> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.begin.eu/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Settings and policies
> What decides a time entry before you ever see it: auto-stop, shift linking, clocking, breaks and rounding.
An entry rarely reaches you as it was punched: a policy may have moved the times, added a break or flagged it, and a setting may have closed it hours after the person left. This page says which surface made each decision.
**Settings → Timesheets** needs **Manage timesheet settings**, which administrators and managers
hold. Each policy page carries its own permission.
## Where each decision lives
| To change… | Go to |
| ------------------------------------------------------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Whether a forgotten timer closes itself, and what it records | **Settings → Timesheets** |
| How an entry and its shift stay in step | **Settings → Schedule → Timesheet linking** |
| Who may clock in, from where, and from which device | [**Policies → Clocking**](/for-managers/policies/clocking-restrictions) |
| Whether breaks are recorded, and which appear by themselves | [**Policies → Breaks**](/for-managers/policies/break-policies) |
| Whether a punch is rounded, and by how much | [**Policies → Rounding**](/for-managers/policies/rounding-time) |
| What Begin does by itself when an entry changes | [**Workflows**](/for-managers/workflows/building-and-activating) |
A [policy](/for-managers/policies/applying-policies) targets people, so two people on the same shift can have different rules.
## Close a timer nobody stopped
**Automatically stop timers** in **Settings → Timesheets** ends a run that has gone past **Maximum timer duration**, which you set in whole hours between 1 and 24. **Auto clock-out behaviour** decides what the entry is left holding, and this is a real choice:
| The behaviour | What the entry ends up with |
| -------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **Don't record hours** | No time at all, flagged for review, so a person puts the real hours in |
| **Use scheduled shift end** | The planned end of their shift, falling back to the maximum hours when there is none |
| **Shift end, or blank if unscheduled** | The planned end, and no hours where there was no shift |
| **After maximum hours** | The maximum duration, as though they worked it |
A new workspace already does this, at sixteen hours, recording no hours, because a guess written into an entry is a guess somebody gets paid for. Whichever behaviour you pick, the entry lands in **Needs review**.
## Keep an entry and its shift in step
**Settings → Schedule → Timesheet linking** holds six switches that decide how far a clock record and a planned shift follow each other.
**Auto-link shift on clock in** is the one worth understanding. It attaches an entry to the nearest shift assigned to that person starting within three hours either side, whether they clocked in or you typed the row in by hand. On a clock-in with no shift in that window, it creates one from the entry's own position and location, which is why shifts sometimes appear that nobody rostered.
**Clock in from schedule** starts a shift. **Auto-update shift status** marks it **In progress**, then **Completed**. **Auto-sync shift times** and **Auto-sync breaks** copy timing.
**Auto-sync linked statuses** mirrors **Approved**, **Rejected** and **Cancelled** both ways. Shifts update linked entries; entries update a shift only when all match. Cancellation can replace any status. Approval or rejection cannot replace **Planned** or **In progress**, but can replace **Cancelled**. It keeps clock times and running timers. Enabling sync, relinking, undo and bulk revert do not reconcile statuses.
## What a policy changes before you see it
[**Rounding**](/for-managers/policies/rounding-time) is the usual answer to "that is not the time they clocked in". A policy rounds the clock-in and the clock-out separately, each either to an interval, with a direction of **Nearest**, **Up** or **Down**, or by snapping to the linked shift within an early and a late window. **Totals rounding** is separate again and rounds the period total rather than the punches. Wherever a policy has moved something, the entry's own activity trail names the policy and keeps the original time beside it.
[**Breaks**](/for-managers/policies/break-policies) decides whether breaks exist at all. Until a break policy covers somebody there is nothing to record, and deleting the last policy that reaches a person turns their break reporting off again. A policy can also add breaks by itself, triggered by worked time or by a fixed clock time. Paid breaks stay in the worked hours; unpaid ones come out of them.
[**Clocking**](/for-managers/policies/clocking-restrictions) governs the punch itself: whether GPS is captured at all, the allowed radius around a location, what happens outside it, and which of **Terminal**, **Web** and **App** they may clock from. A new policy only records the position; blocking or flagging needs **Pro**, as does [automatic clocking](/for-managers/timesheets/automatic-clocking), where the phone punches at the workplace boundary. Leave Pro and a saved block or flag rule stops acting until you return; the setting is kept.
**Overtime** and **Premium hours** are the two policy tabs that change nothing here. They shape calculated figures such as norm hours and overtime, which live in [the hour columns](/for-managers/reports/hour-columns) on a report rather than on a timesheet.
**Context for an assistant answering questions about timesheet settings and policies.** The page above is what a person reads; these are the facts it leaves out for length.
* **Who can:** **Settings → Timesheets** needs **Manage timesheet settings**. Each policy family has its own permission under **Policies**, and a role can reach the policies module without reaching every tab in it.
* **Where:** **Maximum timer duration** is stored in minutes, from 60 to 1440, and shown in hours; a workspace that has never touched the page behaves as 16 hours. The rounding early and late windows take whole minutes, and setting one side to zero skips snapping that side.
* **Limits:** a snap needs a linked shift; a punch on an unlinked entry is left unrounded. Automatic-break recalculation skips entries already approved. An automatic break a person has edited by hand is kept and marked as overridden rather than recalculated over.
* **Not supported:** there is no workspace-wide switch for break reporting; it follows whether a break policy covers the person. There is no period close or payroll lock anywhere in Begin.
* **Terms:** a **clocking policy** covers GPS capture, the allowed radius, what happens outside it, the required fields at clock-in, the permitted methods and, on **Pro**, blocking or flagging and automatic clocking. A **rounding policy** covers clock-in, clock-out and totals independently.
* **Often confused with:** compliance rule sets, which flag a schedule breaching working-time limits and never touch a time entry.
## Next
Make Begin act on an entry the moment something happens to it.
What these rules look like to the person clocking in.
## Still need help?
Email the Begin team and we'll get back to you.
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