Would you like to deduct lunch scheme costs from your employees' salaries? In Salary, you have several options for managing lunch schemes, including both fixed amounts and flexible solutions that take factors such as remote work or absences into account.
You can manage lunch schemes in the following ways:
1. Fixed monthly amount (Added as a employee benefit)
Choose this option if the employee should pay the same amount each month, regardless of how often they eat lunch.
2. Payment per working day (Added as a employee benefit)
Choose this option if the employee should only pay for actual working days.
For salaried employees: If the employee registers an absence or works from home, no lunch deduction will be made for that day.
For waged paid employees: Lunch deductions are made automatically on days when working hours are registered. You can also set a minimum number of hours that must be worked before a lunch deduction is applied.
Example:
An employee registers 2 working hours on a given day.
If no minimum threshold is set, the system will apply a lunch deduction.
If the threshold is set to 4 hours, no lunch deduction will be made because only 2 hours have been registered.
Important: If an employee registers multiple time entries on the same day, and each entry exceeds the minimum threshold, the system may apply multiple lunch deductions for that day. We therefore recommend choosing a threshold that best fits your company's working and time registration practices.
Example:
The minimum threshold is set to 3 hours.
An employee registers two time entries of 3.5 hours each on the same day.
→ The system will apply two lunch deductions.
3. Net deduction via excel import
Use this option if the lunch deduction varies significantly or if the standard options do not meet your needs. With this method, the deduction amounts are entered manually using an Excel template.
Important to know about accounting
Employee Benefit (Methods 1 and 2) is posted as Free Lunch (Income).
Excel Import (Method 3) is posted as Employee Loan.
💡 Tip: Do you have many employees with the same terms and conditions?
You can create employee templates in Salary based on existing employees. This saves time when creating new employees. See how to do it here.
Guide
Add lunch as a employee benefit
Add lunch as a employee benefit
1. Go to the employee and select Edit employee benefits.
2. Click Lunch Scheme.
Choose whether the lunch deduction should be applied as a Fixed Amount or Per Day. Enter the amount and click Save.
3. The lunch deduction will now be displayed automatically on the employee's payslip as a net deduction.
4. The system posts the deduction to the Fri frokost (indtægt) account, where the amount is recorded as a credit.
Lunch reduction via excel import
Lunch reduction via excel import
1. Go to Registrations > Supplements/Reductions and click Import Excel.
2. Download the excel template
When downloading the excel template, it's important to know that it is linked to the current regular payroll run. This means:
You can only download the file if there is an active (open) payroll run.
If you are unable to download the file, make sure the payroll run has been started.
The excel file is only valid for the current payroll period, and each new upload replaces the previous one.
→ If you upload the same file again, it will overwrite any previously imported data. It is therefore not possible to add additional entries later without re-entering all data.
3. Complete the excel template
Fill in the Excel template with the following information:
Type: Select “Forskud/nettotræk”.
Amount: Enter the amount to be deducted for the employee's lunch scheme.
Payslip Text: For example, Lunch Scheme.
4. Upload the completed Excel template back into Salary.
5. Confirm the Import
6. You can now click Done.
7. The deduction will now appear in the Supplements/Reductions overview.
8. The lunch reduction will now be displayed automatically on the employee's payslip as a net reduction.
9. The system posts the deduction to the Fri frokost (indtægt) account, where the amount is recorded as a credit.
FAQ
How is the lunch scheme posted?
How is the lunch scheme posted?
Employee benefit (Methods 1 and 2) is posted to the Free Lunch (Income) account.
Excel Import (Method 3) is posted to the Employee Loan account.
How do I prevent hourly paid employees from being charged for lunch when they work only a few hours
How do I prevent hourly paid employees from being charged for lunch when they work only a few hours
For hourly paid employees, lunch deductions are normally applied automatically on days when working hours are registered.
If you want to avoid lunch deductions on days when employees work only a few hours, you can set a minimum hours threshold. The system will only apply a lunch deduction when the registered working hours meet or exceed the threshold.
Example:
If no threshold is set, an employee who registers 2 hours will be charged for lunch.
If the threshold is set to 4 hours, the employee will not be charged because only 2 hours have been registered.
Important: If an employee registers multiple time entries on the same day, and each entry exceeds the minimum hours threshold, the system may apply multiple lunch deductions. We therefore recommend choosing a threshold that best matches your company's working and time registration practices.
Example:
The minimum threshold is set to 3 hours.
An employee registers two time entries of 3.5 hours on the same day.
→ The system will apply two lunch deductions.
Guide
1. Go to Advanced Settings using this link, then enter the minimum number of hours in the Minimum working hours per time registration trigger lunch field.
2. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save Changes.
