Lunch breaks
How unpaid lunch comes off a day's hours - the settings, the mobile flow, and the Timesheets screen.
A lunch break is recorded as a timesheet entry like any other, against a job you nominate for it. What makes it a break is that its time is taken off the job the person was working on, so the job is charged the hours actually worked - not the whole span from start to finish.
The three ways a break gets recorded
Breaks can be added from three places, and they don’t all work the same way on purpose:
Mobile User - Add Lunch Break to Job when completing work
| When | While the time entry is being saved |
| What happens to the job entry | It stays one entry, created already net of the break; the lunch is linked to it |
| Result | Job entry + a linked lunch entry |
| Best for | A tech finishing a job who took a break during it |
Mobile User - Adds Lunch Break at end of day
| When | After the time is already logged |
| What happens to the job entry | It stays one entry; the lunch is linked to it and subtracted from its hours |
| Result | Job entry + a linked lunch entry |
| Best for | A tech who forgot to account for the break |
Desktop User - Add Lunch Break for team member
| When | Afterwards, in the office |
| What happens to the job entry | It is split into the piece before the break and the piece after |
| Result | Two job entries + a lunch entry |
| Best for | An office correction where the exact pieces matter |
All three end up with the same total hours against the job. The difference is only in how many rows you see, and when the break gets recorded.
Settings
All four settings live in Settings → Module Configuration, under Time Recording. Full descriptions are in the settings reference.
- Show ‘Add lunch break’ option
(
TimeRecordingShowLunchBreakSettingName) - off by default. Turn it on and the Add lunch break button appears on the mobile Timesheet screen. - Lunch Break Job Code
(
TimeRecordingLunchBreakJobCodeSettingName) - the job lunch time is booked against. It’s a dropdown of your admin jobs, so set up an admin job (e.g. “Lunch”) first if you don’t have one. - Lunch Break Default Duration
(
TimeRecordingLunchBreakDurationSettingName) - in minutes, default 30. Used to pre-fill the break length in both apps. - Exclude Lunch Breaks from Totals
(
TimeRecordingExcludeLunchBreaksFromTotalsSettingName) - on by default. Lunch entries are left out of the day and week totals shown on the mobile Timesheet screen and the Timesheets screen, so an unpaid break doesn’t inflate the hours you’re looking at. The entry is still there; only the totals ignore it. - Show ‘Deduct Lunch Break’ on Stop Work
(
TimeRecordingShowLunchBreakOnStopWorkSettingName) - off by default. Adds the Deduct Lunch Break tickbox to the mobile Stop Work screen. Independent of the first setting: a tenant can have the break offered when work is completed without offering it on the Timesheet screen, or the other way round.
Without a Lunch Break Job Code, there is nothing to book the break against. Mobile’s Add lunch break will create an entry with no job, Deduct Lunch Break doesn’t appear on the Stop Work screen at all, and the Timesheets screen’s + Lunch button tells you to set the job in Settings first. Set the job code at the same time as you switch either feature on.
Mobile User - Add Lunch Break to Job when completing work
With Show ‘Deduct Lunch Break’ on Stop Work on, the Stop Work screen (the Work Log screen a tech lands on after tapping Stop Work on a job) carries a Deduct Lunch Break tickbox just above Save.
Ticking it reveals a lunch start and end time, pre-filled with the configured duration starting at noon - or in the middle of the work period when noon isn’t inside it. A line underneath keeps a running answer, e.g. “0:30 lunch break - 8:00 will be recorded”, and it follows the work’s own start and end times as those are adjusted.
On Save the tech gets the same pair of entries the end-of-day break produces: the time entry, already net of the break, and the break itself against the lunch job, linked to it. Everything after that - editing, deleting, the cutlery marker - behaves exactly as it does for the end-of-day break below, because it is the same link.
The break must end after it starts, fall within the work period being saved, and leave something behind to record. If it doesn’t, Save is refused with a message and nothing is written - there’s no half-saved entry to clean up.
When the work is split across several labour codes, the break comes off the first entry long enough to absorb it. That’s usually the first one; if it’s too short (or exactly as long as the break) the next one that fits takes it instead, so no entry is left recording zero hours.
Mobile User - Adds Lunch Break at end of day
On the Timesheet screen, Add lunch break opens a small panel:
Step by step: add a lunch break
- Tap Add lunch break. The start and end times pre-fill from the clock (roughly the last half hour, rounded to your timesheet rounding) - adjust them to the real break.
- Tick Remove lunch time from job? if the break should come off a job you’ve already logged today. Leave it unticked to record the break on its own.
