Break Rules
Plan staggered lunches and breaks into shifts, and keep unpaid breaks out of scheduled hours.
What Break Rules Do
Break Rules plan lunches and breaks into your schedule. You set a rule once, for example a 30-minute unpaid lunch on shifts over 4 hours, and every shift that qualifies gets a break time. Staff see their break on their shift, and unpaid breaks come off scheduled hours and labor cost.
Meal Breaks
Longer breaks (typically 30-60 minutes) for meals. Usually unpaid and required after a certain number of hours worked.
Rest Breaks
Shorter paid breaks (typically 10-15 minutes). Add a second rule for these if your workplace schedules them.
Break Rules is included in the Team plan and above.
Setting Up Break Rules
Open Features
Click Features in the sidebar, find Break Rules, and switch it on.
Set Your Rules
Click Configure to edit the starting rule (a 30-minute unpaid lunch on shifts longer than 4 hours) or Add break rule for another. Each rule has:
- • A name (e.g., Lunch)
- • Length in minutes
- • Paid or unpaid
- • Which shifts get it: shifts longer than a number of hours
- • Optionally, the most hours someone can work without it. Long shifts get a second break so no stretch goes over the limit.
- • Optionally, a shift length that always gets a second one, for places that require two breaks on long shifts.
Choose Suggested or Manual Times
With Suggest break times on, SimpleStaff picks a time for each break. Turn it off if you'd rather place every break yourself.
Save
New and edited shifts pick up the rules right away.
How Breaks Work on the Schedule
Spread Out and Staggered
A shift's breaks are spaced evenly through it, with the longest (usually lunch) in the middle. A 9-5 with a lunch and two short breaks gets them around 10:45, 12:45 and 3:00. If someone else in the same role is already on break then, the break moves so people aren't all out at once.
Moving a Break
Open the shift and change the break time, length, or paid setting under Breaks. A break you've changed stays where you put it. If you later move the shift to another day, the break moves with it.
Missing Breaks
You can remove a break or add an extra one. A shift that should have a break but doesn't shows a No lunch tag (using your rule's name). If a rule has a limit on hours without it and a break has been moved so someone would work longer than that, the shift shows Lunch gap. Both are reminders, not blocks: you can still save and publish.
What Staff See
Staff see their break time on their shifts once the week is published. A changed break counts as a schedule change, so it waits for you to publish like any other edit.
Break Time Display
Week view lists each break under the shift. Day view shows breaks as a striped segment inside the shift bar.
Common Break Requirements
| Location | Meal Break | Rest Break |
|---|---|---|
| California | 30 min after 5 hours | 10 min per 4 hours |
| New York | 30 min after 6 hours | Varies by industry |
| Washington | 30 min after 5 hours | 10 min per 4 hours |
| Ontario | 30 min after 5 hours | No requirement |
| UK | 20 min after 6 hours | Included in meal break |
Example: Ontario
Ontario requires a 30-minute eating period so no one works more than five hours in a row. Set up one rule: Lunch, 30 minutes, unpaid, on shifts longer than 5 hours, no more than 5 hours of work without it. A 10-hour shift gets one lunch placed so neither half runs past five hours; an 11-hour shift gets two. Coffee breaks aren't required in Ontario. If you give them, add a separate paid rule; they don't count as the eating period.
Always verify requirements with your local labor authority.
Hours Calculation
With Break Rules on, unpaid breaks come off scheduled hours in the schedule's labor summary, in payroll (when it uses scheduled hours), and in reports. Paid breaks don't change anything.
Example:
- • Shift: 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM (8 hours)
- • Unpaid lunch: 30 minutes
- • Paid rest break: 15 minutes
- • Paid hours: 7 hours 30 minutes
- • Hours on site: 8 hours
Each employee's weekly hours on the schedule, and limits like maximum hours, still count the full shift. Breaks punched on the time clock are set separately, in Time clock settings.
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