Daily Flex Limits

The Daily Flex Limits constraint flags days on which an employee works too far above or below the day’s norm.

When to use

Use this constraint when:

• Employees may build up flex, but only up to a certain amount of overtime per day
• Employees may go home early, but not more than a certain amount below the norm
• You want managers to notice unusually long or short days

Parameters

Fill in at least one of the two, or the policy cannot be saved. Both are positive numbers, and 0 is allowed: a Max Overtime (minutes) of 0 flags any minute over the norm.

How it works

For each day up to and including today, mTime compares the worked time with the day’s norm:

1. Worked time is the time that counts towards flex: time registrations, time filled in automatically from check in/out, and time off.
2. The norm is the day’s working time after public holidays are taken out. Time off does not reduce it — time off counts as worked time instead.
3. If worked time is more than Max Overtime (minutes) above the norm, or more than Max Deficit (minutes) below it, the day is flagged. A difference exactly at the limit is allowed.

What that means on different days:

• A full day of time off counts as the norm worked, so it is not flagged.
• A day with no norm — a weekend, a day off in the employee’s work pattern, or a full public holiday — has a norm of zero. Any work on it counts as overtime, so it is flagged if it exceeds Max Overtime (minutes) . It can never be flagged for a deficit.
• Today is checked too. While today’s time is still being registered, today can show a deficit warning that goes away once the day is complete.
• Days after today are not checked.

What the employee sees

The day is marked on the timesheet, and the period overview shows a message such as Overtime exceeds the daily limit: 3 hours over norm, max allowed 2 hours. or Deficit exceeds the daily limit: …. Under Blocking constraints the timesheet cannot be submitted while a day is outside the limits; under Non-blocking constraints it is a warning only.

Examples

At most 2 hours over or under

1. Add the Daily Flex Limits plugin under Non-blocking constraints
2. Set Max Overtime (minutes) to 120
3. Set Max Deficit (minutes) to 120

With a 7.5-hour norm, a 9.5-hour day passes (exactly 2 hours over), a 10-hour day is flagged, and a 5-hour day is flagged (2.5 hours under).

No more than 1 hour overtime, short days allowed

1. Add the Daily Flex Limits plugin under Blocking constraints
2. Set Max Overtime (minutes) to 60
3. Leave Max Deficit (minutes) empty

Short days are never flagged. A day more than one hour over the norm — including more than one hour of work on a Saturday — must be corrected before the timesheet can be submitted.

Troubleshooting