Where: Locations & Users → Locations → a location → Scheduling tab → Labor & compliance card.
Not legal advice. The rules packs described here are our reading of public sources. Check them against the citations below for your own situation.
The three rules
- Everything is optional and off by default. A location that has never opened this card behaves exactly as it always has. Choosing a jurisdiction only pre-fills suggested values into the form; nothing is stored until you press Save, and nothing is enforced until a specific toggle is on.
- Settings are per location, not company-wide. Each location owns its own jurisdiction, break definitions and toggles. There is no organisation-level layer that locations inherit from. To roll the same settings out to several stores, use Copy to other locations… — it copies this location's saved settings onto the ones you pick, replacing theirs.
- A settings change never rewrites closed pay periods. Exceptions are written when a punch is clocked out (or edited by a manager); changing a toggle changes what the next clock-out records. A closed pay period, and any export already handed to payroll, stays as it was.
Jurisdiction
Value | What it does |
|---|---|
None (default) | No rules pack. Every other toggle can still be turned on, but there are no break requirements to check against, so warnings and exceptions have nothing to report. |
California | Loads the California pack (below). Reset to California defaults puts the pack's suggested values back into the form — tracking, waivers, attestation and the publish-time warning on; enforcement and the pay toggles off. It does not save. |
Selecting California on a card that is still at its defaults pre-fills the suggestion; on a card you have already changed it only switches the jurisdiction. Discard puts the saved values back.
Breaks
Toggle | Off (default) | On |
|---|---|---|
Track meal-break exceptions | Nothing recorded. | Every clock-out records a missed, late or short meal break as an exception on the pay period (Time Clock → a pay period → Exceptions), with its premium hour (one per workday). |
Track rest-break exceptions | Nothing recorded. | Every clock-out records a missed or short rest break the same way, with its own premium hour (one per workday, separate from the meal). |
Enforce breaks at the time clock | Nothing blocked, and the app and the kiosk don't label any break Required. | A custom break marked Enforced cannot be ended early: the app and the kiosk answer "You can clock back in at 1:45 PM." until its full length has passed, and it shows as Required in the break picker. Applies to every device — enforcement is the location's policy, not an app feature. |
Alert managers when a break is at risk | No alerts. | The employee is pushed 15 minutes before a required break is due ("Take your 30-min meal break before 2:00 PM.") and again when it is overdue; the managers/admins on duty at the location (clocked in, or scheduled right now) are pushed when it is overdue ("Eli North's meal break is overdue (due 2:00 PM) at North."). Each alert is sent once per punch and break. The Time Clock page shows a Today: breaks at risk panel with who is due or overdue right now. |
Warn at publish when a shift can't fit its breaks | The schedule's warning banner is unchanged. | Live now. Before publishing, the schedule's review before publishing banner gains a BREAK row for every shift that is missing a required meal break or whose planned break is too short — e.g. "Eli North's 9-hour shift on Tue needs a 30-min meal break before 2:00 PM (California)." The small California tag names the pack the rule came from. A native shift's planned break is its Break minutes; a mirrored 7shifts shift uses its scheduled breaks. Warnings inform — they never block publishing. |
Custom breaks — named breaks (name, meal or rest, paid, length, the shift length they apply to, enforced). The app and the kiosk offer them on shifts longer than their qualifying length; a break taken as one of them is stored with its kind, so exception tracking knows which rule it satisfied. The California suggestion adds a 30-min unpaid meal break for shifts over 5 h and a 10-min paid rest break for shifts of 3.5 h or more, both not enforced.
Which break is which — a break started from an older app (before break kinds) is read as the meal when it is unpaid and as a rest break when it is paid; exception tracking classifies any break without a kind by its length and paid flag (30+ min unpaid = meal). A plain Start break at a location with no custom breaks is decided by its length when it ends: under 20 minutes it is a paid rest break (short rest breaks count as hours worked under federal law), 20 minutes or more an unpaid meal break.
