Budget Adjustment Rules control how Telephone Timesheets treats worked time when a job or schedule has a budgeted duration. If no adjustment rule is selected, the budget is still useful for reporting and overage review, but the time entry stays as the employee actually worked it.

Budget adjustment rules appear only when budget tracking is enabled and a budgeted time value is entered on the job or schedule.

Choosing A Rule

Use No Adjustment / Report Only when supervisors only need to compare actual time with the budget. Use an adjustment rule only when your company intentionally wants the final worked time to be adjusted for payroll preparation, billing review, or other downstream processing.

No Adjustment / Report Only

This keeps the employee's actual clocked time unchanged. The budget still appears in reporting and can help identify overage, but Telephone Timesheets does not change the time worked to match the budget.

Match Always

This adjusts the time worked to the budget every time, regardless of whether the employee clocked less or more time than the budget. Use it only for jobs that should always count as a fixed budgeted duration.

Match Only When Under

This protects the budgeted amount when the employee works less than the budget, but keeps actual time when the employee works more than the budget. Use it when a job should pay or count at least the budgeted amount while still preserving true overage when work runs long.

Match Only When Over

This caps the time worked at the budget only when the employee goes over budget. If the employee works at or under the budget, the actual clocked time stays unchanged.

Match Unless Over/Tardy

This rule is for jobs where late arrival should matter only when the employee also works less than the budget. If the employee works the full budget or goes over budget, actual time is preserved. If the employee works under budget and was late, Telephone Timesheets subtracts the late-start amount from the budgeted time.

Ignoring Unpaid Breaks For Budget Adjustments

Some companies also use an option to ignore automatically deducted unpaid breaks when budget adjustment rules are applied. This is separate from the break deduction itself.

When the option is enabled, the budget adjustment calculation compares the shift to the budget without reducing the calculation by the automatically deducted unpaid break first. This can be useful when the company wants a budgeted or minimum-pay style rule to apply before unpaid break deductions are considered.

When the option is disabled, budget adjustments use the worked time after automatic unpaid break deductions. Either way, the break remains visible as break activity, and ordinary break tracking and reporting stay unchanged.

Job Rules And Schedule Overrides

Set the normal rule on the job. A schedule can override the job's budget adjustment rule when that shift pattern needs different handling. For the ignore-unpaid-breaks budget adjustment option, a schedule can use Use Job Setting, Enabled, or Disabled.

Use Use Job Setting when the schedule should inherit the job-level behavior. Choose Enabled or Disabled only when the schedule should intentionally differ from the job.

Related pages: Using Time Budgets, Editing Jobs, Editing Schedules, and Breaks.