Time Advantage

This screen covers Punch Rounding and Grace Periods for In and Out punches, lunches, breaks etc. Daily and Weekly net rounding can also be defined.

On the screen below, Grace applies to the employee's scheduled start and stop times and also lunch and break lengths. In his example, assume an employee is scheduled to work from 8:00 AM to 4:30 PM with a 30 minute lunch.

Early In for Day- This is set to 15 so if the employee punches In between 7:45 and 7:59 their time will be calculated as of 8:00 and will not be flagged as Early. If they punch in prior to 7:45 they will be flagged as Early In
Late In for Day- In this example it is set to 3 so if the employee comes in as late as 8:03 AM they will be paid as of 8:00 AM and will not be flagged as late. Any punch after 8:03 AM, the employee will be flagged as Late In and will be docked (assuming Late Ins are not set to "Pay to Schedule"
Early Out for Day- When set to 3 the employee will be paid until 4:30 PM from 4:27 AM and will not be flagged for leaving early. Any punch prior to 4:27 PM, the employee will be flagged as Early Out and will be docked (assuming early Outs are not set to "Pay to Schedule"
Late Out for Day- This is set to 15 so if the employee punches Out between 4:30 and 4:45 their time will be calculated as of 4:30 and will not be flagged as Late. If they punch out after 4:45 they will be flagged as Late Out
Short Lunch- If an employee is scheduled for a 30 minute lunch and this is set to 29, an employee can punch back in one minute after punching out and will not be flagged for punching back in early. The In punch will be rounded up to scheduled minutes so all 30 minutes will be deducted. If this is set to 15 then a pair of lunch punches spanning less than 15 minutes will be flagged as a Short Lunch
Long Lunch- This is a grace for employees coming back late from lunch. The example is set to 3 so an employee can come back after 33 minutes without being flagged. Any minutes beyond 33 will be considered late and will be docked
Short Break and Long Break- Break Grace follows the same rules as the Lunch Grace above

In/Out Rounding applies to punches that are not at scheduled times and do not fall within Grace Periods. Again, assume a schedule of 8:00 AM to 4:30 PM with a 30 minute lunch and Grace Periods as in the screen above. Using Early In as an example:

Approval Required- If this is checked then punches prior to the scheduled In time and also before the early In Grace will be paid to schedule (8:00 AM) If approved on the Time Card Edit screen it will then pay according to the setting in Schedules/Break Point
Schedules/Break Point- If set to Schedules then the punch will round to the Schedule time regardless of whether it is approved or not. This selection is used often for salaried workers. If set to Break Point then Break Point rounding will occur based on how you have it defined
Mins- The number of minutes until Break Point Rounding occurs. In this case since there is a 15 minute Early In Grace so Break Point Rounding will be set to 16 and apply to all punches early by 16 minutes or more
Rounding Unit- If you pay by the quarter hour then set this to 15. If you pay by the tenth of an hour then set to 6, minute to minute set to 1, etc.
Break Point Minutes- This determines at what point the time rounds forward. In this example it is set to 8 so punches from 1 to 7 minutes after the hour, half hour, or quarter hour will round back and minutes from 8 through 14 will round forward. This is the most common scenario (7 minute rule)
Level 2- Break point Rounding can be applied at 2 levels. For instance, you may want to round differently for punches that are at least 300 minutes or 5 hours early so that would be defined under level 2

All other late and early punches are set up the same way. For a Rounding Unit of 15, to round all punches forward for the entire time segment then the break point would be 1. To round back an entire Rounding Unit the break point would be 15. Unscheduled In's and Out's, Callbacks, and Transfers can only round to break point since there is no schedule to reference them to.

Fixed lunches, those that are defined with a specific start and stop time follow the same rounding rules as above.

If an employee has a fixed lunch of 12:00 PM to 12:30 PM they are considered late if the come back after 12:30 PM or the grace period, if any, even if they didn't go to lunch until 12:15 PM. Since many employees go to lunch when they get the opportunity, Time Advantage also has Flex Lunches and Breaks. In this scenario the time the employee leaves and returns is not important. Exceptions are based simply on how long an employee was to lunch or break. Break Point Rounding below applies to the duration of the lunch. Assuming a 30 minute lunch:

Short Lunch- the Rounding Unit is set to 30 and the Break Point to 1. If an employee punches out then back in one minute later, then due to the Break Point of 1 all Short Lunches of 1 minute to 29 minutes will round forward to the Rounding Unit of 30. If you are also using a Short Lunch Grace as noted earlier then the lunch will not be flagged with an exception
Long Lunch- in the example the Rounding Unit is set to 15 and the Break Point to 7. This will result in a Lunch of 31 to 36 minutes to round back to 30 and a lunch of 37 to 44 minutes to round to 45. Lunches that are even longer will follow the same Rounding Rule.
Short Break and Long Break- Break rounding follows the same logic and is set up they same way as lunch
Net Rounding- Instead of rounding punches, you can round total hours at the end of a day or pay period. The same Break Point Rounding applies

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