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  5. General Company Settings

Labor & Compliance Settings

Updated

Labor & Compliance settings in 7shifts help your business stay compliant with local labor laws while making it easier to manage labor costs. These settings control how overtime, breaks, wages, and advanced labor rules are applied across your account.

Company-level settings apply to all locations by default. Use location-level settings when individual locations need different rules (for example, different jurisdiction or advanced labor rules).

This guide covers:

  • How to access and configure company-wide and location-specific compliance settings
  • Important reporting notes and how changes can affect historical calculations and payroll records
  • An overview of each Labor & Compliance option 

Update Labor & Compliance Settings

⚠️ Only Admins can access and update Labor & Compliance settings. 

⚠️ Important — Read before changing compliance settings:

Historical updates: Changing compliance settings (at the company or location level) will retroactively update past labor calculations in reports (e.g., Worked Hours & Wages).

  • Manual edits to exceptions or advanced labor data will be overwritten when new settings are saved.
  • Payroll journals already run will not change — always reference them for official pay records.
  • Company-level settings apply to all locations that do not have location-specific rules.
  • Location-level changes affect only that location.

Best practice: Download historical Worked Hours & Wages reports before making changes if you want to preserve a copy of historical calculations.

Company-level Settings 

By default, all locations in your account will follow the compliance rules set at the company-level. These rules apply automatically unless a location has location-specific settings enabled. 

  1. Log in to the 7shifts web app as an Admin.

  2. Go to Settings > (or, click on your profile photo) > Company Settings.

  3. Select the Labor & Compliance tab.
  4. Set the Labor & Compliance rules for your company including: 
    • Jurisdiction
    • Minimum wage for advanced labor settings 
    • Overtime
    • Breaks 
    • Wages & Pay
    • Advanced Labor (if applicable)
  5. Scroll down to Save changes.

Any updates here will apply across all locations that do not have location-level compliance turned on.

Location-level Settings 

⚠️ At this time, only Compliance and Overtime rules can be set at the location level. Other labor settings including Breaks and Wage-based roles must still be set at the company-level. We plan to move these settings to the location level in future releases. 

If your account has multiple locations, you can set unique compliance rules for individual locations.

  1. Login to 7shifts Web App.
  2. Go to Settings > Locations/Departments/Roles.
  3. Select the desired Location.
  4. Open the Labor & Compliance tab.
  5. Toggle on "Use location-specific settings."
  6. Enter the location's specific:
    • Jurisdiction
    • Minimum wage for advanced labor settings 
    • Overtime
    • Advanced labor rules (if applicable)
  7. Scroll down to Save changes.

Once saved, this location will follow its own compliance rules. Other locations in the account will continue to follow company-wide rules until the location-level settings are enabled for them. 

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Labor & Compliance Settings Overview

Select the drop downs below to learn more about the Labor & Compliance settings available to you in 7shifts:

Jurisdiction

⚠️ Note: These settings can be configured at the company or at the location-level.

Select the applicable region to ensure all labor rules align with local labor regulations. Once the jurisdiction is selected, related settings will automatically update to reflect the region's laws. 

Minimum wage for advanced labor rules 

The minimum wage set here will not impact employees wages assigned in their user profiles. It will update any Advanced Labor settings that require a region's minimum wage for calculations.

Overtime
⚠️ Note: These settings can be configured at the company-level or at the location-level.

Manage labor costs by ensuring employees are paid correctly when working beyond regular hours. These settings also enable automatic calculation of labor costs for shifts that exceed daily, weekly or consecutive-day thresholds. 

Learn more about Overtime settings here.

Breaks
⚠️ Note: At this time, break settings can only be configured at the company-level and will apply to all locations in the account.

Break settings help you comply with local labor laws by ensuring breaks are scheduled correctly and that unpaid breaks are deducted from labor projection calculations. 
  • Custom scheduling breaks: Allows you to add breaks to shifts on the schedule. You can name the break (e.g., "Lunch", "Coffee"), set it as Paid or Unpaid, and specify the duration. This makes it clear to employees which breaks they should be taking during their shifts. 

Learn more about Custom Scheduling Breaks here. 

  • Auto-break: This feature automatically deducts break times and wages from shifts for forecasting purposes only. This feature is used to accurately calculate forecasted labor costs for unpaid breaks on the Schedules page. It's important to understand the following: 
    • Auto-break does not affect an employee's actual time punches.
    • Employees must still manually clock out for breaks to ensure their time punches and wages are accurate. 
    • Auto-break does not dictate when an employee should take a break. 
    • If a custom break is manually added to a shift, it will override the Auto-break setting. 
Wages & Pay
⚠️ Note: At this time, wages & pay settings settings can only be configured at the company-level and will apply to all locations in the account.

Manage wage-based roles, if your employees are paid different wages for different jobs they perform and configure tip credit calculations. This is especially useful for businesses that employ both tipped and non-tipped staff.

Learn more about Wage-based roles here.

Learn more about Tip Credit Calculations & Tipped Roles here.

Advanced Labor
⚠️ Note: Advanced labor settings can be configured at the company or at the location-level.
Go deeper into compliance and labor tracking. For example, some features include:
  • Compliance Fees: Track labor compliance fees that affect your labor reports.
  • Spread of Hours: Set up spread of hours pay for employees who work multiple shifts within a day.
  • Fair Workweek NYC: Automatically apply overtime pay for shifts that violate NYC’s Fair Workweek laws.
  • NYC Call-in Pay: Ensure employees are compensated according to New York City regulations when called into work with short notice.

For more details, check out our dedicated guides on Advanced Labor Compliance here.

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7shifts 101: Company Settings
Advanced Labor Compliance

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