Irene Muñoz
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Factorial · Product design

Rethinking automated breaks

From rigid rules to real schedules.

Product
Time tracking
Role
Product designer, end-to-end UX
Team
Design, Engineering, Product
Platform
Web + Mobile
Outcome
100% fewer manual corrections
Planned breaks laid out across the working week

The change

Break automation only worked off clock-in time, so the moment a company had summer Fridays or flexible hours, HR was back to fixing timesheets by hand. I redesigned the flow so automation follows the company’s real schedule, and brought mobile up to par with desktop.

100%

Fewer break corrections

+10%

Automation adoption in 2 weeks

17.5h

Saved monthly, 50-person company

The problem

Automation that only worked for a 9-to-5.

Automatic breaks were calculated from the employee’s clock-in timestamp. That assumption held for uniform schedules and fell apart everywhere else.

  • Summer Fridays and seasonal hours broke the calculation.
  • Flexible schedules, with no fixed clock-in, got the same errors.
  • Field and hybrid staff on mobile got a weaker version of the feature.

HR teams were still correcting break times by hand.

Constraints

What the system needed to handle.

  • A

    Work inside the system

    Break logic was tightly coupled to scheduling and payroll. The redesign had to work with it, not replace it.

  • B

    Two profiles, one product

    Companies with planned schedules and companies with ad-hoc clock-ins, without splitting the experience in two.

  • C

    Parity, not a port

    Mobile had to match desktop’s depth without squeezing the desktop layout onto a small screen.

Process

We moved break planning to the schedule data HR already maintained.

I worked with backend engineering early to understand where scheduling data already lived. The real fix wasn’t better UI on top of the same logic: it was shifting the source of truth from clock-in time to the planned schedule. That changed the question from “how do we show break errors more clearly” to “how do we let the system use the schedule that already exists”.

  • 1

    Logic and flow redesign

    A break experience that plans pauses against the company’s actual schedule, not a timestamp.

  • 2

    Mobile parity

    An audit of every gap between desktop and mobile, then mobile flows rebuilt for the smaller screen.

DesktopBreaks planned against the real schedule, summer Fridays included.

MobilePlan, edit and review breaks with nothing missing.

The solution

Break planning now follows the work schedule.

Companies now define planned breaks synced to their real schedule structure instead of relying on clock-in logic. Automation still does the heavy lifting; it just works from better data. On mobile, employees and managers can plan, edit and review breaks with the same depth as desktop.

BeforeBreaks inferred from clock-in. Mobile a step behind.

AfterBreaks follow the plan, on every surface.

Impact

Half a work-week back, every month.

  • 100%

    Fewer break corrections for companies using planned breaks with automation.

  • +10%

    More companies using automatic breaks, within two weeks of launch.

  • 17.5h

    Saved per month for a 50-person company. Close to half a work-week returned to HR every month.

  • ES · PT

    Better market fit in Spain and Portugal, where working hours deviate furthest from a fixed schedule.

Reflection

Talking with backend engineering about the schedule data already in the system helped us settle the design. The project also showed how the fixed-hours assumption made the feature harder to use in Spain and Portugal, where working hours vary more.