Setup Considerations: attendance rules

What this achieves

An attendance policy is the set of rules Humavera applies when it decides whether someone was present, for how long, and whether any of it was overtime. These are the decisions that turn raw clock-ins into a number payroll can use, so they are worth settling before anyone starts punching.

Decision 1: how many policies

Policies can apply to everyone, to departments, to locations, or to individuals. Where more than one matches an employee, the one with the higher priority wins.

Start with a single policy covering everyone and add narrower ones only where a group genuinely works differently. Every extra policy is another rule set to keep aligned when the working week changes.

Example: HC Corp UK Ltd runs one policy for its London office staff and a second for warehouse staff whose shifts and overtime threshold differ. Both sit above a company-wide default.

A current limitation: individual assignment is managed outside this screen. Existing individual assignments are preserved, but you cannot create one here.

Decision 2: grace, and what it signals

Grace is the number of minutes after the expected start before someone counts as late. It is a policy statement as much as a setting.

A generous grace period removes noise from a workforce whose commute is unpredictable. A short one produces accurate lateness data that somebody then has to act on. Choose based on whether you intend to manage lateness or merely measure it.

Example: setting grace at HC Corp UK Ltd’s London office absorbs a delayed train without a manager having to dismiss a flag every morning.

Decision 3: rounding

Punch times can be recorded exactly, or rounded to the nearest 5 or 15 minutes.

Option	Description
None	Times are kept as punched. The most accurate, and the most likely to produce odd-looking minutes on a timesheet.
Nearest 5 min	Light smoothing.
Nearest 15 min	Heavier smoothing, common where pay is calculated in quarter hours.

Rounding cuts both ways for the employee, so decide it once and apply it consistently rather than varying it by group without a reason you can explain.

Decision 4: overtime threshold

Overtime is counted beyond a threshold expressed in minutes, measured against the expected day. Expected minutes per day can be set on the policy or derived from the employee record.

Deriving from the employee is the better default where people work different contracted hours, because a single expected figure would misjudge part-time staff.

Example: deriving expected hours at HC Corp UK Ltd means a part-time employee’s overtime is measured against their own contracted day, not a full-time one.

Decision 5: breaks

A break can be deducted automatically, and it can be paid or unpaid. Automatic deduction saves people punching out for lunch; it also deducts a break from someone who worked through one.

Pair automatic deduction with a correction route people actually know about, so a worked-through break can be reclaimed rather than quietly lost.

Decision 6: how strictly to enforce location

Where geofencing is in use, a punch outside the allowed area can be flagged or rejected.

Option	Description
Flag for review	The punch is accepted and marked for someone to look at. Nobody is blocked from recording their time.
Reject the punch	The punch is blocked outright.

Rejecting is stricter and it fails hard: an employee whose location cannot be verified cannot record their time at all, and will contact someone. Flagging keeps the record complete and moves the judgement to a human afterwards.

Consider also that a punch records without location where the employee denies permission or the lookup times out. Rejecting on violation does not mean every punch carries verified coordinates.

Decision 7: what happens to a missing punch

Someone will forget to check out. Auto-close missing punch closes an unpaired check-in at the expected end of the day rather than only flagging it.

Option	Description
On	The day reconciles with a plausible end time and no manual step.
Off	The day stays flagged as a missing punch until someone corrects it.

On is kinder to administrators and assumes the expected end is close enough. Off is more accurate and creates a queue somebody has to work. Neither is wrong; choose according to whether your exception queue gets attended to.

Decision 8: which punch sources to allow

Sources include web, mobile with location, mobile with a face check, a biometric device, and manual entry. Selecting none allows all of them.

That default is worth stating plainly, because an empty list reads like “nothing permitted” and means the opposite.

What is expensive to change later

Decision	Cost of changing later
Rounding	High in perception. It changes recorded time for everyone and invites questions about pay.
Overtime threshold	High. It changes what is payable, and prior periods were calculated differently.
Geofence enforcement from flag to reject	Medium to high. People who could previously punch suddenly cannot.
Grace	Low to medium. It changes lateness reporting rather than pay.
Allowed sources	Low, unless removing a source people rely on.
Policy priority	Low.

What happens next

Create the policy, then the geofences it refers to if you are enforcing location. Rosters, coverage rules, and reporting all sit on top of these rules, because they decide what a reconciled day says in the first place.