able to use the meal policies to work around this limitation for now.

For instance if you setup an Auto-Add meal policy to add 15 or 30 minutes of time to their day, when they punch out for breaks they will be re-reimbursed for either 15 or 30 minutes, so if they go over that time they won't be paid for it.
I did try doing that, but we already have a meal policy set up (lunches are unpaid so we take that time out), unless I'm missing something that lets me set up more than one meal policy.
shaunw
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Joined: Tue Sep 19, 2006 2:22 pm

Post by shaunw »

If you have a 30minute lunch policy, simply make it a 60minute policy to include break time.

That may or may not work for you though.
jmartin235
Posts: 13
Joined: Tue Feb 19, 2008 8:56 am

Post by jmartin235 »

shaunw wrote:If you have a 30minute lunch policy, simply make it a 60minute policy to include break time.

That may or may not work for you though.
I don't think that would work, we have strict enforcement of 30 and 60 minutes lunches because of work laws.

So could paid breaks be included in a near-to-future release? Our company would purchase TimeTrex once that feature is included.
shaunw
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Joined: Tue Sep 19, 2006 2:22 pm

Post by shaunw »

Break policies are on our TODO list, however there is no set date as to when they will be included.

If this is something that you need sooner rather then later I would recommend looking into a custom development proposal.
shaunw
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Joined: Tue Sep 19, 2006 2:22 pm

Post by shaunw »

Just a note, have you tried looking at the Meal/Break premium policies that TimeTrex offers?

Depending on exactly what you are looking for, they are designed to pay employees for meals or breaks that employees may or may not punch in/out for.

From what you describe though I think two Meal/Break premium policies could actually do exactly what you want.
jmartin235
Posts: 13
Joined: Tue Feb 19, 2008 8:56 am

Post by jmartin235 »

Just a note, have you tried looking at the Meal/Break premium policies that TimeTrex offers?

Depending on exactly what you are looking for, they are designed to pay employees for meals or breaks that employees may or may not punch in/out for.

From what you describe though I think two Meal/Break premium policies could actually do exactly what you want.
Thank you for pointing me to that, however I'm not sure that will do what we want. We base the number of paid breaks for the number of hours an employee is scheduled to work in a day. The breakdown is this:

0 - 5.9 hours: 1 15 minute break
6+ hours: 2 15 breaks

It appears that premium policies can only be applied to policy groups and we need them to to apply to schedule policies.
shaunw
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Joined: Tue Sep 19, 2006 2:22 pm

Post by shaunw »

Why not have two Meal/Break premium policies, both being for 15 minutes. The first one is active after 0 hours, and the second one is active after 6 hours.

So the employee always gets paid for 15 minutes of break based on the first policy, and only after their daily total time exceeds 6 hrs do they get a second 15 minute paid break.

If I understand what you are looking for correctly, you can then apply both policies to your policy group and TimeTrex will automatically apply them each in the proper situation automatically.
jmartin235
Posts: 13
Joined: Tue Feb 19, 2008 8:56 am

Post by jmartin235 »

shaunw wrote:Why not have two Meal/Break premium policies, both being for 15 minutes. The first one is active after 0 hours, and the second one is active after 6 hours.

So the employee always gets paid for 15 minutes of break based on the first policy, and only after their daily total time exceeds 6 hrs do they get a second 15 minute paid break.

If I understand what you are looking for correctly, you can then apply both policies to your policy group and TimeTrex will automatically apply them each in the proper situation automatically.
Ah, yes, that would work! Thank you!

Now, I need some clarification on some of the terminology in the premium policies. What is the difference between "Minimum Time Recognized As Break" in the Meal/Break Criteria section and "Minimum Time" in the Hours/Pay section?
jmartin235
Posts: 13
Joined: Tue Feb 19, 2008 8:56 am

Post by jmartin235 »

shaunw wrote:Why not have two Meal/Break premium policies, both being for 15 minutes. The first one is active after 0 hours, and the second one is active after 6 hours.

So the employee always gets paid for 15 minutes of break based on the first policy, and only after their daily total time exceeds 6 hrs do they get a second 15 minute paid break.

If I understand what you are looking for correctly, you can then apply both policies to your policy group and TimeTrex will automatically apply them each in the proper situation automatically.
I spoke too soon. After playing around with the premiums, I figured out a flaw in that setup. If we have someone working 6 hours exactly, they would not get the second 15 minute break because they would have punched out before the break would be enabled. And the break couldn't be active before 6 hours because then that would be available for the employees that work less than 6 hours.
shaunw
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Post by shaunw »

If you use 6 hours for the Active After field, it will activate for any shift time of 6 hours exactly or more.

I don't think it matters what solution you use, there has to be a cutoff at a certain point. What you described in your last message is an impossibility.

