What is electronic working time tracking?

Working time tracking, what exactly is it?

Working time tracking means recording the daily working hours of employees. It measures how long and in what period employees carry out their work. What is recorded is the time in which the contractually agreed working time obligation is fulfilled. That record should be as exact as possible.

Why are working hours recorded?

Alongside certain legal requirements, which are covered later in this article, recording working time makes it possible to trace the hours worked. That way important business metrics can be gathered in order to review the productivity and performance of employees over particular periods and to derive better staff management from them. In cases of illness, action can then be taken more quickly and effectively.

Working time tracking also gives better insight into the costs of different projects. It becomes possible to establish more realistically how much a single productive working hour costs.

The simplest and most fundamental reason for recording working hours, however, is checking employee attendance.

Legal requirements

Tracking every hour or even every minute worked is not required by law. However, Section 16 of the German Working Hours Act (Arbeitszeitgesetz, ArbZG) states that the employer is obliged to record overtime and work on public holidays and Sundays. Apart from that, it is left to the company itself how and whether time tracking is carried out,

However, following a 2019 ruling by the European Court of Justice, work is under way in Germany on passing a law that obliges every employer to record their employees’ working hours.

Since September 2022, a ruling by the Federal Labour Court (Bundesarbeitsgericht) has made it finally clear in Germany too: the obligation to record working time is coming. Because courts already rule today in line with the requirements of the European Court of Justice (Europäischer Gerichtshof, EuGH). That means: every employer is already required today to record their employees’ working hours.

And now, in April 2023, a first draft bill on ‘electronic time tracking’ was presented by Federal Minister of Labour Hubertus Heil. It is intended to cast the requirements of the EuGH into German law. You can find the exact details here.

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How can working time be recorded?

Time tracking on slips of paper

Written time tracking, also called a „written record“, is still one of the most common forms of time tracking today. The start and end of working time, as well as breaks, are entered by hand into a table. These slips of paper are then handed in weekly or monthly to the employer or the HR department.

This form of time tracking still finds favour above all in small businesses with few employees. Many temporary or part-time staff also record their working hours this way. Beyond that, timesheets are also used on job sites and in the skilled trades to record time on individual projects.

Companies are obliged to keep these records for at least two years before they may be destroyed.

Electronic time tracking with a chip terminal

The draft bill on ‘electronic time tracking’ has put a new spotlight on time tracking. If it is passed, this bill could oblige companies in Germany to put pen and paper aside and invest money in software and apps.

What usually comes to mind here is the classic version of electronic time tracking: recording via electronic devices with a chip. It often works like this: every employee gets a personalised card or chip with which they register daily at a permanently installed terminal. At the end of the month the system produces a timesheet for the employee on the basis of the data collected. These systems are usually very expensive, however, prone to errors and designed on the assumption that every employee is on site to work.

Electronic time tracking with digital tools

Digital time tracking means clocking in and out via electronic devices, whereby< the personal data are generated automatically and saved within the system and then usually stored in a cloud.

Compared with ‘electronic time tracking, the digital kind can also take place without an expensive separate device, via an app or in the browser. There are various providers here with different additional features. Alongside daily clocking in and out, project-based time can also be recorded, for example, or the submission of vacation requests can be digitalized. A time tracking app can therefore often be more than just an electronic tool for recording bureaucratic data: it serves as an interface between the company and the employee and is meant to make processes easier on both the employer and the employee side, in order to enable straightforward and simple communication within the business. And all of it free of paper.

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The right solution for your business

One digital time tracking solution for you could be clockin. Simple to use and developed straight out of practice, we want to actively fight the paperwork chaos in your office and let you organise your business calmly and effectively.

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