Set Time limits & reminders for Attendance

To prevent your employees from working overtime, you can set limits to the length of their shifts or the maximum amount of hours they can track each day. You can also set a break reminder for your employees.

These settings, however, will only affect users that are not Admins or HR admins, as their default values of max shift length and max daily hours are 16 and 24 hours respectively. 

To activate the time limits and reminders, go to Settings > Attendance > Settings, and click on Time limits & reminders.

Maximum shift length: 

Move the arrows up and down to establish the max amount of time a shift can have. Note: the maximum shift length cannot be higher than 16 hours or the system will automatically override it.

Limit daily hours: 

Toggle on the Grey bottom to limit the total number of hours employees may track per day. Once it is active, you will be able to establish:

• Maximum hours per day: Move the arrows up and down to set the hours you want your employees to work per day. It cannot be higher than 24 hours or the system will automatically override it.
  
  

Note: Your Maximum shift length can never be higher than your Maximum hours per day. If it happens, the value of the Maximum shift length will change automatically to match the value of the Maximum hours per day.

Break reminder: 

Toggle on the grey bottom to activate it. 

When active, you will: 

• Remind employees to enter their break if shift length exceeds: the number of hours the system will need to track before your employees are reminded to enter a break. 
• Suggested break length: the amount of time that will be automatically inserted for the users in the break reminder dialog.
• Break reminder message: the message that users will be able to read when they see the break reminder dialog. Ad this message is set by default, you still have the option to change it by clicking on PREVIEW & EDIT, adding the text, and clicking on SAVE. 

Time limits and reminders visibility

Once you establish the new values for Maximum shift length, Maximum hours per day, and Break reminders, these settings will have visibility in two different parts of the app:

• Attendance tracking page
• Home page:
  • Punch clock widget
  • Attendance tracking legacy widget

Attendance tracking page

Go to the employee profile > Attendance to find the Attendance tracking page. Here, your employees are able to set the time they start to work and the time they finish. If the number of hours they enter surpasses the Maximum shift length and the Maximum hours per day, the SAVE button will not appear and, instead, a reminder will let them know how long their shifts are allowed to last.

Note: Remember that this rule applies only to employees. As an Admin or HR Admin, you can enter as many hours in your employees' Attendance tracking page as you like. 

Employees will also be reminded to add their breaks when their shift or total working hours exceeds the total number of hours they are allowed to have without a break. So, in the previous example, we have decided to remind employees to enter their break time if the shift length exceeds 6 hours. If they enter a total working time with no breaks, the following message will pop up:

Employees who see this dialog can save their entry without adding any break time whatsoever, this is just for reminder purposes and, in reality, it does not enforce users to add the break time.

Home page

When you track Attendance, your employees will be able to see the Attendance widget on the Home page. You can allow employees to check-in and out with the Punch clock or Manual entry (by manually entering the times). Find below how the attendance time limits and reminders look like for both cases.

Punch clock widget:

When the employee clocks out, the system will show three possible messages that will appear in order:

• Add break dialog: which will always appear before the rest of the dialogs.
• Max shift length exceeded dialog or Max daily hours exceeded dialog: these dialogs are merely informative and do not have any effect other than letting the employee know that his or her end time will be set to a value that does not comply with the rules. Note: if both limits are exceeded, only the Max daily hours exceeded dialog will be displayed to the user.
  
  

Attendance tracking widget:

When employees manually enter their time, a message asking to enter a break duration will appear if the shift exceeds the number of hours you have established before as the limit. As this only works as a reminder, the employee will be able to click SAVE WITHOUT BREAK and still save his or her time entry.

If the shift exceeds the maximum daily hours they can work, the system will show a warning letting them know that the checkout time will be changed, in order to match the Maximum shift length.