Target hours, working-time model, rounding: the basic settings per person

Before the first clock-in is worth anything, Zeitflex needs five pieces of information: the business’s industry, at least one working-time model, the contract details of each person, the rounding rule and the federal state. Every later figure — target/actual, overtime, premiums, payroll preparation — is calculated with exactly these values. This article shows where they are, which limits apply and what Zeitflex does with them. And what it does not.

What the industry presets

When registering, you choose one of 13 industries (Trades & construction, Hospitality, Care & social services, Retail, Security services …). The industry controls only presets, not behaviour: it determines which premium rules, working-time models and modules are created, what projects are called (“Site”, “Job”, “Route”) and which daily limit the working-time check uses. Two businesses with the same needs get the same template, even if their trade registration says something different.

You can change the industry later under Settings → Business. A checkbox decides whether the terms and modules of the new industry are applied — in that case the daily limit of the working-time check also switches to the value of the new template. Premiums and working-time models stay exactly as you set them up in any case.

Creating working-time models

1. Open Settings → Working-time models.
2. At the top are the templates for your industry — one click applies one of them.
3. Or create your own model below: New model (name), Hrs/week, Days/week, Type.
4. Create.

These limits apply to a model: the name needs at least 2 characters, the weekly hours are between 0 and 80, the days between 1 and 7. Four forms are available as the type:

The server accepts core hours only for flexitime; for any other type it rejects them with a message. A flexitime model can also carry caps for the flexitime account — the flexitime templates of the office industry come with them (for example +40 and −10 hours). The form for your own model has no field for this; the caps only get into a model via a template. How they are calculated is explained under Flexitime and overtime account.

The contract details per person

Open Employees → New employee (or Edit on an existing person). The sections Employment & role and Pay contain the fields that determine every calculation:

You enter the weekly hours as a decimal number (“38.5”). From them, Zeitflex calculates the target for an average month: weekly hours × 4.33, rounded half up. For 40 hours that is 10,392 minutes, i.e. 173 hours and 12 minutes. Public holidays do not reduce this monthly target — it is an average, not a calendar.

Changes to pay and target time take effect immediately; months already closed remain unaffected. You enter the start date and vacation days when creating the person — these two fields no longer appear in the edit form.

Rounding: business-wide and always rounded up

Under Settings → Rounding you choose between No rounding, 5 minutes and 15 minutes. The rule applies to the whole business; there is no rounding per person.

Zeitflex does not round the individual clock-in — so not “round up clock-in, round down clock-out”. What is rounded is the net working time of the day: first all working time of the day is added up, then the clocked breaks are deducted, then any missing statutory break, and only the result is rounded up to the next full 5- or 15-minute interval. Nothing is ever rounded down.

The rounded time flows into payroll preparation (month-end close and preview), into bonuses and into the project analysis. The timesheet, on the other hand, shows the duration of each entry from clock-in to clock-out; the weekly row Clocked there adds up the work entries and shows the clocked breaks alongside — without rounding and without the automatic deduction of a missing statutory break. The reports and the mini-job projection on the dashboard are also calculated without rounding. If the timesheet and the month-end close differ by a few minutes per day, that is the reason — the month-end close is what counts for pay.

Break deduction: automatic, no switch

Under § 4 ArbZG (German Working Hours Act), a 30-minute break is required for more than 6 hours of work, and 45 minutes for more than 9 hours. If part of this is missing from the clock-ins at the end of a working day, Zeitflex deducts the difference automatically — per working day, before rounding — and records this as a warning in the daily calculation. The basis is the net working time after deducting the clocked breaks.

There is no switch in the interface to turn this deduction off. Zeitflex always calculates with the automatic deduction. How to clock breaks correctly so that the deduction does not need to apply at all is explained under Recording breaks correctly.

Federal state and public holidays

Under Settings → Business → Federal state you choose one of the 16 states. Zeitflex knows the statewide statutory public holidays of each state — the movable ones based on the Easter formula, the Day of Repentance and Prayer in Saxony, Corpus Christi, Reformation Day, Epiphany and the others. Zeitflex does not know public holidays that apply only in individual municipalities (such as Assumption Day in parts of Bavaria or Corpus Christi in parts of Saxony and Thuringia).

What the federal state does: on a public holiday, the public holiday premium from your premium rules applies, and the day is shown as a public holiday in the audit folder. What it does not do: a person’s monthly target is not reduced by public holidays (see above). More on the rates under Understanding premiums.

Zeitflex creates the public holiday calendar at registration for the current and the following year. A later change of federal state is saved but does not create a new public holiday calendar — in this case, please contact the support team.

Still stuck?

The business’s other master data is explained under Setting up your business; how plus and minus hours arise from target and actual, under Flexitime and overtime account. For everything else, the support team is there for you.