How should flexible work hours separate breaks from waiting time?

Record actual events before calculating totals

A basic flow is Clock In → Break Out → Break In → Clock Out with support for more than one break. Each event should retain employee, timestamp, site/project, source and correction reason when manually adjusted. Net active intervals are then calculated from events instead of subtracting a fixed lunch hour.

Thailand’s labour-department working-conditions form records normal working time and break duration separately by work type, including construction, illustrating why break time should be visible data rather than hidden inside one calculation formula.

References: [2]

Separate raw time from policy calculation

Raw events explain what happened; the policy layer determines target hours, rounding, tolerances, overtime eligibility and approval. If policy changes later, preserve original timestamps and apply a different calculation version rather than rewriting history.

Thailand’s Labour Protection Act framework in Section 23 sets limits and rules for normal working time with differences by type of work. Product configuration therefore should not hard-code a single “eight or nine hours equals the law everywhere” assumption. Organisation settings need appropriate policy/legal review.

References: [1]

Record waiting explicitly instead of assuming it is a break

Waiting for materials, machinery, site access or instructions can have a different business and legal context from a personal break. Record a waiting reason and site/foreman context, then let HR/payroll policy determine treatment rather than automatically turning all waiting into Break.

The separation also lets management distinguish reduced productive time caused by normal breaks from operational bottlenecks—different problems requiring different action.

Notify the foreman when a worker starts and ends a break

Where supervisors coordinate labour in real time, Break Out and Break In can update live worker status and notify the relevant project/site according to policy. The supervisor sees a recorded break rather than an unexplained absence.

Notifications should support operations, not become an automatic disciplinary system, and should expose no more data than the role needs. Offline mode should preserve event time separately from sync time so a delayed connection does not alter the actual break period.

UAT real flexible days, not only an 08:00–17:00 example

Linda lists VertexHR for attendance workflows and requires module, permission and data-handoff confirmation before onboarding. Test a worker starting at 11:00, breaking at 14:30, returning 15:15, taking multiple breaks, forgetting Break In, syncing offline, requesting correction and recording a waiting state for HR review.

The result should expose raw events, net intervals, policy version, correction history and notification lineage separately so reviewers can explain how the final hour total was produced.

References: [3]

Apply it to your business

Auditable flexible hours begin by recording reality, then applying a reviewed policy. Do not force field work into a fixed-break assumption merely because it is easier for the software to calculate.