Meal Compliance App Overview

Meal Compliance

1. What it is

Meal Compliance connects meal break behavior — from timesheets and attendance — with the legal documentation that supports it. The app monitors whether employees are actually taking or skipping meal breaks, manages signed waivers for those who skip, detects when behavior changes, and flags employees who are waiving meals without a valid waiver on file.

• Enablement: Meal Compliance requires a license and is off by default. An administrator enables it from Admin → Apps → All Apps.
• What it is not: Meal Compliance does not schedule breaks. Break rules for each state live under Admin → Compliance → Labor Law Rules, and whether they are observed or enforced is set under Admin → Work Policy Settings. This app manages the waiver documentation and compliance monitoring that sit on top of those rules.

2. Standing it up

1. Enable the app. Go to Admin → Apps → All Apps, find Meal Compliance, and enable it for your organization.
2. Set up jurisdictions. Meal break waiver requirements are per-jurisdiction (state, county, or city). Go to Admin → Jurisdictions and confirm your locations have active jurisdictions assigned. Without jurisdictions, the break compliance engine has no rules to evaluate and remains silently inert.
3. Configure break rules. The break compliance engine reads labor law rules of type “break” that resolve through your locations’ jurisdictions. Confirm at least one active break rule exists — the Break Compliance tab in Meal Compliance shows which rules are in force and which locations they cover.
4. Review default settings. Go to Meal Compliance → Settings and adjust the behavior detection window, waiver expiry period, and whether e-signature is required.
5. Grant access. Any employee can see the My Breaks tab (their own waiver status and break history). Managers can create and manage waivers for their direct reports. HR admins, app admins, and organization admins have full access to all employees’ waivers, compliance gap reports, break compliance findings, and CSV exports. Designate app admins under Admin → Apps → All Apps → Meal Compliance → App Admins if you want non-admin users to have full access.
6. Confirm it works. The Dashboard shows four tiles: Active Waivers, Pending Signatures, Behavior Alerts, and Invalidated. A coverage percentage appears once the system detects employees waiving meals. The Break Compliance tab shows any break-law findings the engine has recorded.

Silent-failure pairing: jurisdictions and break rules must both exist. A location with no jurisdiction resolves no break rule, so the engine writes no findings and the Break Compliance tab shows an empty report — which reads as “no violations” when it actually means “no rules”.

3. How it fits together

Waivers are the core records. A waiver is a signed document allowing one employee to voluntarily skip meal breaks. Each waiver belongs to one employee, optionally to a location and a jurisdiction, and moves through a lifecycle: Draft → Pending Signature → Active → Expired or Invalidated. A waiver that reaches its expiry date is swept to Expired automatically every four hours by a background job. Only managers, HR admins, and app admins can create waivers; employees cannot create their own, but an employee can withdraw their own waiver from My Breaks at any time. Waivers cannot be edited after creation — to correct a mistake, discard the draft (or invalidate a waiver that was already sent or activated) and create a new one.

Per-period elections apply in jurisdictions that define more than one meal period (for example, a 1st and 2nd meal period). Each period is waived independently — an employee might waive the 2nd meal period while taking the 1st. When only one meal period is defined, the waiver form shows a single Behavior State selector (Waiving or Taking) instead of per-period radios. Elections record only what the employee chose; whether a waiver applies on a given day depends on the jurisdiction’s rules for that period.

Example: an employee at a California location works varying shifts. Their waiver elects to waive the 1st meal period. On a 5.5-hour day, that election applies and the system expects them to skip the meal break. On a 7-hour day, the law does not allow the 1st period to be waived, so the system expects them to take it — the waiver is still active but does not apply that day.

Behavior detection runs in the background every four hours while autonomous actions are turned on (Settings → Autonomous actions). With autonomous actions off, no break pattern is analyzed and no new behavior is recorded, so the Compliance Gaps report, the dashboard coverage figure and compliance gap alerts dwindle as the last 30 days of recorded behavior age out; Ask AI can still analyze one employee’s pattern on request. When it runs, the system reads each employee’s completed and skipped break records of the Meal Break break type from Time & Attendance over a configurable detection window (default 14 days). A meal break recorded under another break type is not read, and one that was planned but never started counts neither as taken nor as skipped. Each day is scored independently:

• All meal breaks completed, none skipped → that day counts as taken.
• All meal breaks skipped, none completed → that day counts as waived.
• Some completed, some skipped → that day counts as mixed (neither side).

