Many countries have defined rules on how many breaks an employee can take, based on the duration of their shift. These are usually comprised of a mix of unpaid breaks (e.g. lunch or meal breaks) and paid breaks (e.g. tea or rest breaks).
By default, employees should only use the 'Start Break' function in Droppah's Time Clock for their unpaid breaks. If your company would like team members to record their paid breaks as well, you can enable Droppah's Paid Breaks setting.
Enabling Paid Breaks
To enable paid break tracking for your company, navigate to your Calendar Settings via the drop-down menu at the top-right of the screen and select Settings > Calendar.
Under the Time section of your calendar settings, toggle the Paid Breaks setting on, as seen here:
Important: This setting will only be available if your Country is set to New Zealand, or if you've had custom break rules applied to your account. See the Break Rules section below for more info.
Once this setting is enabled, employees should use the Start Break function in the Time Clock to record all breaks they take, regardless of whether they are paid or unpaid. Any breaks your employees take will automatically determine the portion of each break that is paid or unpaid, based on the rules set for your country or the custom rules set for your account.
Viewing & Exporting Paid Breaks
The breakdown of paid/unpaid breaks can be viewed on each clock entry via the Clock History:
The Breaks section will display the start and end time of each break, the total duration of the break, and a timeline indicating the portion of the break that was paid (indicated with a solid line) vs unpaid (indicated with a dotted line). Beneath each break timeline, the duration of paid break will display to the left, and the duration of unpaid break will display to the right.
You can also view break details within the time entries themselves, by clicking into the entry in either the Resources View or the Timesheet View of the calendar:
Exporting Breaks
To download the duration of paid and unpaid breaks for each time entry, you can use the timesheet export function via the Timesheet View. Simply ensure the 'Paid Break Duration' field has been added to your export setup before exporting time.
Learn how to set up and use the timesheet export function here: Timesheet Export
Paid Break Rules
When the Paid Break function is enabled, a set of default rules may be enabled based on your country, or you can contact our support team to have custom rules set up (regardless of your country).
Currently, only New Zealand has a set of default rules in place.
Click the buttons below to learn more about how custom rules can be defined, or about the default rules for New Zealand.
New Zealand
New Zealand
NZ employees are required by law to have set paid and unpaid breaks throughout their work day. The number and length of these breaks depend on the duration of hours worked and are defined by the Employment Relations Act 2000.
This is covered in further detail by MBIE on their website here: Rest and Meal Breaks
When enabled, Droppah's Paid Breaks function will automate these rules, as detailed below. If you wish to implement more generous rules for your employees, click the Custom Rules button below instead.
Paid vs. Unpaid Break Duration Rules
The automated breaks will be calculated based on the duration of the break taken.
Paid Breaks
If the recorded break is less than 20 minutes it will be treated as a paid break. Only 10 minutes of the break will be applied as a Paid break - any break time over 10 minutes but less than 20 minutes will be unpaid.
Unpaid Breaks
If the recorded break is greater than 20 minutes it will be treated as an unpaid break.
Shift Duration and Frequency of Breaks
The table below covers the minimum rest and meal breaks an employee is entitled to and the rules applied by Droppah to reflect this. The type of break being taken uses the Paid vs. Unpaid rules outlined above.
After the 10-hour point the following breaks apply, in addition to the breaks laid out above:
Custom Rules
Custom Rules
If you'd like to set up custom paid break rules for your Droppah account, contact the team at [email protected] to confirm the following details:
Paid Break Duration
How long your employee paid breaks are. If a break meets the Paid Break Threshold and Hourly Break Rules but exceeds this duration, the remainder of the break will be counted as unpaid time. For example, if your Paid Break Duration is 15 and an employee clocks a paid break that is 20 minutes long, the final 5 minutes would be unpaid.
If no value is provided, the entire duration of any breaks meeting the Paid Break Threshold and Hourly Break Rules will be considered a paid break.
Paid Break Threshold
Used in conjunction with the Hourly Break Rules to determine whether a given break is a paid rest break or an unpaid break.
If the total duration of a break taken by an employee is less than or equal to this value, it will be counted as a paid break (if one is owed according to the Hourly Break Rules). For example, if the Paid Break Threshold is set to 20 minutes, any break less than or equal to 20 minutes will be considered for a paid break (if it meets the Hourly Break Rules), while any break over 20 minutes will be entirely unpaid regardless of the below hourly rules.
If this value is not provided, a break of any duration can be considered to be a paid break.
Hourly Break Rules
These are a series of rules that define the hours of work during which a set number of paid & unpaid breaks are owed. For example, For a 2 - 4 hour shift of work, 1 paid break is owed, or for a 4-6 hour shift of work 1 paid break and 1 unpaid break is owed.
It's also possible to add additional rules which should only apply to time worked in excess of a certain duration (see the example tables below).
If the work period in question doesn’t fit into any of these rules, the break will be considered unpaid. If these rules don’t exist at all, we’ll rely purely on the Paid Break Threshold to determine if a break is paid.
An example of how Hourly Break Rules might be set up for a company is as follows:
After the 10-hour mark, the following breaks apply, in addition to the breaks laid out above:
