How It Works

Applies to: Labor API | Team API | Locations API

Learn how the Labor API lets you build labor hours tracking in your application.

The Labor API enables the following key functions:

• Create and update a shift using the CreateShift and UpdateShift endpoints.
• Get shifts using the SearchShifts endpoint.

Other Labor API functions include the following:

• Define a workweek for use in overtime calculations.
• Create break types to define the name, duration, and paid status of a set of standard shift breaks.

To learn more about the features of the Labor API, see What It Does.

The Labor API provides primary data types used to capture shift start and end times, breaks taken, and the shift wage.

The following diagram shows the relationship between Shift, ShiftWage, Break, BreakType, TeamMemberWage, and TeamMember resources.

The Labor API works with the Team API by assigning a TeamMember to a Shift. To use the Labor API, complete the following team member related tasks in the Square Dashboard:

• Add location-specific salaried, hourly, or volunteer team members to a Square account.
• Set timezone information for each business location. A location's timezone field can also be set using the Locations API.
• Optionally, set hourly or annual wages for team members based on their job titles. If wage settings aren't assigned to a team member, shifts can still be recorded but wage hourly rates must be obtained from another source and then recorded in a shift.

A client application, such as a virtual time clock in a restaurant POS application, completes process flows to start a shift, record breaks, and end a shift at the restaurant.

A bartender uses the POS in the restaurant bar to start a shift:

1. The time clock gets a list of team members by location and allows selection from the list.
2. The time clock queries for an open shift for the selected team member. If an open shift is found, it must be closed before a new open shift can be created.
3. The time clock gets a list of TeamMemberWage objects for the selected team member and chooses a wage rate for a shift based on the selected TeamMemberWage. For example, a team member is working as a bartender today and is paid the hourly rate for a bartender for the shift. Tomorrow, the team member might work as a cashier with a different hourly rate.
4. The time clock sends a request to create a new shift associated with a business location, team member, hourly wage, and date/time stamp when the team member starts the shift.

The new shift is used to record any breaks that are taken during the work shift and record the end time of the shift.

After starting a shift, the bartender takes a dinner break and uses the POS device at the front cashier station to record the dinner break and order a meal:

1. The time clock gets a list of team members by location and lets the bartender choose their name.
2. The time clock gets the open shift created in the previous process flow (Step 1: Start a shift).
3. The time clock reads the state of any breaks that might have been recorded during the shift.
   • If there is an open break, it's closed by setting the Break.end_at field.
   • If there are no open breaks, a new break is created.
4. The time clock creates and sends an update request with the updated shift to replace the current shift.

At the end of the break, the bartender ends the break from the bar POS device.

The bartender uses the bar POS device to end the shift.

1. The time clock gets a list of team members by location and lets the bartender choose their name.
2. The time clock gets the shift created in the previous process flow (Step 1: Start a shift) by querying for the open shift for the selected team member.
3. The time clock reads the state of any breaks that might have been recorded during the shift and closes any open breaks.
4. The time clock sets the Shift.end_at field to close the shift.
5. The time clock creates and sends an update request with the updated shift to replace the current shift.

The Labor API includes several reporting endpoints:

• SearchShifts - This endpoint is used to export historic shift data such as a week's worth of shifts from a Square account to a reporting or payroll application. The endpoint allows flexible filtering and sorting with the use of a ShiftQuery object provided in the body of the POST.
• ListTeamMemberWages - This endpoint returns all the wage levels assigned to a given team member.
• ListBreakTypes - This endpoint returns all the break templates for a given location or all of a seller's locations.

The Labor API includes timecard management concepts:

• Team member - A person who works for a seller as an employee, contractor, or volunteer and whose work hours must be tracked for payroll applications.

• Shift - The new canonical title for a time card.

• Break - Either paid or unpaid time that a person isn't expected to be doing work during a shift.

• Workweek - A payroll-specific and accounting-specific definition of the start of a week. It can be arbitrarily defined by the business owner. For many businesses (that are closed on weekends), Sunday night at midnight is the default. Businesses such as late night bars and clubs are open during these hours. They might shift the day or the time that a workweek starts (such as to Tuesday night at 4 AM). Overtime rules and pay periods follow the cadence of these defined workweeks.

• Workday - 24-hour increments starting on the first minute of a new workweek. If the workweek starts at 4 AM, then every workday starts and ends at 4 AM.

The Labor API uses optimistic concurrency to ensure that write operations on Labor API resources are reliable when multiple endpoints might write the same Labor API resources at the same time.

• Labor API
• Build with the Labor API