If an employee’s waived days are 70% or more of their scored days, their pattern is Waiving. If their taken days are 70% or more, the pattern is Taking. Below 70% on both sides — including days scored mixed — the pattern is Inconsistent. A minimum number of days with break data must exist in the window before a pattern is determined (default 3 days); below that threshold the result is also Inconsistent, and too little data is never treated as a change in behavior.

When the detected pattern differs from the behavior recorded on an employee’s active waiver, the system logs a behavior change alert. When the detection’s confidence meets Minimum confidence (default 95%), the day’s action cap has not been reached and AI is not paused, it also proposes an action in the AI Console, where an admin approves or rejects it — behavior changes always wait for approval. Otherwise the change appears only under Behavior Alerts on the dashboard and no card is proposed. If Auto-Invalidate on Behavior Change is on (it is off by default), approving the action ends the waiver when the new pattern contradicts what the waiver records — for example, an employee on a waiving waiver who now takes their breaks — and the employee is told their waiver was ended.

Compliance gaps are employees whose break records show them waiving meals in the last 30 days but who have no active waiver on file. The Compliance Gaps report (under Waivers → Gaps) lists these employees and can be filtered by location. The dashboard’s coverage percentage measures the same thing: of employees detected as waiving, what share has an active waiver.

Break compliance findings are recorded by a separate engine that evaluates each employee’s actual breaks against the jurisdiction’s legal requirements. Six finding types are tracked:

• Missing — no meal break was recorded.
• Started too early or Started too late — the break fell outside the allowed window.
• Too short — the break was shorter than the legal minimum.
• 2nd meal missing — a required second meal break was not taken.
• Unbroken stretch — the employee worked longer than the allowed unbroken interval.

Each finding is classified by period kind (Meal, Rest, or Unbroken work) and carries a severity of Violation or Warning. The engine has three settings, chosen per organization under Admin → Work Policy Settings — Off (shifts are not checked), Observe (records a shift’s findings when it is clocked out; prompts nobody and adjusts no pay) and Enforce (asks employees about rest breaks at clock-out — or at their next clock-in on the web or at the kiosk, for up to 14 days, when a manager, the shared kiosk or the automatic clock-out closed the shift — blocks non-compliant assignments, and writes missed-break pay to the timesheet as each state’s break rule sets). The default is Observe. Review the findings that accumulate in Observe mode before switching to Enforce.

E-signature integration is optional. When Offer e-signature collection is on in settings and the E-Signature app is separately enabled for your organization, a draft waiver can be sent to the employee for formal e-signature. A manager can also mark a draft waiver as active using the Activate action, whether or not e-signature is on — this records that a signature was collected outside the app. Activate is also offered for a waiver left in Pending signature whose signature request never went out, was voided, or expired unsigned. Without one of these two paths, a waiver has no way to become active.

Notifications. The app sends four kinds of notifications (in-app bell and email):

• Waiver expiring — sent to the employee, and to their manager (or an app admin when they have none), a configurable number of days before their waiver’s expiry date (default 14 days). Not sent once a newer signed waiver already continues their coverage.
• Waiver invalidated — sent to the employee when their waiver is ended, whether by a manager, an admin, or an approved behavior-change action. A draft discarded before it was ever sent is not announced.
• Compliance gap alert — sent to the employee’s manager (or to an app admin when there is no manager, and to the employee only when there is neither) when they are waiving meals without a valid waiver. Gap alerts depend on behavior detection, which runs only while autonomous actions are on; with it off they dwindle as the last 30 days of recorded behavior age out.
• Behavior change detected — sent to the employee after an admin approves a behavior-change action in the AI Console. Not sent when that approval ends their waiver; they get the waiver-ended notice instead.

Proactive reminders (expiry and compliance-gap alerts) are checked every four hours for every organization with Meal Compliance enabled, whether or not autonomous actions are on, unless Send proactive reminders is turned off in Settings or Automation Hub’s Pause All is in effect. At most one reminder per person per waiver is sent each week.

