🎯 This article is intended for users who haven't imported an award via our Award library. You can navigate to How to work with breaks if you have imported an award via our Award library.

If you are unsure of what break-related employment terms are correct for your business or your employees, we encourage you to visit the Fair Work Commission Awards finder page or contact the Fair Work Ombudsman to discuss this further. You may also wish to seek independent legal advice as may be appropriate for your business. Getting this right is very important and sets the foundation for paying your employees correctly. Please also note that overriding the breaks required for your employee could be in breach of your compliance obligations. You should seek independent legal advice as appropriate for your business.

You can set up break rules that automatically apply a break to the shifts in your schedule, or you can add them manually on a shift-by-shift basis. If you want your employees to use Punch Clock to punch in and out of their breaks, click here.

Please note: Any penalties payable to employees relating to missing meal breaks are not automated in Planday, and you will have to manually adjust the shifts for the appropriate penalty to apply.

Automatic breaks

Set up automatic break rules to automatically apply breaks either at a specific time of day or after a set amount of time has been worked.

For both Time of day and Time after start breaks, you can determine:

How long a shift must be before an employee receives a break.
The days it applies to.
If the break should be paid or unpaid.
The Department(s) and Employee group(s) the break applies to.

Setting up automatic breaks based on time of the day

First, go to Settings > Schedule > Break rules and press Add break.

To add a break at a specific time of day, press Add break, and select the Time of day break type. Give your break a name, set how long the shift must be for this break to be applicable and set when the break should start and end.

Setting up automatic breaks based on time after start of a shift

If you need to give employees a break after they've worked a certain amount of time, go to Settings > Schedule > Break rules, press Add break, then choose the Time after start break rule. Specify the break length, then choose how far into the shift the break should begin and if it should be paid or unpaid.

Setting up multiple automatic breaks

If you want to set up multiple break rules that occur throughout the day, we recommend that you have the longest shift possible in mind and add all the breaks accordingly.

Follow the steps described above to create your first break rule of the day
For the following break(s), add only the additional break time and not the total break time. The breaks will accumulate.

For example, if you want to give your employees one 10 minute paid break if the shift is 4 hours and another 10 minute paid break if the shift is 7 hours, configure this as two separate break rules:

Break rule 1:

Break rule 2:

This will result in 2 x 10 min paid breaks, a total of 20 minutes if the shift is 7 hours or longer.

See related articles:

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