California Meal Break Premium Clock Entry Time Based Rule

Enter the number of minutes into a shift before which employees must take their second meal break. Employees who don't take their second meal break before the specified number of minutes into their shift receive a meal penalty premium.

For example, if employees must take a second meal break before working 10 hours in a shift, enter 600. Employees who don't get a second meal break before 600 minutes are paid the meal penalty premium.

Employees who work shifts shorter than the specified duration aren't guaranteed a second meal break. With 10 entered in this field, an employee who works an eight-hour shift wouldn't be guaranteed a second meal break.

These fields provide the same functionality available in the Minutes That Must Be Worked For First Meal To Be Waived and Minutes That Must Be Worked For Second Meal To Be Waived fields in time entry policies, where users can’t waive meals after their shift exceeds that threshold. Having the fields in this rule allows administrators to use this functionality even if it hasn’t been configured in the time entry policy.

Note: If these settings are configured in the time entry policy, you must either configure them in the same way in this rule, or leave the settings blank in this rule and Dayforce references the time entry policy instead.

Enter the minimum duration for meal breaks. If either of an employee’s meal breaks is shorter than this duration, the rule pays out the premium.

Note: This setting is analogous to the Meal required minutes field in time entry policies. Both should be configured with the same number.

Enter the duration, in minutes, of premiums that the rule pays out for employees who didn't receive enough meal breaks. This field accepts both positive and negative values.

Dayforce pays out a premium of the specified duration for each meal that is missed or shorter in duration than the number of minutes specified in the Minimum meal length mins field.

Note: For a comparison of the following two settings’ functionality, see Comparison of the Maximum Number of Penalties Settings.

Select Multiplier to configure the rule to pay out premiums at a rate that is a multiple of their regular pay rate. To pay employees time and a half, you would select Multiplier and enter 1.5 in the Rate value field.

Select Incremental to configure the rule to pay the employee a premium at the specified flat rate.

To pay employees $3.50 an hour extra in premiums for a missed meal break, you would select Incremental and enter 3.50 in the Meal penalty rate value.

By default, this checkbox is selected and the first meal counts toward the threshold for the second meal.

For example, an employee is entitled to a second meal break after eight hours. The employee worked four hours, and then took a one-hour meal, followed by three more hours of work. With this checkbox selected, the employee would be entitled to their second meal. With it cleared, the employee would have to work one more hour before they’re entitled to a second meal.

Clear this checkbox and Dayforce uses net time to calculate thresholds (that is, meals are excluded).

Select the checkbox to take the employee’s location, department, job, and rate into consideration when calculating premiums and determining which department and location the pay is charged against. When this checkbox is selected, the rate is taken from the Rate field in the employee’s work assignment in People in the Work > Work Assignments screen.

For example, if the rule is configured to pay premiums at 1.5 times the employee’s regular pay rate, when this checkbox is selected, the rule multiplies the rate employees are paid for the shift that earned the premium by 1.5, not the employee’s base rate. If an employee’s base rate is $8 but they’re paid $10 an hour for the shift that earned the meal break premium, the rule pays out premiums with a pay rate of $15 (10 multiplied by 1.5).

Any premiums the rule awards when this new functionality is enabled uses the location, job assignment, and rate values that are effective at the time when the rule’s threshold is exceeded and the employee earns a premium. For example, if employees earn a premium if they work five hours without a meal break, and an employee works three hours at their primary job, performs a job transfer and works another four hours at a secondary job, then the secondary job is effective at the time when the threshold of five hours is exceeded. As a result, the rule pays out the premium and records it against the employee’s secondary job (which was the job effective at the time the employee was awarded the premium).

Clear this checkbox to pay premiums and charge pay based only on the defaults set for the employee, and not the location, department, job, or rate from that specific shift.

Select the checkbox to allow employees to take their required meal breaks at any time during their worked shift. For example, employees entitled to a meal break after working four hours. An employee works a seven-hour shift, but takes their meal break after working for five hours. With this checkbox selected, the employee doesn’t receive the meal break premium even though their break didn't fall within the first four hours of their shift.

Clear the checkbox to pay the meal break premium whenever an employee doesn’t take their meal break within the defined thresholds, even if they take a meal break later in their shift.

Select the checkbox to configure Dayforce to ignore the On duty meal type scheduled setting and employees’ scheduled shifts, meals, and breaks, and to instead examine the jobs employees are working at the meal threshold times to determine whether to pay out meal break premiums. If the employee has one of the meal waivers from the existing On duty meal waiver includes setting assigned to their records (in the Work > Volunteer List screen in People) and is working an “on duty meal” job (a job selected in the existing On duty meal scheduled job includes setting) at the time of either the first or second meal penalty thresholds (as defined in the Time worked for first meal penalty to be paid and Time worked for second meal penalty to be paid fields), then the rule doesn’t pay a meal break premium. If the employee isn’t working an on duty meal job, then the rule does pay the meal break premium.

For example, with the first meal penalty threshold set to five hours, when an employee works an eight-hour shift, the rule examines the job the employee is working at the five-hour mark to determine if the employee should be paid a meal break penalty. If the employee hasn't taken a meal break and isn’t working an on duty meal job, then the rule pays out the meal break penalty.

Select the checkbox to configure the rule so that employees can’t waive short or late meals. With this checkbox selected, Dayforce still awards employees premiums for meals that were too short or taken too late.

Note: This functionality doesn’t disable the Waive button in timesheets. Instead, it prevents Dayforce from removing the premium, even if the employee tries to waive the meal, or is configured to waive meals by default.

Select the checkbox to configure the rule so that shifts that cross into the next day are evaluated as a single shift on the second of the two affected days. This ensures that the premium is calculated based on the total length of the shift.

For example, when the checkbox is selected, a shift that starts at 11:00 PM on the first day, and then continues until 5:00 AM the next day (with 12:00 AM BDA) is evaluated as a six-hour shift, even though the hours don’t all occur on the same business day.