Overriding Automatic Lunch Deductions

Time deductions allow you to automatically deduct a lunch from employee timecards without requiring employees to clock out. For example, you may want to automatically deduct lunch breaks from your warehouse workers, but require your administrative employees to clock in and out for their lunch breaks. This works great for all those employees who take lunch at the same time (like workers on an assembly line) because they don't have to wait in line at the time clock to punch out for lunch. You can also assign a different time deduction rule for each employee, or even none at all.

Sometimes, an employee will need to work through their lunch break. Because they're not clocking in and out for lunches, your employee time clock software will still calculate the scheduled lunch deduction. Here's how you override the automatic lunch deduction:

Go to the Lists menu and choose Activities. Create a new activity called something like 'Worked Lunch' that's good for manual entries only.

Now go to the Actions menu and choose Add Manual Entry. Add a new manual entry for the worker using the activity you created and enter a start and end time (for example, 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM).

You'll still see the automatic lunch deduction on the employee's timecard, but you'll also see the manual entry for 'Worked Lunch' adding the hour back into the total hours worked.

Jeff Morrow

Technical Support Team

Redcort Software

Tracking Worker Lunches

Some employers like to track the time workers are spending on their lunch breaks even though it's unpaid. You may want to do this for a variety of reasons, but the two most common are to make sure phone coverage or customer care is being adequately provided for, and the other is to make sure employees are not abusing their lunch breaks by taking excessive time away from the office.

The lunch tracking feature in your computer time clock software makes tracking worker lunch breaks easy to do. The first thing is to verify that lunch breaks are set up according to your business rules.

1. From the Tools menu of your Virtual TimeClock software, choose Time Calculations.
2. Change the worker lunch label if you'd like to be more explicit (like 'Unpaid Lunch').
3. Verify lunch calculations are unpaid.

Now instead of stopping work to go on a lunch break, employees can click the Lunch icon on the toolbar in the main time clock window. Their status will change to 'Lunch'. When they come back from lunch, they simply double-click their name, pick what activity they're returning to, and enter their password. Time spent at lunch will be recorded in a separate 'Unpaid' column on your worker timecard reports.

If you don't want employees to use the lunch tracking feature, then you can remove it within your program preferences.

1. From the Virtual TimeClock menu on Mac, or the Edit menu on Windows PCs, choose Preferences.
2. Click the User Access tab.
3. Uncheck Worker Lunch in the Toolbar Buttons section and save.

Maggie Hofer

Customer Service Team

Redcort Software

Automatic Time Deductions

Virtual TimeClock employee time clock software has a great feature called Time Deductions that allows you to automatically deduct unpaid lunch or break time without requiring employees to clock out. Even better, a different time deduction rule can be assigned to each individual worker. This makes it easy to apply different time deduction rules to different types of employees. For example, maybe you want to automatically deduct lunch breaks for your warehouse workers, but require your office employees to clock in and out for their lunch breaks. New time deduction rules can be setup at anytime from the Lists menu within your time and attendance software.

Automatic time deductions are included on worker timecards with other time clock entries for the payroll period. The amount of the time deduction will be displayed in the unpaid hours column of the worker timecard.

Since employees aren't punching out for lunches, if they happen to work through their lunch break the automatic time deduction will still occur. Here's an easy way to make sure employees still get paid for working during their scheduled lunch break. First, create a new activity called something like 'Working Lunch' and set the type to manual entries only. Now, whenever an employee works through lunch you can add a manual entry for 'Working Lunch' for the time they remained at the office. This will offset the automatic lunch deduction so employee timecards reflect correct daily and weekly overtime totals.

Jeff Morrow

Time Clock Software Specialist

Redcort Software

Handling Lunch Breaks with Virtual TimeClock

How to handle lunch breaks with your time clock software can be tricky business. It depends partly on your time and attendance rules, and partly on how you want your payroll reports to look. We'll look at 3 ways to handle lunch breaks using Virtual TimeClock software.

1. One option is to clock out completely for lunch breaks. This means time tracking completely stops while you're away. You would start work in the morning, stop work when it's time for lunch, start work again for your afternoon shift, and stop work at the end of the day. Your timecard entries may look something like this:

Start Stop Activity Regular

7:55 AM 12:00 PM In 4:05

1:00 PM 5:01 PM In 4:01

You'll end up with 2 timecard entries for the day.

2. Another option is to use the built-in worker lunch break functionality. This allows time tracking to continue even while you're at lunch, and you just have to decide if lunch is unpaid, paid, or only paid until a certain time threshold is reached. Your timecard entries may look something like this:

Start Stop Activity Unpaid Regular

7:55 AM 12:00 PM In 4:05

12:00 PM 1:00 PM Lunch 1:00

1:00 PM 5:01 PM In 4:01

You'll end up with 3 timecard entries for the day, and of course this example assumes your lunch break is unpaid. This is great for knowing how much time workers are spending on lunch, which is especially useful when planning phone coverage.

3. A third option is to use automatic time deductions to deduct a defined amount of time after a certain number of hours are worked. Your timecard report may look something like this:

Start Stop Activity Unpaid Regular

7:55 AM 5:01 PM In 1:00 8:06

This leaves you with just 1 timecard entry per day. Automatic time deductions are always unpaid and can be different for each employee.

I hope that gives you some ideas on how to handle worker lunch breaks. You can mix and match any way you want. For example, you may want your office employees to clock in and out for lunch but use automatic lunch deductions for your warehouse workers.

Jeff Morrow

Redcort Software