4. Running it

Creating a waiver

1. Go to Meal Compliance → Waivers → New Waiver.
2. Select the employee, optionally a location and jurisdiction, and choose the behavior state or per-period elections.
3. Set the validity period (Valid From / Valid Until). If Valid Until is left blank, the waiver does not expire by date.
4. Submit. The waiver is saved as a Draft.
5. Either click Send for Signature (if e-signature is enabled and the E-Signature app is active) or click Activate to put the waiver on file immediately.

Invalidating a waiver

1. Go to Meal Compliance → Waivers and open the waiver.
2. Click Invalidate. Optionally provide a reason.
3. The employee is notified that their waiver is no longer valid.

Active and Pending Signature waivers can be invalidated. A Draft is discarded instead — the employee never saw it, so they are not told. Already-expired waivers cannot be changed.

Reviewing compliance gaps

1. Go to Meal Compliance → Waivers → Gaps.
2. The page lists employees whose break behavior shows them waiving meals without an active waiver. Filter by location if needed.
3. Create a waiver for any listed employee directly from the gap report.

This report is available to HR admins, app admins, and organization admins only.

Reading break compliance findings

1. Go to Meal Compliance → Break Compliance.
2. The report shows findings grouped by counts: total, open, by period kind, and affected employees. Filter by finding type, period kind, status, employee, or date range.
3. Resolve individual findings by marking them and adding an optional note.

Before switching the engine from Observe to Enforce, review the findings backlog here — this is the only place accumulated observations are visible.

Exporting waivers

From the Dashboard or the Waivers list, click Export to download a CSV of all waivers (or filtered by status). The export caps at 10,000 records; if your data exceeds that, filter by status and export in batches. The file labels the truncation when it applies.

Using the AI Console

Open the AI Console tab. The console provides an AI mode dial with three positions: Off — manual only, Approve — AI acts, human confirms, and Auto — AI acts when confident. In Approve mode, the system proposes actions and waits for an admin to approve each one. Behavior-change actions always wait for approval, in every mode. The app always opens on the Dashboard.

5. Settings

All settings are at Meal Compliance → Settings.

Setting	Card	Default	What it changes
Detection window (days)	Behavior detection	14	How many days of break records are analyzed to determine an employee’s meal break pattern.
Minimum days for reliable detection	Behavior detection	3	The number of days with break data required in the window before the system assigns a behavior pattern. Below this, the pattern is Inconsistent.
Default waiver expiry (days)	Waivers and reminders	365	Pre-fills Valid Until on the New Waiver form: this many days after the waiver starts (today, or the day after the current waiver ends when you start the next one from a waiver about to expire). Existing waivers keep their dates.
Expiry reminder (days before)	Waivers and reminders	14	How many days before a waiver’s expiry date the system sends a reminder to the employee and their manager.
Send proactive reminders	Waivers and reminders	On	Turns the four-hourly expiry reminders and compliance gap alerts on or off for your organization.
Enable Meal Compliance AI Agent	AI agent	On	Lets people ask Ask AI about waivers, gaps and break patterns, and lets authorized users create, send, activate or end waivers from chat (each change asks for confirmation).
Offer e-signature collection	Waivers and reminders	On	Shows the Send for Signature action on waivers, so employees sign in the E-Signature app. Requires the E-Signature app to be separately enabled. It does not stop a manager recording a signature collected on paper: Activate stays available either way.
Enable autonomous actions	Autonomous actions	Off	Allows the system to take automated compliance actions (behavior analysis, waiver invalidation, gap notifications) without manual triggers.
Auto-invalidate on behavior change	Autonomous actions	Off	When an admin approves a behavior-change action in the AI Console, the employee’s waiver is ended if their new pattern contradicts it, and they are notified. Only takes effect while autonomous actions are enabled.
Minimum confidence (%)	Autonomous actions	95	The confidence threshold for autonomous actions to execute.
Max actions per day	Autonomous actions	50	Caps the number of autonomous actions the system can take per day.
Trust level	Autonomous actions	Probation	Controls which types of autonomous actions are permitted. The three levels are Probation, Standard, and Trusted.

The AI Console’s AI mode dial writes the same autonomous-actions fields. Its three positions — Off, Approve, and Auto — map to the Enable autonomous actions toggle and the Trust level. Moving the dial to Auto sets Trust level to Trusted.

6. More help

• Meal Compliance FAQ — specific setup and operating questions.
• Ask AI — the assistant answers questions about Meal Compliance from these articles and can check waiver status, list compliance gaps, analyze behavior patterns, and list break-law findings.