Digital time tracking in Germany: Do you need it — and if so, what must it look like?

Briefly, and in the order the questions come up: You must record your employees' working time today — in full, not just the overtime. The Federal Labour Court decided that in 2022. You do not yet have to do it electronically: that duty exists only in a draft from the Federal Ministry of Labour, and under that draft employers with up to ten employees may stay on paper permanently. So if you have five people, the much-discussed electronic duty is exactly the rule that does not apply to you.

There is one exception that may well concern you: for mini-jobbers and for eleven industries — construction, hospitality, building cleaning, transport and others — a stricter rule already applies today, and customs authorities check it.

This article provides general information and does not replace legal advice. For your specific business, ask your chamber of trade or a lawyer specialising in employment law.

Contents

1. Find your case first
2. What already applies today — and since when
3. The mini-jobber case: where the duty is strictest
4. What the new draft provides for
5. The ten-person clause: what it exempts you from — and what it does not
6. How much time you would have
7. How to do it in practice
8. If you work alone: none of this applies to you
9. The hours that never make it onto an invoice
10. Frequently asked questions

Find your case first

Four cases, and you are in exactly one of them. After this you will know which sections matter for you.

What is the same in every case involving employees: you record the entire working time, not just what goes beyond eight hours. The next section explains why.

What already applies today — and since when

Two rules run in parallel, and they are constantly confused.

Rule one is in the Working Hours Act. Under Section 16(2) ArbZG you must record the working time that exceeds eight hours on a working day. Only that part. You keep the records for at least two years. Failing to do so is an administrative offence — not a criminal offence, but something the authority can fine you for. Under Section 22(2) ArbZG the range goes up to 30,000 euros.

Rule two comes from occupational safety law. On 13 September 2022 the Federal Labour Court ruled (decision 1 ABR 22/21) that employers are already required under Section 3(2) no. 1 ArbSchG to introduce a system that records the start, end and duration of the entire daily working time. Not just overtime. This has applied since the decision, with no transition period.

The practical difference: the court said that time must be recorded, but not how. To this day there is no requirement as to form and no deadline by which a day must be entered. The supervisory authority can order you to introduce a system — and anyone who ignores such an order is back in fine territory.

It is precisely this gap between "must" and "how" that the new law is meant to close.

The mini-jobber case: where the duty is strictest

If you employ a mini-jobber, more already applies to them today than the Working Hours Act requires — and has done for years.

Section 17 MiLoG requires for mini-jobbers (the law calls them "marginally employed persons"): start, end and duration of daily working time, recorded no later than the end of the seventh calendar day after the working day, kept for at least two years. In substance that is almost what the new draft is meant to bring for everyone — only without the electronic requirement.

The same rule applies regardless of mini-jobs if your business belongs to one of the industries listed in Section 2a SchwarzArbG. The list is exhaustive:

• Construction
• Hospitality and accommodation
• Passenger transport
• Freight forwarding, transport and logistics, including platform-based delivery services
• Travelling showmen
• Building cleaning
• Setting up and dismantling trade fairs and exhibitions
• Meat industry (butchers' craft businesses are excluded)
• Prostitution
• Security services
• Hairdressing and cosmetics

In these industries the customs authority — the financial control unit for undeclared work — carries out checks, including unannounced ones at the place of work. So if you are an electrician with no mini-jobbers, Section 17 MiLoG is not your concern. If you do drywall work, it very much is.

What the new draft provides for

On 18 June 2026 the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs presented a ministerial draft amending the Working Hours Act; in August 2026 a revised version became known, which the ministry itself describes as an internal working version. Nothing has been decided. A ministerial draft is the first step: consultation of associations, cabinet, parliament and the Federal Council all still lie ahead. Figures and thresholds can still change at every one of those stages.

What the draft says on Section 16 ArbZG:

"Electronically" is deliberately left open in the draft. A terminal on the wall counts, but so does an app on a phone. The draft's own explanatory memorandum assumes around 170,500 businesses would have to convert and estimates 450 euros per business.

Also new: breaches of the recording, information and retention duties are to be explicitly punishable by a fine. Different figures circulate in the reporting on the amount — the draft text does not quantify it at that point, and in an ongoing legislative procedure it is not settled anyway.

The ten-person clause: what it exempts you from — and what it does not

The draft contains an exception for the smallest businesses: employers with up to ten employees may record working time in non-electronic form permanently. Not temporarily — permanently. The same applies to private households with domestic staff, but only where the employment contract is genuinely with the household.

This is where the misunderstanding that runs through many articles on the subject occurs. The clause exempts you from the form, not from the substance. For a business with six people that means:

• Recording: yes, start, end and duration, just like everyone else.
• On the same day: yes, the daily deadline is not part of the exception.
• Keeping it for two years: yes.
• Electronically: no, a properly kept paper timesheet would be enough.

Anyone who takes "up to ten employees exempt" to mean they need do nothing at all has kept the wrong half of the sentence.

How much time you would have

Even if the law came in this form, the electronic duty would not apply to everyone at once. The draft staggers it by company size, counted from entry into force:

The law is to enter into force on the first day of the quarter following its promulgation. There is no date for that, because the procedure is still running.

For a business with six or twelve people this means: there is no reason to buy technology at short notice because of this draft. How to do it instead is in the next section.

How to do it in practice

Which details belong on the record

Whether on paper or in software — a record only becomes verifiable with these details:

• Date
• Start and end, not just the total
• Duration
• Who worked
• Breaks, if they are not already deducted

Recording is not a matter of forms. There is no official template you would have to use, and no obligation for the employee to sign. What is required is that the details are correct and that you can produce them for two years.

