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How Does Automatic Lunch Deduction Work for Workers on Multiple Job Sites?

This article will summarize how Corfix automatically deducts a lunch break from the correct timecard when a worker reaches a set number of hours in a day — including how it handles workers who move between multiple job sites.

Overview & Explanation

When workers move between multiple job sites throughout the day, each site generates its own timecard. This creates a challenge: the lunch question may never appear (if the worker keeps switching before reaching the threshold), or it may appear too many times (once per site). Neither outcome accurately reflects a single lunch break.

The Automatic Lunch Deduction setting solves this by tracking a worker's total hours across all timecards for the day and deducting the lunch break from the specific timecard that pushes them over the threshold — no matter how many sites they visited.

How It Works

Setting It Up

  1. In Corfix, navigate to Timekeeping Settings for the relevant policy.
  2. Select the Lunch tab.
  3. Set Lunch Removal to Auto using the dropdown.
  4. Enter the number of hours a worker must reach before lunch is deducted in the Hours Until Lunch Removal field (e.g., 2.5 hours).
  5. Enter the number of minutes to deduct in the Lunch Minutes field (e.g., 30 minutes).
  6. Toggle Opt-out of Lunch on or off depending on whether workers should be able to decline the deduction.
  7. Toggle Flag if no lunch is taken on if you want a flag raised when no lunch is recorded for the day.
  8. Click Save.

What Happens at the Threshold

Once a worker's combined hours for the day cross the Hours Until Lunch Removal threshold:

  • The lunch deduction (e.g., 30 minutes) is removed from the timecard that triggered the threshold.
  • If that timecard doesn't have enough recorded time to cover the full deduction, the remainder is taken from the previous timecard(s) in sequence.
  • In some cases, this may bring a timecard down to 0 minutes of recorded time, which is expected behavior and not an error.

⚠️ Heads up: A timecard showing 0 minutes is normal when the lunch deduction spans across timecards. This does not mean the worker's hours were lost — it means the deduction was distributed correctly.

Opt-Out Behaviour

If Opt-out of Lunch is enabled, workers will be prompted and can confirm or decline the lunch deduction when they clock out or reach the threshold. If they decline, no time is removed.

Use Cases and Benefits

  • Multi-site workers: A worker who clocks in at three different sites in one day will have lunch deducted from the right timecard automatically — no manual adjustment needed.
  • Consistent daily deductions: Lunch is only deducted once per day, regardless of how many job sites or timecards a worker has.
  • Reduced payroll corrections: Supervisors and payroll admins spend less time manually fixing timecards where lunch was deducted multiple times or not at all.
  • Flagging missed lunches: With Flag if no lunch is taken enabled, your team is notified when a worker's day ends without a lunch deduction — useful for compliance tracking.
  • Flexible opt-out: Workers can be given the option to confirm they did not take a lunch break, keeping deductions accurate and fair.

Behaviour Changes: What's New?

Before After (Auto Deduction)
Lunch question appeared on every timecard when a worker switched sites Lunch is asked once and deducted from the correct timecard automatically
Setting threshold to 0 prompted workers every time they clocked out or switched sites Workers are prompted once, at the threshold, across their full day
Lunch could be deducted multiple times in a day across multiple timecards Lunch is deducted once, split across timecards only if needed to cover the full amount
Workers on 10+ sites might never reach the threshold on a single card, skipping lunch entirely Daily hours are tracked in total, so the threshold is always reached correctly