Mallow Hours guide · September 8, 2026
Overnight Shifts, Breaks and Daylight Saving Time
A clock-out time earlier than clock-in needs an explicit next-day choice. Daylight saving changes need a separate check of actual elapsed time.
Crossing midnight
For 22:00 to 06:00 the next day, count 2 hours before midnight and 6 hours after it: 8 hours. Subtract a 30-minute unpaid break for 7 hours 30 minutes. Select Ends next day in Mallow Hours; otherwise the earlier clock-out is flagged rather than guessed.
Which date owns the hours?
Mallow Hours assigns all net minutes to the shift’s start date. A Sunday night shift ending Monday morning remains on Sunday. If your reporting method allocates hours on both sides of midnight, enter two shifts on their respective dates and allocate the break and any adjustment appropriately.
Do not overlap the following day
A 22:00–06:00 overnight shift overlaps a next-day 05:30–09:00 shift. Mallow Hours checks across dates, including the overnight portion. A shift starting exactly at 06:00 does not overlap. Break minutes do not create a known gap because no break start time is entered.
Spring forward and fall back
Clock-face subtraction does not know your time zone. If a verified one-hour spring-forward transition occurs inside a 22:00–06:00 shift, actual elapsed time may be 7 rather than 8 hours: enter −60 adjustment minutes and a reason. A verified one-hour fall-back may require +60. Changes are not always one hour, and some regions do not observe them. Check the actual transition for the shift’s location.
Keep the correction visible
Manual adjustments are limited to −180 through +180 minutes and require a reason when nonzero. CSV and print include the correction. The adjustment changes net minutes, not the entered interval used to warn about overlaps. This is a transparent manual correction, not an automatic timezone engine.
A final overnight checklist
Verify the end date, the unpaid break, any actual daylight saving transition and the start-date attribution. A shift must last more than zero and at most 24 clock-face hours. For longer assignments, split the record into checked daily shifts.
Continue with a practical example
Open Mallow Hours and choose Try an example. No data is saved until you press Save.