Time Tracking Law in Germany: What Employers Must Do in 2026

Plenty of international companies discover German time tracking law the same way: a new hire in Munich asks which tool to log hours in, and HR in London or Austin has no answer. In the UK there is no general duty to record every employee’s hours. In the US, salaried exempt staff often never clock in at all. Germany is different, and has been since a court decision in 2022 that surprised German employers too.

Where the obligation comes from

The case began as a dispute about something else. A works council in North Rhine-Westphalia wanted to force its employer to introduce an electronic time recording system. The Federal Labour Court (Bundesarbeitsgericht) turned the works council down on 13 September 2022, case 1 ABR 22/21, and explained why: the employer was already legally required to record working time, so there was nothing left to demand.

The court based this on section 3(2) no. 1 of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, read in the light of EU law. The Court of Justice of the EU had ruled on 14 May 2019 (C-55/18, CCOO) that member states must require employers to set up an objective, reliable and accessible system for measuring daily working time. Without records, nobody can check whether maximum hours and rest periods are respected. That ruling binds every EU country.

1. 14 May 2019CJEU requires a system to measure daily working time (C-55/18).
2. 13 Sept 2022Federal Labour Court: employers must record hours under existing safety law.
3. April 2023First ministry draft with electronic recording, not taken forward.
4. June 2026New ministry working draft becomes public, linked to a reform of maximum hours.
5. October 2026No cabinet decision known. The 2022 court ruling remains the legal basis.

Source: CJEU C-55/18; Federal Labour Court 1 ABR 22/21; reports on the Labour Ministry working draft, as of October 2026

What you must record today

Under the ruling, employers must record when work starts and ends each day and how long it lasts, including overtime. Breaks follow from the difference. That applies to everyone: part-timers, remote workers, field staff.

The format is open for now. Paper and spreadsheets are acceptable, as are apps and wall terminals, as long as the records are reliable. You may delegate the recording to employees, but you remain responsible and should at least spot-check that it happens.

Two groups face specific, fineable record-keeping rules on top:

• Hours beyond eight a day. Section 16(2) of the Working Hours Act requires these to be recorded and kept for two years. Breaches can cost up to €30,000.
• Mini-jobs and certain sectors. Under section 17 of the Minimum Wage Act, start and end times and the duration must be recorded within seven days and kept for two years. This covers marginal part-time “mini-jobs” and sectors such as construction, hospitality and cleaning.

The law itself is in German on gesetze-im-internet.de, the federal government’s official legal database.

What happens if you don’t record?

For the general duty, there is no direct fine yet. The labour inspectorate can order an employer to record hours, and ignoring that order can cost up to €30,000. The bigger exposure is often in court. An employer without records struggles to rebut an overtime claim.

My read: the enforcement risk is moderate today. That is no reason to ignore it, and most employers already trigger the specific duties for overtime or mini-jobs anyway.

What the 2026 draft would change

In mid-June 2026 a working draft from the Federal Ministry of Labour became public. The ministry called it an internal working version, not an agreed government bill. By October 2026 no cabinet decision was known, and employer groups and parts of the governing coalition had criticised it. Changes are likely. According to consistent reports, the draft includes:

• Start and end of working time, plus its duration, recorded electronically and on the same day, without prescribing a specific technology
• Deviations such as paper records or recording up to seven days later only through collective agreements
• A permanent exemption from the electronic format for employers with up to ten staff and for private households
• Records kept for at least two years
• Trust-based working time still allowed if the employer makes sure breaches of maximum hours and rest come to light
• A weekly instead of daily cap on working hours, but only through collective agreements

1. 250 or more employees1 years
2. 50 to 249 employees2 years
3. 11 to 49 employees5 years

Counted from entry into force. Employers with up to 10 staff would be permanently exempt from the electronic format.

Source: Reports on the Labour Ministry working draft of June 2026; not adopted law

The structure matches the 2023 draft. Whether it survives is open. For planning purposes, the lesson is simple: if you are introducing a system now, make it electronic. Then the final transition period doesn’t matter.

What counts as working time

You can’t record correctly without knowing what to record. Three situations cause frequent disputes.

On-call duty at the workplace counts as working time. The CJEU settled that for hospital doctors back in 2003 (C-151/02, Jaeger). If someone must stay at a place set by the employer, they are working even when nothing happens.

Standby at home is generally not working time. The person is reachable but free to move around. You record actual call-outs, such as a 40-minute call at 2am. If the constraints are so tight that someone is effectively stuck at home, the assessment can change.

Business travel depends on what happens during the journey. Driving yourself or answering email on the train is work. Reading a novel on the train is, on the common view, not working time under the Working Hours Act. Pay is a separate question governed by contract or collective agreement.

Choosing a method

Criterion	allowed today	electronic under draft	admin effort
Paper timesheet			high
Spreadsheet per person		partly	medium
App or browser tool			low
Terminal with badge			low

For offices and remote staff, a browser or app solution is usually simplest. Warehouses and care settings tend to work better with terminals because not everyone has a work phone. Fingerprint terminals are risky under GDPR, which treats biometric data as a special category. If a badge does the job, skip the fingerprint.

GPS tracking is unnecessary for time recording and hard to justify under data protection law. If you want it anyway, you need a strong reason and, where one exists, a works council agreement.

The works council decides how, not whether

Whether to record is no longer negotiable after the 2022 ruling. How to record is. An electronic system is a technical device capable of monitoring behaviour and performance, so a works council has co-determination rights over it. Agreements typically cover what is collected, who sees it and what it may not be used for, such as performance monitoring. See works councils and IT systems for detail. If you plan shifts as well, linking rota and time records saves a lot of reconciliation, as explained in how to make a staff rota.

If you need time recording wired into existing HR and payroll systems and want a custom build, a studio like OnlineBuilders can take that on.

Your next step: check whether you hold start and end times plus duration for every person working in Germany today, including mini-jobbers and remote staff. Where you don’t, introduce an electronic tool that already meets the draft. Explain it during onboarding, using the employee onboarding checklist.

Questions people ask

Does the German time tracking duty apply to foreign companies?

If you employ people who work in Germany, German working time rules generally apply to that work, even if your company is based elsewhere. That includes remote employees living in Germany. An employer-of-record arrangement shifts the formal duty but not the practical need to collect accurate hours.

Is trust-based working time still allowed?

Yes. 'Vertrauensarbeitszeit' means the employer does not dictate or check when people work. Hours still have to be recorded, and employees can do the recording themselves.

Are small companies exempt?

No. The court's ruling has no size threshold. The 2026 draft would only exempt employers with up to ten staff from the electronic format, not from recording itself.

What about senior executives?

Germany's Working Hours Act does not apply to 'leitende Angestellte', a narrowly defined group of senior managers with hiring and firing authority or similar powers. Whether the recording duty from safety law covers them is disputed. Most managers do not fall into that group.