Record and review breaks#
For: Manager | Shift worker You’ll need: A time entry, and a work policy that picks a break policy (your admin sets it up).
The planner includes expected unpaid breaks in planned paid hours and costs. Payroll uses the break entries recorded with attendance. A planned requirement alone does not prove that a break was taken. Which breaks are owed, and how they’re recorded and checked, comes from the break policy — see Break policies.
Record a break#
At the kiosk or in the mobile app, use ‘Start break’ and ‘End break’. If the rules offer both kinds, choose ‘Meal break’ or ‘Rest break’ when asked ‘Which break?’. With one kind, it is selected automatically.
Unless the break policy’s ‘Breaks must be punched’ is on, confirming a never-punched row records scheduled hours together with the expected breaks. Entering both clock times on an empty row on the web or mobile does the same for the times entered. Check the displayed breaks and paid hours before confirming or saving.
This also applies to confirmation on behalf, bulk actions and automatic schedule recording. Existing punches or break entries are preserved. Where the policy adds up a day’s or a stretch’s shifts, each row gets its share of the breaks; where it counts gaps between shifts as meals, a long enough gap leaves nothing to add. With ‘Breaks must be punched’ on, record the breaks actually taken: confirmation and typed hours add no breaks.
Where the break policy pays for missed breaks, people are asked about their breaks after clocking out — see How to answer the break questions.
Correct a recorded break on the web#
Open Planning → Management → Timesheet and click ‘Edit’ on the row — in its kebab menu (⋮) when the row shows another action first.
If it is approved, unapprove it first: an approved row offers no ‘Edit’.
Open a break to correct its kind, start, end or its ‘Is paid’, ‘Cannot leave workplace’ and ‘On standby’ settings, or choose ‘Create break’ for a missing one. Delete an entry if that break was not taken.
Save, then review the hours. On a finished shift, saving a break replaces the previous confirmation with yours, in every approval mode. It never approves the row on its own.
Changing only a setting keeps the break’s times, down to the second — a time you leave as shown isn’t rounded to the minute. A save that changes nothing leaves the break, and an existing confirmation, as they were. Editing existing clock times or confirming again does not regenerate a deleted break. ‘Undo confirmation’ keeps punched hours and their breaks, but removes hours and breaks that were typed in or filled from the schedule; use a correction to keep that attendance record. Under ‘Strict break records’, a break’s pay and a meal’s length follow the rules, and a save that contradicts them is refused.
Review warnings#
When the break policy checks recorded breaks, the timesheet shows a ‘Break issue’ badge — a warning icon in the app’s manager queue — for missing, short, early or late breaks, for stretches of work longer than a stretch rule allows, and for breaks the policy doesn’t count. Read the issue messages, then check the recorded breaks. A manager can still approve after review; automatic approval skips flagged rows, unless an answer to the break questions or a manager’s reason explains them — see How to review break answers.
Where the policy adds up a day’s or a stretch’s shifts, ‘Across shifts on [date]’ means the check includes the person’s complete workday, even when a filter or page shows only part of it. A gap between assignments is never work; it counts as a meal break only where the break policy’s ‘Gaps between shifts count as meals’ is on. Overlapping work counts once. The workday boundary uses the location’s time zone.
A stretch warning names the stretch by its hours, for example “6 h of work from 06:00 to 12:00 without a break of 15 min”. Record a break of that length inside the stretch to clear it. “Break on standby does not count” means the only break long and early enough was taken on standby, under a break policy that doesn’t count such breaks; “break the person couldn’t leave does not count” is the same for a break taken on the premises.
A ‘Break check pending’ badge on a clocked-out row means its check is still waiting — for the rest of that workday, a shift that hasn’t started or is still running, or for answers to the break questions on a day with a break issue. Hover over the badge to see what it’s waiting for. Automatic approval waits too, but the row isn’t counted as an issue.
Incomplete or automatically closed attendance, or incompatible policies across the day, produces ‘Daily break check needs review’. Correct the attendance or ask an admin to review the rules. These days are excluded from automatic approval. Earlier manager approvals are not removed automatically.
Verify it worked#
Reopen the entry and check its break list, paid hours and issue messages. Use the web ‘Break issue’ filter to find remaining flagged rows, or the report’s ‘Break issues’ filter to select issue types.