- If ticked, tap Select Time Entry and pick the entry the break came out of. Only real job entries are offered - lunch entries aren’t.
- The panel confirms what will happen, e.g. “0:30 will be removed from time entry J1043 - Smith kitchen”.
- Tap Save Lunch Break.
You now have two rows in the day:
- the job entry, with its hours reduced and a Lunch: -0:30 marker under it;
- the lunch entry, showing Taken off: J1043 - Smith kitchen.
Editing an entry that has lunch on it
This is the part that used to bite people. The entry is edited in hours worked, not the reduced figure:
- Opening it for edit shows the original start and end times - they don’t shuffle back by the length of the break.
- A note under the times reads “Includes 0:30 lunch break - 7:30 will be recorded”.
- Changing the times or the hours re-does the subtraction on save. Shorten the day by half an hour and the lunch is still taken off; the break doesn’t quietly disappear.
- You can’t shorten an entry to less than its lunch break - delete the break first.
The link is what makes this stick, and it survives being edited from either app.
Deleting
- Delete the lunch entry - the hours go back onto the job entry.
- Delete the job entry - the lunch entry stays, but is no longer taken off anything. Mobile warns you before either.
Lunch entries themselves are read-only on mobile: to change one, delete it and add the break again.
Entries that have already been submitted to your ERP are never recalculated - their hours have been posted. A lunch can’t be linked to a processed entry, and a change to a lunch whose job entry has since been processed leaves that entry alone.
Desktop User - Add Lunch Break for team member
The Timesheets screen shows what mobile recorded and lets you carve a break out of an entry yourself.
The cutlery marker
An entry that has a lunch taken off it shows a cutlery icon in its Start/Stop cell. Hover it for the full picture: “0:30 lunch break taken off this entry (8:00 worked, 7:30 recorded)”. The Hours column is always the recorded (net) figure.
+ Lunch: splitting an entry
+ Lunch appears on an entry that has both a start and a stop time, isn’t a lunch entry itself, and doesn’t already have a break taken off it.
The dialog lists exactly what it is about to write, and the list follows the times as you change them - so you can see the two job pieces and the break before committing to them.
Step by step: split an entry around a break
- Click + Lunch on the row.
- Enter the break’s start and end - pre-filled from the default duration, and previewed live as the rows it will produce.
- The break has to fall inside the entry’s own span and leave something behind on at least one side.
- Confirm. The original entry keeps the part before the break, a new entry takes the part after it, and a third entry records the break against the lunch job.
Editing an entry that has lunch on it
Editing hours here behaves the same way as on mobile: change the Start/Stop times and the recorded hours drop by the break; change the Hours and the stop time moves out to match, so it doesn’t creep forward by the length of the break each time you save.
A break stays on the day of the work it interrupts
A break belongs to the entry it comes off, and that decides its date. Move the work to a different day - correcting it on the Timesheets screen or on the phone - and the break moves with it. Only its date changes; its times, its length and the entry it is linked to are untouched.
That is what keeps the hours honest on both days. A break left behind on the day it was originally recorded would still be subtracted from the entry it points at, so one day would come up short and the other over by the same amount - a difference easy to miss for weeks, and hard to explain once the timesheet has been submitted.
What payroll and your ERP see
The recorded hours - the job entry net of its break. The lunch entry goes across as its own line against the lunch job, which is what makes lunch visible (and reportable) without it being charged to the customer’s job.
Troubleshooting
- No Add lunch break button on mobile - Show ‘Add lunch break’ option is off, or the device hasn’t picked up the setting yet. The mobile app refreshes its configuration every few hours; a restart forces it.
- No Deduct Lunch Break on the Stop Work screen - Show ‘Deduct Lunch Break’ on Stop Work is off, or there’s no Lunch Break Job Code (it hides entirely rather than offering a break with nowhere to book it). Same configuration-refresh caveat as above.
- + Lunch doesn’t appear on a row - the entry has no start/stop times, is a lunch entry, or already has a break taken off it.
- “No lunch job has been set up for timesheets” - set Lunch Break Job Code.
- Totals look like they include lunch - turn on Exclude Lunch Breaks from Totals.
- An old entry says “incl lunch” in its comment - that’s from before breaks were linked. The deduction is already baked into its hours and won’t be applied twice; new breaks use the link instead.
See also
- Timesheets - reviewing and submitting the week
- Labour codes - the codes time is logged against
- Module settings - where the four settings live
- Settings reference - every setting, by key