Short-time work: accurate timesheets prevent trouble with the employment agency

What is short-time work?

The coronavirus and the poor economic situation it has caused have put many companies in difficulty. Production stoppages, jobs that fail to come in and tightened safety measures mean that many businesses can no longer employ and pay their employees in full.
To support companies through these times of crisis, lawmakers have relaxed the requirements for claiming short-time work. For the employer to be reimbursed for the short-time work allowance (Kurzarbeitergeld) afterwards, a benefit application including precise working time tracking for the staff has to be submitted to the employment agency (Arbeitsamt). Time and again this leads to conflicts with the authorities when the hours have not been recorded properly. Applications such as clockin offer a simple remedy here.

What do the new rules look like?

The government has adopted easier access to short-time work allowance, in force until the end of the year, in order to support companies through the current difficult period and to avoid redundancies. Normally, short-time work allowance is only paid if at least ⅔ of the workforce is affected by a loss of work. At the moment, however, there is already an entitlement to payment if at least 10 percent of the staff have an unavoidable and temporary loss of pay of more than 10 percent within one month.

The Federal Employment Agency (Agentur für Arbeit) relieves employers of part of their staff costs by paying employees 60 percent (or 67 percent if they have a child) of the wages they have lost, and by covering in full the social security contributions that the employer would otherwise bear.

Cleanly documented working hours save a lot of trouble...

To claim short-time work allowance, the employer notifies the local employment agency (Agentur für Arbeit) of the duration and extent of the loss of work. At the end of a month, the reimbursement of the short-time work allowance incurred is then applied for retrospectively by means of a benefit application. This requires cleanly recorded proof of working time that shows exactly how many hours employees have worked. Actual working hours, but also vacation and other absences, have to be listed in detail. And that is exactly what causes problems for many companies in which working time tracking to the minute is not normally the practice.

They often fall back on Excel lists, which are prone to error and frequently inaccurate and hard to read. Trouble with the employment agency over imprecise documentation and a lack of clarity is then often inevitable and makes prompt reimbursement of the money harder.

How to create timesheets automatically with no effort

clockin helps you here: with our mobile working time tracking, your employees can record the hours they have worked quickly, easily and to the minute. Whether in the home office or on site at the business: clockin can be used on any standard smartphone or tablet, requires no time-consuming setup and is extremely easy to operate. Exact, clearly laid out hours reports for your employees are created automatically, and you can then submit them to your local employment agency (Agentur für Arbeit).

With clockin you save not only valuable time but also trouble with the employment agency. Get started with clockin today so that you can keep a clear head even in these turbulent times!

Benefits:

• Working time tracking to the second (mobile and on-site)
• Automatic creation of timesheets (including Excel export)
• Immediately understandable