Everhour tracks work time for payroll and billing review, while French lunch breaks require exact unpaid-time handling.
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A lunch-break calculation turns a shift span into paid working time. You enter the start time, end time, and lunch duration, then subtract unpaid break time from the total. In France, the calculation should use 24-hour time, such as 09:00 to 18:00, because French locale formats use HH:mm and day-first dates.
The result matters for daily totals, weekly timesheets, overtime checks, and payroll review. French law treats lunch time between two periods of actual work as break time, with no separate statutory lunch-break duration beyond the applicable break rules. The legal question is whether the break satisfies the break requirement and whether it remains unpaid.
An adult employee in France must receive at least a 20-minute consecutive break once daily work reaches 6 consecutive hours. The break may be granted before the 6-hour point is fully reached or immediately after it. Employees under 18 have a stricter rule: at least 30 consecutive minutes after a continuous work period of 4 hours 30 minutes.
Break time is generally unpaid unless it qualifies as actual working time, such as when the employee must remain available to the employer during the break. A collective, company, or branch agreement can also provide paid breaks. For a lunch calculation, separate the break's duration from its pay status before you finalize the paid-hour total.
Use this formula: paid hours equal clock-out time minus clock-in time minus unpaid lunch time. For a shift from 09:00 to 18:00 with a 1-hour unpaid lunch, the gross span is 9 hours and the paid total is 8 hours. At €24.50 per hour, straight-time pay equals €196.00 before taxes, deductions, overtime premiums, or agreement-specific additions.
The same method works for shorter unpaid lunches. A 30-minute unpaid break would reduce a 9-hour span to 8.5 paid hours. The compliance check stays separate from the arithmetic: a 30-minute break satisfies the adult 20-minute minimum, but the schedule must still respect daily and weekly working-time limits.
A one-off calculation is enough when you need to check one shift, correct a single payslip line, or compare a scheduled lunch against an actual break. A durable workflow becomes necessary when employees clock in and out every day, managers approve time, or payroll needs a consistent record of paid and unpaid time.
Everhour Time Tracking captures task and project hours through timers or manual entries, then feeds timesheets, reporting, budgeting, invoicing, and payroll review. Admins can use approvals, locked periods, reminders, and timer rules to keep lunch-adjusted records consistent before payroll or billing uses them.
This content is for general information only, may not be fully up to date, and is provided without any warranty or liability.
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France does not set a separate statutory lunch-break duration apart from the applicable break rules. Lunch time between two periods of actual work counts as break time. Adult employees must receive at least 20 consecutive minutes once daily work reaches 6 consecutive hours, while employees under 18 must receive at least 30 consecutive minutes after 4 hours 30 minutes of continuous work.
Lunch time is generally unpaid in France unless it qualifies as actual working time. A break can count as actual working time when the employee must remain available to the employer during the break. A collective, company, or branch agreement can also provide paid breaks, so payroll review should check the worker's applicable agreement before deducting lunch.
French lunch entries should use 24-hour time for clean parsing and review, such as 08:30 to 12:30 and 13:30 to 17:30. French locale formats use HH:mm time and day-first numeric dates, so 24-hour entries reduce ambiguity in timesheets, exports, and payroll spreadsheets.
A lunch deduction can produce the right paid-hour total while the schedule still violates a working-time rule. Actual daily work may not exceed 10 hours in the general case, with limited derogations. Adult employees generally also need at least 11 consecutive hours of daily rest between two working days, subject to narrow derogations.
French overtime checks use actual working time, so unpaid lunch time normally comes out before the weekly total is compared with the legal duration. Full-time legal working time is 35 hours per week, equivalent to 151.67 hours per month or 1,607 hours per year, and hours beyond the legal duration are treated as overtime unless an exception applies.
Everhour Time Tracking lets employees record hours with live timers or manual entries, including work tracked against tasks and projects. Those entries can feed timesheets, reporting, budgeting, invoicing, and payroll review, while admin controls cover approvals, locked periods, reminders, and timer behavior.
Use Everhour to capture daily work time, approve timesheets, lock reviewed periods, and move cleaner lunch-adjusted records into payroll or billing review.
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