Meal Policies

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Meal policies have several purposes. The primary purpose is to define when TimeTrex can expect an employee to take lunch, so it knows to set the default Punch Type to Lunch. The second purpose is to specify the duration of the meal time, or if the meal time should automatically add to or subtract from the shift time for the employees to which the meal policy applies. A Meal policy can be included in a Schedule Policy to apply for specific shifts.

TIP:  This policy must be assigned to a Policy Group before it will become active. See Setting up Policies. Meal Policies can be included in a Schedule Policy to apply for specific shifts.

See the Basic Operation section for details on viewing, adding, editing and deleting.

 

Meal Policy Tab
FIELD DESCRIPTION
Type Specifies if this meal policy defines a window for defaulting punch types to lunch, or if it will be used to modify employees' total time for the day.
TYPEDESCRIPTION
NormalUsed to determine the lunch time an employee is expected to take for scheduling purposes, or a time window when the employee is expected to punch out for lunch so TimeTrex can default the punch type for the employee.
Auto-DeductWill automatically deduct the meal time from employees' time once their shift exceeds the Active After interval. This is useful when employees are not paid for lunch and they won't be punching in or out for lunch.
Auto-AddSetting Type to Auto-Add will cause an automatic addition of the Meal Time to the employees' time after their shift exceeds the Active After interval. This is useful when employees are paid for lunch, but you want to have them punch In/Out for tracking purposes. Setting Type to Normal means that meal policies are used to determine the lunchtime an employee is expected to take for scheduling purposes.
Active After This is amount of time that a shift must exceed before this meal policy is activated.

For example, an employee might punch in for only 4 hours and then punch out to go home sick. You may not want to deduct the usual 1-hour lunch from their shift. In this case, you could set the Active After to 5 hours, so that a lunch deduction will only occur when an employee works at least 5 hours. As with Overtime Policies, you can specify multiple meal policies, each having a different Active After interval. You can configure it so employees who work 4-hour shifts will only receive a 30-minute lunch, and employees who work 6-hour shifts receive a 1-hour lunch.
Meal Time When Type is set to Auto-Add or Auto-Deduct, this interval defines the length of time that adds or deducts from the total shift time for all employees to whom this policy applies.
Auto-Detect Meals By Determines how TimeTrex auto-detects meals.
AUTO-DETECT MEALS BYDESCRIPTION
Time WindowWill cause lunch punches to be detected relative to the employees' first punch of their shifts.
FIELDDESCRIPTION
Start WindowAmount of time that must elapse after the employees' first punch before their next punch is defaulted to lunch.

For example if an employee punches in at 8:00 AM and usually goes for lunch between 11:00 AM and 1:00 PM, setting the start window to 3 hours would cause TimeTrex to interpret any punch that happens 3 hours after the first punch as being Lunch.

Window LengthThe length of time after the Start Window that TimeTrex continues to default punches to lunch. When outside this window, punches will default to Normal.

For example, if an employee normally starts their lunch within a 2-hour window (for example, between 11:00 AM and 1:00 PM), then you would set this value to 2 hours.

Punch Time (Proactive)Will use a minimum and maximum value to constrain the interval that an employee takes for a meal. This will proactively detect lunch punches when the employee is punching out and allow lunch punch reminders to be used. You must specify two additional values, described below.
FIELDDESCRIPTION
Minimum Punch TimeThe minimum amount of time that an employee can punch out for Lunch.

For example, if employees usually take a lunch that is approximately 60 minutes in length, you can set this value to 45 minutes.

Maximum Punch TimeThe maximum amount of time that an employee can punch out for Lunch.

For example, if employees usually take a lunch that is approximately 60 minutes in length, you can set this value to 75 minutes.

Punch Time (Reactive)Will use a minimum and maximum value to constrain the interval that an employee takes for a meal. This will reactively detect lunch punches when the employee is punching back in from lunch and lunch punch reminders will be disabled. You must specify two additional values, described below.
FIELDDESCRIPTION
Minimum Punch TimeThe minimum amount of time that an employee can punch out for Lunch.

For example, if employees usually take a lunch that is approximately 60 minutes in length, you can set this value to 45 minutes.

Maximum Punch TimeThe maximum amount of time that an employee can punch out for Lunch.

For example, if employees usually take a lunch that is approximately 60 minutes in length, you can set this value to 75 minutes.
Include Any Punched Time for Meal When Type is set to Auto-Add or Auto-Deduct, checking this box will cause TimeTrex to adjust the meal time by the difference between what an employee punches and what the meal policy defines. This is used when you pay employees for a 30-minute lunch, but still have them punch in and punch out so you can track if they take more then 30 minutes. You do not want to pay them for any time that exceeds the 30-minute interval. Consider this example: You want to pay employees for a maximum 30-minute lunch. With a 30-minute Auto-Add meal policy, when an employee punches out for a 30-minute lunch, they will not (by default) be paid for that time because they are punched out, or off the clock. However, TimeTrex will apply this meal policy and add 30 minutes to their total paid time, so they are paid for a lunch. Subsequently, if the employee punches out for a 45-minute lunch, TimeTrex will only add 30 minutes of paid time. They will not be paid for the extra 15 minutes that they took for lunch.
Allocation Type Specifies how the meal time is allocated within the employees shift if they have worked in more than one cost center (Branch, Department, Job or Task).
ALLOCATION DESCRIPTION
Proportional Distribution (Default)Allocates the meal time to each Branch, Department, Job, Task proportionally.

For example, if the employee worked an 11 hour day and 1 hour was auto-deducted for lunch with 4 hours in Branch A, and 6 hours in Branch B, than 40% of the lunch time would be allocated to Branch A and 60% allocated to Branch B.

At Active After TimeAllocates the end of the meal time retroactively to the Branch, Department, Job and Task that the employee was working before the Active After Time occurred.

For example, assuming 1 hour total for lunch, if the Active After Time is set to 5 hours, and the employee worked from 8 AM to 12:30 PM (4.5. hours) in Branch A and 12:30 PM to 5:00 PM in Branch B, the meal would trigger at 1:00 PM, placing the lunch at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM. This will allocate 0.5hours of lunch to Branch A and 0.5 hours to Branch B. In the rare event when there is no way to allocate the meal time to a specific cost center, it will fall back to using the proportional distribution method.

Pay Code Specifies the Pay Code that resulting time is recorded as.
Pay Formula Policy Determines how resulting time is converted to dollars. If a Pay Formula Policy is not explicitly defined then the Pay Formula Policy assigned to the above selected Pay Code is used instead.