A Guide to Lunches and Breaks Follow
With uAttend you can track and manage your employees' lunches and breaks with ease. This comprehensive guide will cover everything you need to know about setting up and managing lunches and breaks for your employees.
Use the table of contents below to skip to specific sections or click links within this article to access how-to articles, troubleshooting help, downloadable resources, videos, and more.
In this article:
- Who can update lunch and break settings?
- Configuring Lunch and Break Settings
- Lunch Overtime
- Break and Lunch Reminders and Alerts
- Setting Up Employees to Punch for Lunches and Breaks
- Break and Lunch Punch Guides by Time Clock Series
Who can update lunch and break settings?
Administrators are able to update lunch and break settings for all departments. Supervisors can be configured with permissions in their profile to view and/or edit departments. Their responsibility can also be limited to certain departments by updating their Responsible Departments setting.
Configuring Lunch and Break Settings
Lunch and Break settings are set at the department level and apply to all employees within the department. To update the settings, you will navigate to the Departments tab and set the lunch and break settings in the General sub-tab.
There are a few important things to note when setting up lunch and break settings.
- Department-level settings and rules are inherited from the employee's home department. Regardless of the department the employee is working, the lunch settings will always be that of their home department.
- Any lunches on the time card should be set to the home department to prevent timecard calculation issues.
- Lunch settings, like lunch lockouts, will not be applied to punches that were manually added to the timecard.
The Department's General settings are broken into three sections: General, Lunch Punches, and Break Punches.
General Section
The General section covers items such as the department name, code, and status as well as three settings that will effect lunches and breaks:
- Punch Rounding
- Lunch Deduction/Duration
- Paid Break/Duration
Punch Rounding: Any punch rounding rules will apply to all employee punches, including breaks and lunches. Check out our article on Punch Rounding for more information and to see if this setting should be adjusted to fit your company policies.
Lunch Deduction/Duration: The Lunch Deduction/Duration setting is used for automatic lunch deductions, meaning employees will not need to punch for their lunch (meal) breaks. Automatic lunch deductions cannot be edited or deleted on a timecard. We cover automatic deductions more in-depth in our Automatic Lunch Break Options article.
Break Deduction/Duration: The Break Deduction/Duration setting is used when employees punch out for breaks but don't use the break punch option. In this case, their time out will be deducted, but you'll still pay for their breaks. It's commonly used when employees punch out for breaks on timeclocks that do not have a break punch option, allowing you to track break times and still pay employees according to your company's policies.
Lunch Punches Section
The Lunch Punches section covers settings that only apply when an employee punches in and out for lunch. Here, you can configure whether lunches are paid or unpaid, set how much of the lunch is paid, prevent employees from punching back from lunch early, and set up lunch premium pay.
Paid vs. Unpaid Lunches
The uAttend system will not automatically deduct lunches, unless you enable the Deduct Lunch Punches from the Time Card option. Once enabled, this feature deducts the time they take for lunch. If you pay for your employees' lunch, regardless of its length, leave this setting disable. Alternatively, if you only pay for a set amount of lunch time, use the Add Up To option to specify how much time is paid in Hours and Minutes (HH:MM).
Prevent Early Returns from Lunch
To prevent employees from returning early from lunch, enable the Lunch Lockout option. Once enabled, you can set the Lunch Lockout Duration in Hours and Minutes (HH:MM), ensuring employees cannot end their lunch until the set time has passed.
Lunch Premium Pay
Lunch Premium Pay automatically adds time to the employee's timecard if they work past the threshold without punching for lunch. When enabled, you can set both the threshold and the amount of time to be added, which is applied to the employee's Regular hours. There is no distinction in uAttend between regular hours eared from lunch premium pay and those earned from hours worked. It is the administrator's responsibility to verify any applicable federal and/or state laws that may apply to your organization; the uAttend support team cannot provide guidance on legal matters. You should reach out to your HR and/or Legal team for advice.
Break Punches Section
In the uAttend system, breaks are paid by default. The settings in the Break Punches section allow you to customize how break time is handled in two key ways.
Add Up To: The Add Up To option lets you set a maximum amount of time that is paid for each break in hours and minutes (HH:MM). This time limit will apply to each break when employees use the break punch feature on the smartphone app, web portal, or any timeclocks that have the break punch option. Any time over the set time will be deducted on their time card. For example, if you only want to pay for 15-minute breaks, enable the Add Up To option and enter the time as 00:15 (HH:MM), any time taken after 15 minutes will be deducted.
Break Lockout: The Break Lockout setting prevents employees from returning from their break early. Once enabled, you can set the lockout duration in hours and minutes (HH:MM). If an employee attempts to punch before the set time, they will receive an error or notice preventing them from doing so.
If your company does not pay for breaks, employees can simply punch out and punch back in without using the break punch option. To learn more about our break options, check out this article: Rest Break Options
Lunch Overtime
Lunch Overtime settings are configured in the Department's Overtime section. When the Lunch Overtime option is enabled, if a lunch or break does not occur before the set threshold, any time worked beyond that point is calculated as overtime. If your company is required to apply lunch overtime, this setting ensures that each hour worked after passing the threshold without a break is applied to the overtime pay code of your choice (OT1 or OT2). Be sure to enable the Weekly Overtime settings to activate the Lunch Overtime option. For more information, check out our Lunch Overtime article.
Break and Lunch Reminders and Alerts
Setting up break and lunch reminders and alerts helps ensure employees take their scheduled breaks and meals on time, promoting compliance with labor laws, maintaining productivity, and helps avoid missed punches. To set break and lunch alerts and reminders, navigate to the Departments tab, click the drop-down icon next to Alerts, and select Break and Lunch.
Use the easy-to-follow setup to select which departments, specific employees, administrators, and employees should receive reminders and alerts and how they should receive them (text or email). We also have our Break and Lunch Alerts and Reminders article to assist you.
Setting Up Employees to Punch for Lunches and Breaks
In order for an employee to punch in the web portal, smartphone app, or on a timeclock, you will need to set them up with the necessary permissions.
- Authentication for web punching
- Authentication for mobile app punching
- Authentication for timeclock punching
No additional settings will need to be enabled to punch for lunches or breaks, as these features are built into the portal, mobile app, and some models of timeclocks. There is no way to remove or hide the lunch and/or break punch option from the portal, smartphone app, or any timeclock.
Break and Lunch Punch Guides by Time Clock Series
The exact steps needed to punch on the timeclock will vary based on your model; we have linked the steps here for each model for your convenience.
BN-N Models: BN6000N, BN6500N
- Punching for Lunches on a BN6000N or BN6500N Timeclocks
- Punching for Breaks on BN6000N or BN6500N Timeclock
DR Models: DR2000, DR2500
- How-to guides for your employees (DR2500, DR2000)
- Punching for Breaks on a DR2500 or DR2000 Timeclock
JR and NX Models: JR2000, NX2500
- Punching for Lunches on a JR2000 or NX2500 Timeclock
- Punching for Breaks on a JR2000 or NX2500 Timeclock
BN Models: BN6000, BN6400, BN6500
CB Models: CB6000, CB6400, CB6500