Labor Law Rules FAQ
Answers to common setup and operating questions about Labor & Employment Law Rules.
For what the system is and how to set it up from scratch, see the
Labor & Employment Law Rules Overview.
Setup
Do I have to assign jurisdictions to locations before anything works?
Yes. The scheduling engine resolves rules by walking the jurisdiction hierarchy attached to a location. Until a location has at least one jurisdiction assigned to it under Admin → Compliance → Jurisdiction Mapping, the engine has no rules to enforce for shifts at that location — assignments proceed with no compliance checks and no audit trail.
What rule types can I create, and which fields does each one use?
Each labor law rule has exactly one type, and the form shows only the fields for that type:
- Wage — minimum wage (decimal, e.g. $15.50)
- Overtime — daily overtime threshold and/or weekly overtime threshold (hours)
- Break — meal break timing, rest break intervals, and an optional structured break-requirements document for complex multi-period statutes
- Schedule — advance notice days for schedule publication
- Minor — work-end time and maximum daily hours for minors
What are the three jurisdiction levels, and which one wins when they overlap?
Jurisdictions sit at one of three levels — Federal, State, or City — and they nest (a city has a state parent, a state has a federal parent). When two rules of the same type apply to a location — for example a state wage rule and a city wage rule — the more specific jurisdiction wins: city beats state, state beats federal.
Permissions and access
Who can access the labor law and employment law admin surfaces?
All five surfaces — Labor Law Rules, Employment Law Rules, Work Policy Settings, Compliance Explorer, and Employment Law Audit History — are in the admin sidebar. Access is limited to Admin and Super Admin. There is no app-specific licence gate; these are platform administration surfaces available to any tenant.
Day-to-day
Can a rule inherit its rate from the MangoApps-maintained system rule instead of using my own values?
Yes. Each labor law rule can optionally link to a matching MangoApps-maintained system rule. The rule form shows a Rate source choice: pick Use the MangoApps-maintained rate instead of Use my own values and the rule takes its rate (minimum wage, overtime thresholds) from the linked system rule. The choice only appears when the rule’s jurisdiction is linked to a system jurisdiction and the rule type has a matching category (wage, overtime, break, and schedule do; minor does not).
What is a business override on an employment law rule, and can I relax a system rule?
An override lets your business add a requirement beyond the legal minimum (“additional”) or tighten an existing system rule (“stricter”). You cannot relax or remove a system rule — that is enforced by validation: a “stricter” override must reference an existing system rule, and there is no “relaxed” override type.
What happens when MangoApps updates a system employment law rule?
A legal update notification is created with a review period — 30 days by default, or 14 days for critical-severity updates. Your business receives a review record you can acknowledge, customize (by creating a stricter business override), or dismiss. If no action is taken before the review period ends, the update auto-applies. The auto-apply job runs daily at 02:05 UTC.
What makes a legal update review “urgent”?
A review is urgent when either the notification’s severity is “critical” or the auto-apply deadline is within 3 days.
How do exceptions work — can I exempt a specific role or employee from a rule?
Yes. Each labor law rule can have exceptions with two types: exempt (removes the rule entirely for the target) and override (changes the rule’s value for the target). Target groups are role (must be one of the business’s configured role types) and employee (must be a valid user ID in the business). The target value is validated at save time — a typo or stale ID is rejected. During scheduling, the compliance engine checks role-based exceptions first, then employee-specific exceptions.
Break compliance
What are the three break enforcement modes?
The Meal and rest break enforcement setting on Work Policy Settings offers three choices:
- Off — do not evaluate breaks — no break evaluation at all
- Observe — record findings only — evaluate and record break findings but do not block anything or reach anyone
- Enforce — prompt, block and adjust pay — evaluate, record, prompt at clock-out, block non-compliant assignments, and produce payroll adjustments
New tenants start on Observe so an admin can review their break-compliance backlog (under Meal Compliance → Break Compliance) before enforcement begins.
Can an employee waive a meal break?
It depends on how the break rule defines that meal period. A period can be always waivable; waivable only within an hours window — for example over 5 hours worked but not over 6; or not waivable at all. When a period is waivable for the shift’s length, the waiver form offers it with the window spelled out (“Waivable only on days over 5 and up to 6 hours worked”) and the employee chooses Waived (voluntary) or Not waived — will take this meal period for that specific period.
When something looks wrong
“I created rules but nothing gets enforced during shift assignment”
Three things to check: (1) The location must have at least one jurisdiction assigned under Jurisdiction Mapping — without it the scheduling engine has no rules to apply. (2) The rules must be Active (on by default) and current — effective date in the past, expiration date either blank or in the future. (3) Work Policy Settings must have the relevant enforcement toggle turned on — Enforce Daily Hour Limits, Enforce Weekly Hour Limits, and Enforce Minimum Rest Periods are all on by default, but if someone turned one off, that check is skipped.
“A legal update auto-applied before we reviewed it”
The auto-apply job runs daily and applies any pending notification whose review period has already ended. The review period is 30 days for important/informational updates and 14 days for critical updates, counted from the notification’s creation date. To prevent auto-apply, take action (acknowledge, customize, or dismiss) before the deadline. Urgent reviews — critical severity or fewer than 3 days until auto-apply — are flagged in the Legal Updates tab.
“The Compliance Explorer search returned nothing for my query”
The semantic search applies a relevance cutoff of 0.65 and discards weaker matches rather than showing them. Queries that are too vague or unrelated to any rule text will fall through to the keyword search and ultimately the empty state, rather than returning irrelevant results. Try using more specific legal or regulatory terms in your search.
Limits and exact values
What are the default Work Policy Settings values?
| Setting | Default | Allowed range |
|---|---|---|
| Max daily hours | 12.0 | any value > 0 |
| Max weekly hours | 40.0 | any value > 0 |
| Min rest period (hours) | 8.0 | any value > 0 |
| Daily hours warning threshold | 80% | 1–100 (integer) |
| Weekly hours warning threshold | 80% | 1–100 (integer) |
| Meal and rest break enforcement | Observe — record findings only | Off, Observe, Enforce |
| Max consecutive shift overlap | 30 minutes | 0–60 (integer) |
| Contracted Days Off | Soft prompt | Soft prompt, Hard block |
| Emergency override enabled | On | — |
| Compliance override roles | Manager, Admin, Super Admin | — |
| All hard disqualifiers | On | — |
Are audit log records editable?
No. Employment law audit log records are immutable. Once a compliance event is logged, it cannot be edited or deleted by anyone — there is no path in the product, or behind it, that changes a record after it is written.
More help
- Labor & Employment Law Rules Overview
- Audit Logs & Activity History
- Compliance Administration
- Ask AI — the assistant answers labor law compliance questions from these articles.