Meal allowances

Meal allowances let Shyfter automatically calculate, for payroll, the meals owed to your employees based on their activity. You define one or more rules, each with its allowance type, its amount and its conditions. Go to Settings ⚙️ → HR → Meal allowances.

This screen mainly concerns French payroll. The amounts and ceilings mentioned refer to the URSSAF scales.

Why configure meal allowance rules

Rather than counting meals by hand, you describe your rules once. Shyfter then determines, for each employee and according to their shifts, how many meals they are owed and in what form. The amounts are then carried over automatically into the payroll exports, which avoids omissions and calculation errors.

The list of rules

The table shows your rules, in their priority order, with for each one: a priority number, the rule name (and the "default" label where applicable), the allowance type, the calculation method, the application conditions (relevant categories or "All categories"), the amount per meal, and an active/inactive indicator.

The rules are evaluated in priority order, the highest first: the first rule that matches an employee is the one that applies. The move up and move down arrows reorder the list, and each row has the Edit and Delete actions.

Creating or editing a rule

The Add a rule button opens the form (identical when editing). It is made up of three blocks.

General information

• Rule name: a meaningful label, for example "AN Kitchen" or "PP Delivery drivers".
• Active: a switch to enable or suspend the rule without deleting it.

Allowance type and amount

The meal allowance type is chosen from four options:

• Benefit in Kind (AN): meals provided on-site, valued at a flat rate.
• Compensatory Allowance (ICN): compensation when the owed meal is not provided.
• Meal premium (PP): allowance for a meal taken outside the establishment or on-site.
• Meal voucher (TR): meal tickets with an employer share and an employee share.

You fill in the amount per meal in euros. Depending on the type chosen, additional fields appear:

• For the benefit in kind, an ICN amount per meal (left blank, it takes the AN amount) and a automatically generate ICN for meals not taken checkbox.
• For the meal voucher, the face value of the voucher and the employer share as a percentage. The employer share must stay between 50% and 60% of the face value.

Calculation method

Three methods determine how many meals are owed:

• Per worked day: one meal per day present, as soon as at least one hour is worked.
• Per shift covering a meal: one meal per shift that overlaps a meal time slot.
• By duration and hours (advanced): cumulative criteria, namely a minimum shift duration (set by a slider in hours) and meal time slots.

With the "per shift" and "advanced" methods, you define the meal time slots: start and end times of lunch and dinner, with the option to also enable breakfast and fill in its times.

Conditions of application

The right-hand block controls who the rule applies to:

• Default rule: when ticked, the rule applies to all employees who do not match any other rule. This is your safety net so nobody is forgotten.
• Categories / roles: on a non-default rule, you limit its application to certain employee categories. Without a selection, the rule places no category restriction.

Finish with Save. Remember to provide a default rule: employees who do not match any active rule are not covered and get no allowance.

Deleting a rule

The Delete button removes the rule after confirmation. Note: employees who depended on this rule will no longer be covered until another rule takes them over.