Keep in mind the rounding policies can also come into play here to make sure things happen the way you want. So if you set the Active After time to be 6:00, and you have a 5 minute average rounding policy it would work something like this:

Assume punching out at 5:00PM would equal a 6 hour shift:
Punch Out: 4:49 Rounds To: 4:50, 1 paid break.
Punch Out: 4:57 Rounds To: 5:00, 2 paid breaks.
Punch Out: 5:03 Rounds To: 5:00, 2 paid breaks.
Punch Out: 5:17 Rounds To: 5:15, 2 paid breaks.

If you used a down rounding policy only, it would ensure that the employee has to work AT LEAST 6hours to get two paid breaks, ie:
Punch Out: 4:49 Rounds To: 4:45, 1 paid break.
Punch Out: 4:57 Rounds To: 4:55, 1 paid breaks.
Punch Out: 5:03 Rounds To: 5:00, 2 paid breaks.
Punch Out: 5:17 Rounds To: 5:15, 2 paid breaks.

75% of the problem is describing it in full detail. If you can do that, we can figure out a solution one way or another.
bronzini
Posts: 29
Joined: Wed May 21, 2008 5:09 pm

Post by bronzini »

I'm also using this method to resolve paid breaks. However, perhaps because of the way I set it up, the premium policy adds the breaks but not to the Total Time. Is there a way to make the 15 minute breaks total w/ the worked time?

I created premium policies as "Meal/Break" called Break 1 and Break 2. The first has default settings except Maximum Time is 00:15 and Pay Stub is Regular. Break 2 is the same, but it is "Active After Daily Hours:" of 6:00.

Thank you very much for your help. Using this software has been a joy because of the superb customer support!
shaunw
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Joined: Tue Sep 19, 2006 2:22 pm

Post by shaunw »

Premium time is not considered part of "worked time", the primary reason for this is so it also is not considered when overtime policies are being calculated.

As well this allows it to be non-exclusive so you can have multiple premium policies applied to the same time frame.
bronzini
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Joined: Wed May 21, 2008 5:09 pm

Post by bronzini »

It's fine if it's not apart of Worked Time, but how can I add it to the total time. If my employees are being paid for their breaks, it needs to be tallyed in somewhere, so when I print timecards it shows as part of their total payable hours for the pay period. Does that make sense? Thanks!
shaunw
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Joined: Tue Sep 19, 2006 2:22 pm

Post by shaunw »

It depends on how you pay the employees. Premium time is still considered paid time, if you use TimeTrex for payroll, it will show up on pay stubs and be paid based on the rate that you specify.

If you use some other software for payroll, you need to make sure that you include the premium time as paid time, however that is outside the control of TimeTrex of course.

Due to space issues, premium time is not included on the printable (PDF) timesheet though.
bronzini
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Joined: Wed May 21, 2008 5:09 pm

Post by bronzini »

How are our employees to see their total time without the breaks added in? In order to show all the stamps, we have each employee print and review their MyTimeSheet from their web browser. Can you help us add those premium policies (the breaks) to one of the totals at the bottom so that employees can see the tally of all the hours they've actually worked? We just need them to be able to see it somewhere on there before they get their check.
shaunw
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Joined: Tue Sep 19, 2006 2:22 pm

Post by shaunw »

Unfortunately until TimeTrex supports paid breaks, there isn't much that be done about this.
bronzini
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Joined: Wed May 21, 2008 5:09 pm

Post by bronzini »

There are quite a few settings in the Premium Policy I don't understand. None of those can be adjusted to apply the premium policies to any total anywhere? Perhaps the accrual or something? It would be incredibly helpful if we could tweak something to make this work. This issue is largely undermining our use of the software.

Are there plans in the near future to offer support for paid breaks?

As always, thank you!
shaunw
Posts: 7839
Joined: Tue Sep 19, 2006 2:22 pm

Post by shaunw »

No setting in the Premium Policies will add the time to a total on the TimeSheet page.

Paid breaks are on our TODO list, but they are still a rarely requested feature (we already support paid lunches, which are much more popular), I'm not sure when they will be implemented.

Most of our customers who offer paid breaks to their employees don't track them, so its a non-issue as far as TimeTrex is concerned.
bronzini
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Joined: Wed May 21, 2008 5:09 pm

Post by bronzini »

So there is nothing you can do to help me resolve this issue?
shaunw
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Joined: Tue Sep 19, 2006 2:22 pm

Post by shaunw »

Short of having us do custom development for you, there isn't much we can do.
bronzini
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Joined: Wed May 21, 2008 5:09 pm

Post by bronzini »

Where in TimeTrex can you see the premium policies added to the time worked? Anywhere? Thanks.
bronzini
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Joined: Wed May 21, 2008 5:09 pm

Post by bronzini »

And there is no way to keep them on the clock while they are breaking?
rogerh
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Joined: Wed Aug 05, 2009 10:10 pm

Post by rogerh »

So it seems like this is a pretty popular requirement. Any news on when you could release it?

I would be willing to make a contribution toward a development for this.
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