My employee takes several breaks a day, for lunch and prayer; how do I enter them?

Method one: one figure for all the breaks

This is the quickest for most shops. Ask how many unpaid minutes the employee took across the whole day, and type that. The calculator subtracts it from the shift and does not care how many breaks there were or when.

1. Open the Timesheet calculator and enter a start of 08:00 and an end of 18:00.
2. Add up the unpaid breaks: 30 for lunch + 15 for the noon prayer + 20 for the afternoon prayer = 65 minutes.
3. Type 65 in 'Break (min)'. The row shows 8:55, or 8.92 in decimal.
4. At 20 SAR an hour, the day's pay is 178.33 SAR.

If the same pattern runs for five days, the week is 44:35, or 44.58 hours, and the pay is 891.67 SAR.

Method two: a row per working stretch

If you want the sheet to show exactly when the employee was working, put each stretch between breaks on its own row with the same date and leave the break at zero:

• 08:00 to 12:10, which is 4:10, then a 15 minute noon prayer break.
• 12:25 to 13:00, which is 0:35, then 30 minutes for lunch.
• 13:30 to 15:20, which is 1:50, then a 20 minute afternoon prayer break.
• 15:40 to 18:00, which is 2:20.

That also totals 8:55, and 178.33 SAR at the same rate. Both methods give the same hours; the second takes longer to type but is clearer to check.

The one difference: overtime

If you set a daily overtime threshold, the calculator checks it against each row on its own. With 8 hours and a 1.5 multiplier, the single 8:55 row has 0:55 of overtime, so pay becomes 187.50 SAR: 160.00 regular and 27.50 overtime. None of the four separate rows goes over 8 hours, so overtime is zero and pay stays at 178.33 SAR.

So if you have an overtime arrangement based on the whole day, use method one. If there is no daily threshold, pick whichever suits you; the result is the same.

Is the break paid or not?

The calculator treats everything in the break field as unpaid and subtracts it. If some breaks are paid under your arrangement with the employee, for instance prayer breaks paid and lunch unpaid, enter only the lunch: 30 minutes, making the day 9:30. That is for the employment contract, company policy or the authority in your country to settle, not the calculator.