Attendance records

What it means

An employer must record working time, overtime, night work, standby and absence. The record underpins payroll and the calculation of average earnings.

The law prescribes no format: a book, a spreadsheet or a time system will do. It must be kept as work happens and match reality, not be filled in before an inspection.

A clock-in and clock-out record is not yet a working time record. Breaks have to be taken out of the time spent on site, and work separated from moments when the employee was in the building by choice, for instance before the shift began. For pay and overtime what counts is time actually worked, not the gap between two swipes of a card.

How it works in practice

For home working the duty is the same, relying on the employee’s own entries. It helps to agree when work is recorded and until when the employee is reachable.

The record also protects the company. Without it a dispute over unpaid overtime starts from the employee’s account, and the employer has nothing to show otherwise.

Records are often neglected for agreements outside employment, yet even under a student work agreement the hours must be tracked: the agreement has a statutory weekly limit, and without a record the company cannot show it was respected. Each month we therefore ask clients for the hours worked under such agreements along with attendance of regular staff.

What to watch out for

The labour inspectorate asks for the record among the first documents and matches it with payroll sheets. A mismatch between hours and pay leads to back payments and a fine.

A record kept only in a program that one person can access is easily lost when the supplier changes or the payroll clerk leaves. Records must be kept for the period the law sets and an inspection may ask for earlier years, so we archive them with the personnel files rather than in exports scattered across e-mails.