Meal Penalty - Managing and Cancelling (California)

Meal Penalty - Managing and Cancelling (California)

California clients may elect to have the system auto-add an extra hour of pay to hourly employees in order to automate the penalty process. The system will look to see if an employee has taken their lunch before the 5th hour, which means the Meal Penalty will kick in if no lunch has been initiated by 5.01 hours. If the employee has only a 6-hour shift, the Meal Penalty will still appear and will require the Meal Penalty to be "Cancelled" if the employee has waived the meal. This will also apply to employees who take a lunch within the first 5 hours but whose total shift exceeds 10 hours. In this case, the 2nd Meal Penalty can be waived. Below will outline how to monitor and manage the process of Cancelling Meal Penalty hours that should NOT be paid out during payroll. 

Below you can see that the "Exception" of Meal Penalty is showing us clearly where the Meal Penalty is occurring on the time entry sheet (RED ARROWS). If you click the trash can icon, you'd only be removing the alert of the exception and removing this from reportable functions. If you'd like to remove the hours to NOT be paid, you'd need to CANCEL the Meal Penalty. This is done by choosing the GREEN arrow to drop down under the "Meal Penalty" column on the line item the penalty that should be canceled. 




Now once you choose from the drop-down, the pop-up below will appear. From here if the first Meal Penalty should be waived, choose accordingly, but if this is for the second Meal Penalty (after 10 hours), cancel Meal Penalty 2. 




After cancellation, the hours should be updated on your Summary by Day screen. 

If an employee incurred more than on Meal Penalty for the day, the system will remove the second to ensure only one is paid to the employee. 

If any additional help is needed, please reach out to your assigned payroll specialist. 

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