HR-exception alert bot
Every night, each manager gets a same-day list of their timekeeping exceptions in chat, before they turn into liabilities.
Timekeeping problems (forgotten punches, missed meal breaks) are cheap to fix the day they happen and expensive to fix later. In California a missed meal break is a one-hour premium liability. I wanted each manager nudged the same day, in the tool they already use, not in a report they open next week.
How it works
A nightly per-property bot posts that day's exceptions to a closed manager channel in Slack. It reuses the punch-detection logic already built for the payroll checks and adds a California meal-break detector over the break records: the meal must start before the end of the 5th hour and run at least 30 minutes.
- Voice is fix-action, not verdict: "fix the record or pay the premium," never a public callout
- Still-clocked-in staff are informational, not flagged as missed punches
- A closed management channel by design, no line employees and no peer-visible callouts
Stack: a first-party Slack app, the Python slack_sdk, Gusto time-and-break data, and a scheduled job on the mini.
About 70% of it was already built. It is mostly wiring the existing punch engine to a new meal-break rule and a Slack sender. Piloting on one property, then rolling out. It is the HR-compliance seat expressed as a nightly cron: the exceptions come to the manager, instead of waiting for someone to go looking for them.