Rounding Rules let you control how early or late clock-ins and clock-outs are treated on a timesheet, without needing a candidate or back office user to manually adjust times.

They answer two everyday questions:

• If someone clocks in a few minutes early or late, should their pay still start at the scheduled time, or at the time they actually clocked in?

• If someone clocks out late, should they be paid for that extra time?

 

A built-in Tester is also available so you can check your configuration before it goes live.

Rounding Rules can be applied anywhere a Dynamic Rate can be applied - at Shift Job level and/or at individual Placement level - and each Placement can have its own Rounding Rule applied, independent of other candidates on the same job.

Important: Rounding Rules, Break Rules, and Dynamic Rates each work independently - there isn't a single combined Test Calculator. However, when a timesheet is processed, Tracker applies them in this order:

1. Rounding Rules - adjusts early/late clock in and out times

2. Break Rules - deducts any unpaid break time

3. Dynamic Rates - the remaining hours are then costed against your Dynamic Rate configuration

 

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Rounding Rules are created within Tools & Settings > Back Office group > Dynamic Rounding Rules.

Here, there are options to create the Sets and Rules within them, Search for rules, Filter the list and Test Rounding Rules.

 

New Sets are create via the New Rounding Set button.

When creating or editing a Rounding Set they can be generic (available to everyone) or scoped to a specific Company/Client, Work Type, and so on.

 

Once a Rounding Rule Set is created, the Rounding Rules can be added via the Add button, and given a Name.

Here, are options to set the Rules for when a candidate clocks in either Early or Late.

 

Early arrivals | Flag if clocked in more than (minutes early)

If a candidate clocks in early, Tracker always rounds their start time forward to the scheduled start time for pay purposes - this part isn't optional and doesn't affect hours worked either way.

What is configurable is a separate early-clocking flag: "Flag if clocked in more than X minutes early." This only controls whether the early clock-in is flagged when the candidate enters their time - it has no effect on the hours paid.

• Setting this to 0 does not turn flagging off — it means any early arrival at all gets flagged.

 

Late arrivals | Still Pay from Scheduled start if late by up to (minutes)

Lateness works differently. Each Rounding Rule has a grace window (in minutes):

• If the candidate clocks in late, but within the grace window, they're still paid from the scheduled start time.

• If they clock in later than the grace window allows, pay reverts to the actual clock-in time instead.

• No flag is raised for late clock-ins - flagging only applies to early arrivals.

• Setting the grace window to 0 means zero tolerance — any lateness at all reverts to actual clock-in time.

 

Using a rule configured as 20 minutes early (flag threshold) / 10 minutes late (grace window), with a 9:00 AM scheduled start:

Clock-out behaviour is simpler, and only one side of it is configurable:

• Leaving early - always paid as the actual clocked-out time. This isn't configurable and no rounding is applied.

• Leaving late - whether the candidate is paid for the extra time depends on whether their Dynamic Rate Set has an active Overtime Rule:

  • No active Overtime Rule - the clock-out is capped at the scheduled end time; time worked beyond schedule is not recorded.

  • Active Overtime Rule - the candidate is paid for the actual clocked-out time.

 

Worked example

Scheduled end time 5:00 PM, actual clock-out 5:30 PM (30 minutes late):

Days of the Week

Every Rounding Rule has a Days of Week setting, and it's worth taking care here - leaving every day unticked is not the same as ticking every day. You must explicitly select which days the rule applies to.

 

Saving a Rule

Ensure Active is ticked (assuming you want this rule to be live, and click Save.

 

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Rounding Rules are designed so you can set up different Sets for different patterns of days - for example, one Set for Monday–Friday and a separate Set for weekends, each with its own early/late thresholds. This is the recommended way to vary rounding behaviour across the week.

 

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The UI also currently allows you to create more than one Rounding Rule within the same Set, for the same day. Ideally, only one rule should apply per day per Set - but if more than one does cover the same day, order decides which one is used:

• Rules are checked in the order they appear in the Set, from top to bottom.

• The first matching rule (highest up the order) takes priority - once it matches, the rest are ignored for that day.

If you need different behaviour for different days, it's best practice to use separate Sets (as above) rather than stacking multiple rules for the same day within one Set - that way there's no ambiguity about which rule is controlling the outcome.

 

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Within the Rounding Testing you have options to set the following:

• Date - useful where you’ve rule sets covering different days of the week

• Scheduled From & To times - to set the base line for the calculation

• Actual In & Out times - to test the rules and show the outcome.

• Assume the Dynamic Rate Set has an active Overtime Rule - this alone decides the clock-out side. On = a late clock-out is paid as actual time. Off = it caps at the scheduled end.

You can add in multiple days with different times, to test both the clocking In & Out outcomes.

Once Time Entries are added, click Calculate Rounding.

You get a result for each day, describing what has been applied, and a breakdown by Rounding Rule below (useful if more than one Rule is applied to a set).

 

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Rounding Rules are set in the same place as Dynamic Rates - at Shift Job creation, and/or at individual Placement level, so each candidate can have their own Rounding Rule if needed.

 

Within a Placement record, once a Rounding Rule Set is selected from the dropdown, a summary of the rules within that set appears below it, so you can confirm what's been applied before timesheets start coming in.

 

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On saving a timesheet, the relevant adjustments, as per the Rounding Rule set on the placement, are applied automatically. Any Clock In’s before the set time will flagged.

Take a placement with a Rounding Rule applied, but no active Overtime Rule on its Dynamic Rate Set, and a scheduled shift of 9:00 AM–5:00 PM:

Once the timesheet is saved, hovering over the flagged entry will display the details of the flag. These details can also be seen by clicking into the day.