59. Rounding Rules

TimeKeeper has an extensive set of rounding rules. By default, they are off in the system. They can be useful if you want to round time entries to the nearest X minutes, or exclude time worked before/after their scheduled hours. You may also use these settings to allow your employees a few minutes grace either side of clocking in or clocking out.

There are a number of rounding settings available.

“Count Time Worked Before Expected Start Time” and “Count Time Worked After Expected End Time”. Once these are switched off, only time within an employees scheduled start and end times (according to their working pattern) will be counted towards their timesheet. For example, if they were due to start at 9AM and clock in at 8:30AM, the first 30 minutes of their shift would not be counted towards their timesheet.

A common requirement is to round all times to the nearest 15 minutes. In this case, you will need to select 'Round all clock/in out events' and 'Specify global rounding rules'.

The 'Rounding interval' determines the intervals that times are rounded up or down to. In this example, our interval would be 15 minutes.

The 'Rounding split' determines whether to round up or down. In this example, we'll set the split to 7 minutes.

You will then need to select if you'd like this rules to apply before and after clock in and clock out. The system will generate scenarios which show how your rounding rules would be applied to someone working a standard 9AM - 5PM working pattern.

We will toggle each scenario on, and revisit what this means.

“The Round Up at Clock In” rule means that, given our 7 minute split, any employee who clocks in at 9:08AM to 9:14AM will get their time rounded up to 9:15AM. This also applies before their clock in, so if they clock in at 8:53AM to 8:59AM, their time will be rounded to 9AM.

TimeKeeper supports more complex rounding rules as well - so if you wanted to only round up after clock in, and not before clock in, or round with different intervals, we support that. This can be done by disabling the Global Rounding Rules setting, which will then show more rounding split options for each scenario.

These individual rounding rules can get very complex - so please do reach out to the support team at support@timekeeper.co.uk for help, if you require.

There is legislation on rounding in some countries, particularly that rounding does not favour the employer. The customer is responsible for the application of these rules and ensuring they abide by their country's legislation, and not TimeKeeper.

Updated on: 22/07/2024