Flexitime account

Time recording with flexitime accounts has been available in CrewBrain for some time now. With the new logic for time recording, we now offer an optimized variant that solves the following problems of the previous time recording:

• More flexible options for surcharges (in future: salary components)

• Break deduction for shifts over midnight

• Evaluation options for rest periods and other time violations

This payroll type generally applies to all permanent employees, mini-jobbers, working students, etc. As a rule, this includes all those who are bound to their company by a contract.

Base data

The configuration of the new logic for time recording with flexitime account is largely identical to the previous one. If the new logic is selected in the payroll period, the following information must first be entered:

• Valid from (with time limit if applicable)

• Working days (usually Monday to Friday, also for part-time employees - see working hours)

• Salary plus ancillary wage costs (for calculation in the statistics)
  • A distinction can be made between a fixed and a variable salary. In Germany, only the fixed salary is generally relevant.
  • You have the option of defining a maximum amount. This can be relevant for €520 employees, for example. During job planning, this amount is checked so that it is already clear in the request dialog when the amount for a month has been reached and the employee should no longer be requested or booked.

• Working time (hours per day, week or month)
  • A weekly working time should be calculated down to a 5-day week and stored per day.
  • If the “per week” option is used, the target time is always deducted on Sundays. Please note that the start of work must be a Monday or alternatively a start value must be used.
  • A classic 40-hour week should always be stored with “8 hours per day”. If the hours differ for individual days, the days can be defined individually.

• Working time for vacation, sick days and public holidays
  • If the working time is calculated per day, this value can be left at 0
  • In the case of monthly working hours, the contractually defined value for vacation days must be entered here
  • If the employee does not receive compensation for public holidays (e.g.because this is excluded by a collective agreement), this can also be entered here. The system can then, for example, only calculate the public holiday bonuses instead of the public holiday compensation.

Flex time

There are three options for the flexitime account:

• Update flextime from previous period (default)

• Start time for flexitime (required if a start value is to be transferred from a previous system)

• Do not create a flextime account

If changes are to be made to the time account at a later date (e.g. for payments or similar), this can be entered directly via the “Time recording” menu item as an overtime payment. In these cases, no changes need to be made to the statement period. The start value for the flexitime account should therefore only be set once and then permanently updated.

Break deduction

CrewBrain is able to automatically deduct breaks if the legal minimum has not been reached by the employee for a day. The new logic can calculate this break deduction correctly even for shifts over midnight. The default is the currently valid regulation in Germany (30 minutes after 6 hours working time and another 15 minutes after 9 hours).

The break deduction should not replace the recording of breaks by the employees. It is merely intended to encourage employees to record breaks cleanly, since "saving" breaks does not give them any advantage. Nevertheless, an accurate (and recorded by the employee) proof of breaks is legally essential and should not be replaced by automatic break deduction. In addition, automatically deducted breaks cannot be taken into account when calculating salary components (surcharges) because the system does not know when the break took place.

Capping

There are two variants of capping: daily and monthly capping. The daily capping can be used to limit working hours to 10 hours per day, for example. Again, as with the break deduction, this should not be used as a default but only as an exception to encourage employees to comply with labor law rules.

There are three different options for monthly capping. In addition to capping to a maximum number of overtime hours (= flexitime), there are two variants of fixed capping.

One works on a monthly basis and caps only the overtime from the current month, while the other works on a flexitime basis. This one reduces the balance over several months even if during those month the employee worked less, because there is still a time credit from previous months.

Planned days

Parallel to the target and actual times, CrewBrain can also count the working days for an employee based on the work, travel and off days and the billing factor. A target value can also be stored for these days in order to obtain a quick overview of days worked. If this feature is not to be used, the value can be left at 0.

Additional wage components (e.g. surcharges)

In CrewBrain you can define additional wage components like surcharges to get them treated seperately in time recording or statements. For each component you can define a timerange and the weekdays that this component should be calculated for. This gives you the ability to subdivide the working hours into different components with different time ranges.

Before creating wage components, you should first create categories for these components (Administration > Time recording > Wage components > Categories). Any number of wage components can later be assigned to each category, and these will be displayed in groups in the payroll and other places. Typical categories would be "Night shift", "Sunday shift" or "Holiday shift". If different levels of surcharges apply which have to be evaluated separately, it is possible to create "Night shift 25%" and "Night shift 40%" separately, for example.

Please find more information about the wage components and how to create them here.

Time recording

In this section it is possible to define how the employee or freelancer is allowed to participate in the time recording (e.g. by manual entry or by clocking in at the time clocks).

Time off

The employee's leave can also be specified in the payroll period. As with the flexitime account, there is also an option to define a start value. This could be necessary for different reasons:

• Transfer from a previous system
• Fixed-term contracts or start during the year, if a different number of days than calculated by the system should be granted (e.g. due to rounding differences)

If you want to make changes to the leave account later (for example, for payouts or similar), you can do this directly via the "Time recording" menu item as a leave payout. In these cases, there is no need to make any changes to the payroll period. The start value for the leave account should therefore only be set once and then permanently updated.