Using Breaks in Companion

How Breaks Affect Billing and Payroll

Breaks may be actually recorded by caregivers using mobile/telephony clock ins, automatically applied based on the configuration attached to the Call Type/Service, or applied via manual override to an individual schedule.

If break hours are applied to a schedule via actual recorded breaks or automatically and there is no manual override, these hours will be totaled and saved to the schedule at time of Finalization.

When calculating Billing or Payroll, the break hours recorded will be subtracted from the total hours of the schedule during the calculation process.

For example, if you have a schedule from 9 AM to 5 PM for 8 hours with 0.5 hours of break time, 7.5 hours will actually be paid.

If a schedule has been broken into multiple records due to shift boundaries or splitting records at midnight, break time will be proportionally applied to each record.

Caregiver Recorded Breaks

Caregivers can use the HomeTrak Companion mobile app (iOS and Android) to record the actual times of breaks taken.

To record a break, the Schedule must be already "Clocked In" and not yet "Clocked Out". The options to start or end a break will then appear in the TimeCard menu or options beside the "Clock Out" option.

Caregivers will only be able to record breaks for the Break categories that are attached to the Call Type/Service in the Agency Office Module. If there are no Break categories attached to the Call Type, the options to record breaks will be hidden in the mobile app.

Automatically Applying Breaks

If the Call Type has an attached Break category that has the "Auto Create" option checked in its configuration, then when a schedule is finalized, if there are no actual breaks recorded for that matching category, Companion will automatically apply break hours as if there had been a break recorded for the Default Minutes in the configuration.

This is a handy tool to automatically apply standard breaks to a schedule without requiring caregivers or other employees to actually manually record this information.

For example, if you schedule and pay your Office Staff through Companion and wish to have their schedule(s) account for a half hour unpaid lunch break, you can set up a Break category on the Call Type with the "Auto Create" option enabled with a Default Minutes of 30. This would apply the half hour of break time automatically to the schedule(s) when finalized.

The Break category setup also includes a Minimum and Maximum length option to control the automatic application of breaks. If the finalized time of the schedule is outside of the range allowed, breaks will not be automatically applied. This will prevent automatically applying breaks when the employee works only a portion of a normal schedule.

Manual Overrides

Break Hours may also be manually overridden on any individual schedule. 

The finalized break time fields show up in the Schedule Edit screen in the Billing and Payroll information box at the bottom of the screen, next to the Billing and Payroll date/time/hours/rate override fields.

If there is nothing recorded in these fields when the schedule is finalized, the fields will be filled in with the calculated break hours from any actual or automatically applied breaks. If these numbers are manually adjusted, this is what will be used when Billing and/or Payroll are calculated.

Breaks with Live-In and Per Visit Schedules

Schedules with a "Live-In" Rate Type are a special case requiring some discussion.

The classic set up for a Live-In Rate Type is to use credited hours to represent the sleep time of a 24 hour live-in schedule. (Often 16 hours for a 24 hour schedule, which assumes 8 hours of "sleep time".) If you apply a break to a Live-In schedule it will NO LONGER use the credited hours to adjust the hours of the calculated payroll record(s) but use the break time instead to adjust the hours.

Consider and compare the following examples. The first Schedule has no breaks applied, and is the classic case of a Live-In schedule credited 16 hours for payroll for a 24 hour Live-In. The other schedules all have varying amounts of break time applied. Note that in all cases the configuration of the Rate Type remains unchanged - to credit 16 hours for a 24 hour Live-In, as this is still used in calculating the final amount from the pay hours and rate, that is, the Live-In rate will still be based off an expected 16 hours.

(* Finalized "Pay" hours from the schedule | ** Hours on the actual calculated payroll record(s))

Billing and Payroll for "Per Visit" schedules will not be affected by breaks (unless the total overall time becomes zero) as a Per Visit rate is by definition a flat amount.