What belongs in a working-time record — and what does not

Asking what belongs in a working-time record sounds trivial and is not. Most of the deficient records that fail an inspection are not empty — they contain the wrong things, or too little. A monthly total is not a record in the sense the law means, even when the total is correct.

This article sets out the minimum contents, the cases where more is required, and the mistakes that keep being found.

The core: three entries per day

In both countries it comes down to the same three.

• the start of working time
• the end of working time
• rest breaks — start and end, or at least the duration

The daily duration follows from these and is usually carried alongside. It does not replace them: “8.5 hours” does not show whether the eleven-hour rest period from the previous day was observed, or whether a break fell after six hours. Those are exactly what an inspection examines.

In Germany this scope follows from the Federal Labour Court's decision of 13 September 2022 (“start, end and duration”) and, for the sectors in § 2a SchwarzArbG, expressly from § 17(1) MiLoG. In Austria it follows from the monitoring purpose stated in § 26(1) AZG.

When more is required

Work during a rest period or at a weekend (Austria). § 25 ARG additionally requires the place, duration and nature of the activity. This is a free-standing obligation alongside the AZG and is almost always overlooked. Anyone running on-call duty or Sunday callouts needs a field for it.

Averaging (Austria). § 26(1) AZG requires the start and length of the averaging period to be documented. Not per day, but documented.

Working time beyond eight hours (Germany). § 16(2) ArbZG requires those hours separately, together with a register of employees who have consented to an extension under § 7(7). An employer already recording start and end satisfies the first part automatically — the register is a separate list and is often missing.

Hours attracting a supplement. Whether an hour counts as overtime with a supplement is not decided in the time record but by statute and by the collective agreement. The record has to supply the basis from which that can be calculated.

What expressly does not belong in it

Here businesses make the opposite mistake and record too much. The record is purpose-bound: it serves the monitoring of working-time rules, not the monitoring of conduct.

A working-time record should not contain:

• Location data, unless there is a separate legal basis of its own. An app that sends a position along with a clock-in collects more than it may.
• Fine-grained presence at the desk, keystroke activity, screen captures. That is performance and conduct monitoring and needs a far heavier justification.
• Health data. That somebody is absent belongs in absence management; why does not belong there. A record with the entry “disc rehabilitation” is processing health data within Article 9 GDPR.
• Free-text fields with no purpose. They fill up with appraisals as soon as they exist.

The purpose limits the contents. That is not a formality; it is why a lean record is easier to defend in data protection terms than an extensive one.

Six mistakes that keep being found

1. Duration only, no start and end. The most common defect. In Austria this is permissible only under § 26(3) AZG — for staff who largely determine both time and place, or who work predominantly from home.

2. Breaks deducted as a flat rule. “30 minutes break” as a fixed calculation is an assumption, not a record. In Austria it becomes permissible only through a works agreement under § 26(5) AZG, and even then deviations must be recorded.

3. Written up retrospectively at month end. Hours reconstructed from memory are open to challenge, and the German draft bill would expressly require same-day recording. In the MiLoG sectors the seven-day deadline has applied for years.

4. The roster used as the record. A roster says what was planned. The simplification in § 26(5a) AZG allows confirmation of adherence only where the fixed schedule is recorded in writing — and every deviation still has to be recorded.

5. Only overtime recorded. Common in Germany, because § 16(2) ArbZG was read that way. Since the 2022 decision, full recording is owed; § 16(2) is an additional duty, not a ceiling.

6. No way to account for absences. Holiday, sickness, public holidays and unpaid leave must be distinguishable from working time. Otherwise an empty day looks like an unrecorded day — and the burden of proof turns in a dispute over holiday that was never granted.

How to tell a usable record

A simple test. Take any day from eight months ago and answer four questions from the record alone.

1. When did the person start and finish?
2. Was there a break after no more than six hours?
3. Were there eleven hours between finishing and starting the next day?
4. If the day is empty: was it a weekend, holiday, sickness, or unrecorded work?

Anyone who can answer all four has a record that will survive an inspection. Anyone who has to go and ask somebody for one of the answers has a note.