Employee Policies are flexible rules you can configure to automatically calculate employee overtime, in/out and time range rounding, and more. Each employee will have one policy group assigned to them at a time. 

Table of Contents

• Understanding the Policies Page
• Overtime Policies
• Rounding Policies
• Other Policies (Auto Lunch, Manual Meal Break, Midnight Split, Travel)

Understanding the Policies Page

1. Employees/Shifts Tab - Toggle between employee or shift policies. For more information about shifts, you can refer to the following article.
2. Add a Policy Group - Create a new policy group for employees that require different policies.
3. Policy Groups - Select the policy group to view/adjust.
4. Policy Name - The policy name will be viewed from the employee profile and used when importing CSV files. The name of the 'Default' policy group cannot be adjusted.
5. Policy Details/Employee Members - Toggle between the policy option details or employee members that have the policy.
6. Policy Options - Policy options such as overtime, time rounding, and more. To enable an option, click the checkbox. Selecting the option name will show you the settings.
7. Policy Settings - The settings of the selected policy option.

Policy Options

Overtime

Overtime policies help you calculate consistent overtime patterns for your employees. There are additional overtime rules based on an employee's shift or location worked.

Weekly Overtime

Used to calculate an employee's overtime and/or doubletime over a week or biweekly.

For more information about setting up biweekly settings, you can refer to the following article.

Daily Overtime

Used to calculate an employee's overtime and/or doubletime on a daily basis.

Day of the Week Overtime

Used to calculate overtime and/or doubletime that is dependent on a specific day and will take priority over other overtime policy rules. 

For example, if an employee receives overtime from a "Day of the Week" policy, it will only be considered overtime and will not count towards weekly overtime/doubletime calculations. 

Use the checkbox in the 'Exclude' column for any day of the week where regular time for that excluded day should not count towards weekly overtime/doubletime calculations. For example, if you have any work performed on the weekend that will stand alone from your typical weekly/daily be overtime and will not count towards your typical weekly overtime calculation.

Consecutive Day Overtime

Used for when an employee has overtime and/or doubletime that is dependent if they work five, six, or seven days in a row and will take priority over other overtime policy rules. 

For example, if an employee receives overtime from a "Consecutive Day" policy, it will only be considered overtime and will not count towards weekly overtime/doubletime calculations. 

Excluded Cost Codes

Used for situations where a specific cost code should not have any policy affect it, such as overtime, roundings, travel, auto-lunch, etc. This is intended for cost codes that the employee will track time for, but it will not be counted towards their overtime, such as vacation time.

Rounding

Rounding policies are utilized where an employee's time should be rounded to the nearest set of minutes or to a specific time.

If you are using both the In/Out Rounding and Shift Rounding, please keep in mind that the In/Out Rounding will occur BEFORE the Shift Rounding.

After a time record has been rounded, the new rounded time record will be permanent. Disabling any of the "Rounding" policies will not revert a time record back to its original time. If you were to change the time rounding settings after a time record has been already been rounded, it will not look at the original time and will only look at the newly rounded time for any further roundings. 

In/Out Rounding

Round an employee's punches to the nearest set of minutes. It can also be set up to only apply to the first and last punch of the day with a threshold of how long their workday generally is. A common setting is to the nearest 15 minutes. 

How these rounding setting works is that an employee's clock in would first go to the nearest minute (an employee clocking in at 7:06 and 38 seconds would round to 7:07 AM) as normal, then it would round to the nearest specified minutes of the In/Out Rounding.

For example with a 'nearest 15-minute rounding', If an employee's clock in/out is at 7:07 AM, it would round to 7:00 AM. If an employee's clock in is at 7:08 AM, it would round to 7:15 AM.

Time Range Rounding

Time range rounding is intended for when employees' start/end time cannot occur before or exceed a certain time frame.

After specifying the time range for a punch in or out, any punches that occur during the time window are rounded to the specific time you want. This allows the employee to clock in early before their day starts if they get there early, but do not receive the extra time.

It is best to let your employees know that if they were to clocking in/out within a certain time range, they are not expected to be paid for the time.

In the example below, if there is a clock in between 7:30 AM and 8 AM, the time punches are adjusted to 8 AM instead.

Other

Other policies are reserved for unique rules.

Meal Breaks

Auto Lunch

Used to deduct a set amount of time for an employee so they do not have to worry about clocking out themselves.

You will need to specify the minimum amount of hours that must be worked before receiving the deduction, along with the amount of time to be deducted. The amount of time will typically be deducted at the end of the day if they meet the minimum hour threshold.

You can also specify when the lunch deduction begins, what cost code is used with the deduction, and the comment to be included.

Manual Meal Break

Allow your employees to track their meal break manually, specify how long their meal is expected, and use notifications to remind them. For more information about manual meal breaks, you can refer to the following dedicated article.

If enabled, you can:

• Allow employees to track their meal breaks freely.
• Specify how long the employee's meal break will be and additional options for:
  • Prevent Employee - The employee is unable to press the button to end their meal break.
  • Warn Employee - Warn the employee if they are ending their meal break before their allotted time and enter the message that should be shown to employees.
  • Enable notifications for upcoming meal breaks and meal breaks finishing.

Midnight Split

Used to split an employee's time if an employee works through midnight to put the time into two separate workdays (e.g. An employee works from 8 PM to 5 AM. It will split the time into two separate days, 8 PM to 12 AM for one day and 12 AM to 5 AM the following day).

After a time record has been split at midnight, the time record will stay split permanently. Unchecking the "Midnight Split" policy will not combine any split time records into a single time record.

For more information and an example of the midnight split policy, you can refer to this.

Travel

Used to help ensure that the travel time is associated with either the departure or destination location. The cost code must be specified to indicate travel time and if a minimum amount of time should be required before the travel policy applies to a time record.