Advanced
Toggle | Off (default) | On |
|---|---|---|
Meal-break waivers | Waivers on file are ignored. | The Meal break 1 / Meal break 2 waiver boxes on an employee's profile (Locations & Users → the user → Employment) are honoured: a meal they were entitled to skip is recorded as waived, with no premium — the first meal on shifts of 6 h or less, the second on shifts of 12 h or less when the first was taken in full and on time. Every waiver change is logged on the user's Activity timeline. |
Automatically dismiss waived meal breaks | A waived meal stays listed for review. | Needs waivers and attestation on. A waived meal's exception is dismissed automatically (badge Auto-dismissed on the Exceptions tab) and can be reverted per punch. Never for shifts over 12 h. |
Attestation at clock-out | Nobody is asked. | Every clock-out in the app and on the kiosk asks the question below with its three answers (English, with a Spanish copy the app can show instead) — took all breaks / had the opportunity but chose not to / prevented by work. The answer is stored on the punch, shown in the punch editor and beside each exception. An app from before this feature clocks out without asking; a manager's force clock-out never asks. Leave the wording blank for the default text; the policy link is shown with the question. |
Split shift | — | Two punches on one workday at the location separated by an unpaid gap of more than 60 minutes record a Split shift exception on the later punch: one premium hour at the Minimum wage set below it (pre-filled by the pack, $16.50 for California; raise it for a local ordinance). |
Reporting pay | — | A punch tied to a scheduled shift that worked less than half of it records a Reporting pay exception: the hours up to half the schedule (never fewer than 2, never more than 4) minus the hours worked, at the regular rate. |
Compliance fees in labor reports | The premium hours are listed; nothing is costed. | The premiums are costed into Labor Summary → Total Pay and into the pay-period export (a Compliance Fees column; the Gusto sheet's |
Who sees pay: the Labor Summary tab and both pay-period exports list every employee's wage and pay, so they need the Build & manage native schedule permission — managers and admins have it by default. Someone whose role can only view the schedule doesn't see the Labor Summary tab or the Export button.
Exceptions tab (Time Clock → a pay period)
Every exception the rules produced for the period, one row each: the employee, the rule (1st meal break · 30 min, Split shift, Reporting pay), its status (Missed / Late / Short / Waived), what happened (not taken · due by 2pm, 20 min taken at 1:10pm, 120 min unpaid gap · 12pm – 2pm), the premium (1.00 h @ regular rate, 1.00 h @ $16.50 min wage), the employee's attestation, and the review actions:
- Dismiss (with a required reason) — removes the premium from the labor totals until reverted; the row shows Dismissed by <name>.
- Revert — undoes a dismissal, including an automatic one.
- CSV — the same rows for payroll or an auditor.
Filters: rule, status (incl. Open / Dismissed), employee. A manager's punch edit re-evaluates the workday; rows a manager dismissed by hand are kept.
The California pack
Each rule below links to the official source it comes from.
Rule | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
First meal break | ≥30 min, unpaid, for shifts of more than 5 h; must begin no later than the end of the 5th hour. Waivable by mutual consent when the shift is no more than 6 h. | Cal. Labor Code §512(a); IWC Wage Orders §11; DLSE meal-period FAQ |
Second meal break | ≥30 min, unpaid, for shifts of more than 10 h; must begin no later than the end of the 10th hour. Waivable when the shift is no more than 12 h and the first meal was taken. | Cal. Labor Code §512(a); DLSE meal-period FAQ |
Rest breaks | 10 min paid per 4 h worked or major fraction thereof: 3.5–6 h → 1, over 6 h → 2, over 10 h → 3, over 14 h → 4. None for shifts under 3.5 h. Not waivable. | IWC Wage Orders §12; DLSE rest-period FAQ |
Premium | One additional hour at the regular rate of pay per workday a meal break is not provided, and one per workday for rest breaks — separately, at most one of each per day. | Cal. Labor Code §226.7(c); Ferra v. Loews (2021) |
Overtime | Computed on the regular rate of pay. | Ferra v. Loews (2021); DLSE |
Minimum wage | $16.50/h statewide (from 1 Jan 2025); local ordinances can be higher — set the location's own figure on the card. | Cal. Labor Code §1182.12; DIR minimum-wage FAQ |
Split shift | One hour at the minimum wage per workday with an unpaid, non-working gap of more than an hour between work periods. The offset the DLSE allows when the day's wages already exceed the minimum by the premium is deliberately not applied — the report shows the hour and payroll decides. | IWC Wage Orders §4(C); DLSE split-shift FAQ |
Reporting-time pay | Reported for a scheduled shift and given less than half of it → paid for half the scheduled hours, never fewer than 2 nor more than 4, at the regular rate. | IWC Wage Orders §5(A); DLSE reporting-time FAQ |
Sources: <https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=LAB§ionNum=512>, <https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=LAB§ionNum=226.7>, <https://www.dir.ca.gov/iwc/wageorderindustries.htm>, <https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/faq_mealperiods.htm>, <https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/faq_restperiods.htm>.
How the deadline is read: "no later than the end of the 5th hour" includes the 5-hour mark itself — a meal break that begins exactly 5:00 into the shift is on time; 5:01 is late.