Breaks & Compliance

Homebase provides a comprehensive suite of solutions to ensure your team remains compliant with breaks and labor laws. With our platform, you can effortlessly access and customize break requirements based on your state, tailor settings for unpaid breaks, and implement rules for addressing missed breaks – all conveniently consolidated into a single, user-friendly interface. In this article, we'll explore the Breaks & Compliance settings and how they work.

Where to edit your Breaks & Compliance Settings

1. Select Settings at the bottom of the left-side menu

    

   

    

2. Select Breaks & Compliance in the left-side menu

    

   

    

3. Customize any of your settings to fit the needs of your team!

Review Break Requirements

Homebase gathers the info about break requirements based on your state directly from the U.S. Department of Labor. You can use this info to help inform you while editing your Breaks & Compliance settings.

Manage Breaks

In Homebase, you have the flexibility to tailor your break management, encompassing break duration, break categorization (paid or unpaid), break frequency, and the distinction between mandatory and optional breaks. 

Check/uncheck the breaks that you would like to be active. Any breaks that are checked will show as an option for your employees to take when they clock out for a break. 

• Mandatory Breaks: If a break is marked as mandatory, Homebase will remind you when employees forget to clock in for their breaks in their timesheets. This helps you quickly spot any missed breaks and maintain compliance with ease.
• Optional Breaks: If a break is marked as optional it will show as an option when employees clock out for a break, but it will not alert you if the break is missed. 

Unpaid Break Settings

Unpaid break settings allow you to tailor your unpaid breaks to help you keep track of the unpaid break hours and stay compliant. 

• Subtract unpaid breaks from scheduled hours and wage forecasts: In the schedule builder, you are able to view the hours and wage forecast in the Forecasting Toolbar. When this setting is turned on, the unpaid breaks that you have assigned to your team will be automatically subtracted from these forecasting tools, to give you a more accurate picture of the hours and labor costs for your team. 
• Convert excess time from a paid break to an unpaid break: If your team is assigned a paid break and they go over the assigned break time, the excess time from that break will be shown as unpaid break time. This helps make sure you aren't paying your team for extra paid break time. As an example: if an employee is allowed a 10-minute paid break, and they stay clocked out for their break for 15 minutes, 5 minutes will be shown as unpaid in your timesheets and it will not show as time paid. 

Resolve Missed Breaks 

• • • • Allow Team Members to add or waive missed breaks before clocking out
        
        • Team members will be required to either add or waive missed mandatory breaks on clock out. Owners and managers will still have the ability to add missed breaks as needed.
        • If you would like to apply this setting to the whole team, check the box under this setting titled Enable break waivers for all team members by default. 
        • If you would like to apply this setting to specific team members, you will be able to turn this setting on in their employee profile.

        • Click here to learn more about how employees waive breaks

          

           

      • Allow employees to add missed break time after clocking out - Mobile Time Clock only: If your employees are using the Mobile Time Clock, you can let them add missed breaks to their mobile time cards during an active pay period.
        • When an employee includes a missed break, you'll receive a note in your timesheets. This allows you to conveniently review the added break before proceeding with payroll processing.
      • Award additional paid hours for missed breaks. Award is ___ hours for each missed break: Stay in compliance with Break Penalty laws. Awards will not be applied to salaried employees. Please consult your local and state rules for guidelines.