Workspace time settings

Workspace timezone

The workspace timezone is the agency's operational clock. Timesheet days, daily and weekly totals, and reporting periods all group by it, wherever each member actually lives.

That is what keeps a distributed team's records coherent: a VA in Manila working Tuesday 9 PM to Wednesday 6 AM their time is working one New York Tuesday, and with the workspace set to New York time, that is exactly the day their timesheet shows.

Members still see their own times in their own timezone, and admins can flip timesheets between both views. These are two displays of the same record.

Pick a real place, like Asia/Manila or America/New_York, not a fixed offset; places carry their own daylight-saving rules.

Break policy

Turning the Break policy on lets you set, for your own agency:

• Short break duration, and how many per shift
• Lunch duration
• Whether short breaks and lunch are paid
• A grace period before anything is flagged
• Whether to flag overbreaks and extended lunches on timesheets
• Whether to notify a member when their break time ends, and again once

an overbreak begins

There are no fixed 15-minute or 60-minute rules; every agency sets its own.

What the policy does, and does not do

When a member takes a classified break, the allowance in force at that moment travels with the break. If they run over it plus the grace period, the break is flagged, for example:

> Allowed short break: 15m · Actual: 24m · Overbreak: 9m

Nothing is enforced. The timer keeps recording the real times, nothing is stopped or trimmed, and no time is deducted. VA To-Do records and reports the facts; what the agency does with them is the agency's decision.

Notifications

With the notification switches on, the member gets a notification when their allowed break time is reached, and one more if the grace period passes. One each, per break, never a stream of reminders.

Paid breaks

The paid switches describe your policy so reports can separate attendance, working time, and paid time. They do not move money anywhere; billing is separate and project-based.

Where it shows: the Billable tab's Total Tracked card reports paid time, break entries there read Paid or Unpaid, paid breaks carry a badge in timesheets, and the CSV export has Paid break columns. Short breaks and lunch follow their switches; Other and unclassified breaks are never counted as paid, because the policy only speaks for the kinds it defines.

Paid time caps at the allowance: overbreak minutes are flagged, never compensated. A break's allowance is the one snapshotted when it was taken, so raising the allowance later does not retroactively pay old overruns. See Billable hours.