Recording breaks
Last updated - Mar 12, 2025 at 3:25PM
Types of breaks
How you manage staff breaks depends on whether the break is paid or unpaid. Read below for more information and options that you can use for managing staff breaks.
Paid breaks
Staff remain on the clock (clocked IN) and are paid for this time along with their hours worked.Unpaid breaks
Staff are not paid for these durations, so should either be clocked out or should have the time automatically deducted.
Paid breaks
Staff need to remain clocked in for paid breaks to ensure that they're paid for this time when it comes to performing a pay run in your payroll software. Time spent on their paid breaks will be part of their total recorded hours for their day/shift.
Tracking paid breaks
If you want the ability to track/report on how long staff are spending on paid breaks, you can set up an activity code explicitly for this. This can be called something like "Paid Break" and would require the employee to clock into this activity code at the start of their paid break and then clock into no activity code or a different activity code at the end of the break.
This ensures that the employee stays clocked IN for the break, and at the same time will allow you to filter your timesheets by the activity code, download a custom CSV export template, or run a number of job reports to view time spent on the paid break activity code.
Unpaid breaks
See below the different options you can implement to manage unpaid breaks:
Staff clock out for breaks
Staff clock OUT at the start of their break and clock back IN at the end of their break. Your staff timesheet hours will show their true worked hours and you'll be able to see when and for how long staff took breaks. Because these hours already have the unpaid break durations removed, they're ready for sending to payroll for a pay run without the need for any deductions being applied.Automatic break deductions
Staff stay on the clock (clocked IN) for their break. Your staff timesheet hours will show daily hours that include their unpaid break durations, however when you perform an export to custom CSV or payroll, you can apply automatic break deduction rules to the exported data. See Automatic break deductions for more information on creating and applying break deductions to exported timesheet data.