Meal budgets and deductions

Meal budgets allow you to track the meals an employee takes when they are working. Meals can be tracked on a daily, weekly, or pay period basis. Employees are eligible for meal budgets when they work the jobs associated with the meal budget settings.

When you configure a meal budget setting, you establish a budget for meals, which is simply a count of the number of meals an employee can take in a set frequency of time. An employee’s meal activity is compared to the budget and if they exceed the budget, a paycode deduction for a specific amount of money can be configured.

Reports are available for tracking employee meal budgets and deductions. See Gaming reports.

Meal budget retrieval sequence settings

Meal budget settings are configured for the Business Structure types associated with the meal budget retrieval sequence. Meal budget retrieval sequence settings must be configured before configuring meal budgets. See Retrieval sequences.

Configure meal budgets

Within the Gaming application, go to Administration > Meal Budgets.
Select a Location and then click Edit .
Select options for the meal budget, for example, Department or Job. You can select All or select specific values.
Note: The first 1 to 3 options in the meal budget settings are the types associated with the meal budget sequences defined in the retrieval settings.
Specify the meal budget settings:
- Exclude— Excludes the setting from meal budget processing. When this option is selected, meal budget rules are not applied to the setting.
- Amount— The deduction amount that appears as a paycode edit on the employee's timecard when the employee exceeds their meal budget. This occurs when an employee exceeds the value set in Number of Meals for the specified Frequency. The deduction is only recorded on the employee's timecard when the Create Deduction option is selected.
- Number of Meals— Enter the number of meals the employee is allowed to take for the selected Frequency. For example, if Daily is selected for Frequency and the employee is allowed 2 meals per day, then enter 2.
  This number is also used in conjunction with the Cafeteria device (timeclock) configuration. The number of times an employee enters the cafeteria is recorded by the device. By default, employees are restricted from entering the cafeteria when they exceed the number of meals limit. The cafeteria device can be configured to allow employee entrance to the cafeteria when they are over budget. See Device Setup.
- Frequency— The frequency of meal tracking, Daily, Weekly, or Pay Period.
- Create Deduction— Creates a deduction in the employee's timecard when the employee exceeds their meal budget (the value set in Number of Meals). This is recorded as a positive or negative amount in the timecard (depending on the selection for Positive or Negative Deductions on the Retrieval Sequences > Meal Budget tab).
  Note: If Create Deduction is not selected, the exception is still noted and reported on the Meal Count Exceptions Report.
- Pay Code— Specify the pay code to use for meal budget deductions.
Click Save.

Meal budget setting precedence

When configuring meal budget settings, there may be times when a job appears in more than one setting. For example, in a meal budget setting you have the following rows defined for Property, Department, and Job:

Property 1 > Bakery > All
Property 1 > Bakery > Baker

When an employee works the job Baker, then it exists in more than one meal budget setting. To determine which setting is used for the meal budget:

If Exclude is selected for any setting where the job exists, than that setting takes precedence and the job is excluded from meal budget processing.
If Exclude is not selected for any setting where the job exists, then use the following sample as a guide for order of precedence (top to bottom). Cells that contain an X indicate that a specific selection (other than All) has been made.

This table provides a sample for the order of precedence for meal budget settings.

Property	Department	Job
X	X	X
	X	X
X		X
		X
X	X
	X
X