Which form is permitted — and what fails in practice

The real problem is the same for all four, and it is not a legal one: records that are not created on the same day are guesswork. A sheet filled in at the end of the month meets neither the draft's daily deadline nor the seven-day deadline for mini-jobbers — and usually is not accurate either.

Who enters the time

Your employees may enter their own hours; the draft says so explicitly, and for fieldwork and installation it is in practice the only version that works. Responsibility for correct recording nevertheless stays with you. In practical terms: you have to look once a month at whether everyone has entered anything at all.

When the work takes place at the customer's site

In installation work, trades, care services and field sales there is no premises that someone walks into in the morning. Here the only thing that works is recording that the employee triggers where they are standing — and that does not need the trip from the van to the office. This is also the point where compulsory recording starts to affect your money.

If you work alone: none of this applies to you

The Working Hours Act protects employees. If you are a sole trader or freelancer with no staff, you are not your own employee — none of the duties above apply to you. You do not have to write down your own hours, for anyone.

Most people still end up doing it. Not because of customs, but because of the next section.

The hours that never make it onto an invoice

Work it out for yourself. A business with five fitters, each losing twenty minutes a day that nobody notes down — half the trip to the builders' merchant, the call to the customer from the van, the quarter hour of rework after clocking off:

• 20 minutes × 5 fitters = 100 minutes a day
• 100 minutes × 220 working days = 22,000 minutes a year
• 22,000 minutes = around 367 hours
• 367 hours × 60 euros calculated hourly rate = around 22,000 euros

That is a worked example, not a statistic. Put in your own figures — the result is usually uncomfortable enough.

So anyone who has to introduce something because of the duty anyway should decide one more question along the way: should the recording only supply the evidence, or the invoice as well? A time clock records that someone was there from 7 to 4. For invoicing you also need to know who they worked for during that time.

That is exactly what time tracking in the Office Cloud by office1.cloud is built for: time spent at the customer that is meant to end up on an invoice. The timer starts in the browser or in the app for Android and iPhone, right on site. Every entry is attached to a project, an activity and a customer — or to a supplier, if you are recording bought-in work. The hourly rate comes from the default setting, from the project, from the activity or from the individual entry, depending on where you have stored it.

When invoicing you decide two things yourself:

• Rounding: to 5, 6, 10, 15, 30 or 60 minutes, either always upwards or commercially — that is, from half up, below that down. And either per entry or only on the total. That makes a considerable difference: six-minute increments per entry is not the same as quarter hours on the monthly total.
• Level of detail on the invoice: one line per project, per activity or per individual entry. For private customers the activity is usually enough; anyone who regularly gets their invoices trimmed switches to individual entries.

Time you do not charge for is marked with a reason instead of being deleted — then at the end of the year you can see how much goodwill you have given away. From that selection a document with a document number is created; if something is wrong, the billing can be cancelled and the hours are free again. The time record for the customer is also available as a PDF — that is the paper that counts in a dispute, long before it comes to reminders or debt collection.

Where the limit is, said plainly: this module is designed for customer time, not for occupational safety. It holds the date, start, end, duration and the person — the details this article is about. But it does not track breaks separately, it does not monitor the eight- and ten-hour limits, and it does not warn you if someone falls short of the rest period between two shifts. Whether your record works as evidence also depends on whether the entire working time really ends up in it, including hours with no customer attached. If you are looking for a solution that actively checks limits and rest periods, you need working-time compliance software. If your hours belong to customers and projects anyway, record them once and use them twice.

Because the hours are being kept anyway, the follow-up steps hang off them: the same data produces the tradesman's invoice showing the labour share, the progress or final invoice on a running project, or the recurring billing of a maintenance contract. And anyone who already calculated with hours in the quote can put target and actual side by side at the end.

One practical note to finish: forgotten timers are the most common mistake. Anyone who forgets to press "stop" in the evening has an entry of eighteen hours the next morning. That is why there is a warning threshold for unusually long entries, preset at 16 hours.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need time tracking at all? If you have employees: yes. Start, end and duration of the entire working time, since the Federal Labour Court decision of 13 September 2022. If you work alone: no.

Does it have to be digital? Not today. Under the draft, later yes — except with up to ten employees, where paper is to remain permitted permanently.

What happens if I record nothing at all? For working time beyond eight hours that is an administrative offence with a fine range up to 30,000 euros. For full recording under the 2022 ruling there is so far no separate fine provision — but the supervisory authority can order you to introduce a system, and then it gets expensive if you continue to do nothing. For mini-jobbers and the industries under Section 2a SchwarzArbG, customs checks.

Is a spreadsheet enough? As an electronic form within the meaning of the draft, a spreadsheet is generally considered sufficient, because the draft does not prescribe any particular technology. The catch is elsewhere: a table filled in at the end of the month from paper slips does not meet the daily deadline.

May my people enter their own hours? Yes, the draft explicitly provides for this. Responsibility for correct recording stays with you.

Does the employee have to sign the timesheet? That is not prescribed. For invoicing your customer, a countersignature on the time record can still be worthwhile.

How long do I have to keep the records? At least two years — under current law, under Section 17 MiLoG and under the draft as well. That is separate from the tax retention periods for your accounting documents.

Do I have to record my own hours? As an owner without an employment contract, no. For costing and for invoicing the customer it is still worth it.

When will the law come? That is not settled. The draft still has the procedure ahead of it, and it is to enter into force only at the start of the quarter following promulgation.

Status: 26 August 2026. The ministerial draft is not applicable law; thresholds and deadlines may change in the further legislative procedure.

Sources: Sections 16 and 22 ArbZG, Section 17 MiLoG and Section 2a SchwarzArbG (Gesetze im Internet); Federal Labour Court, decision of 13 September 2022, 1 ABR 22/21; ministerial draft of the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs "Draft of an Act amending the Working Hours Act and other provisions" of 18 June 2026.