Employee time tracking: the law, your obligations and FAQs

Since 2019, every company in Spain has been legally required to record its employees’ working hours. Whatever the size of your workforce or the sector you operate in, if you employ staff you must keep a record of their working time. And this is not a recommendation: it is a legal obligation, and failing to meet it comes at a high price. In this guide we explain exactly what time tracking is, what the law says, what obligations you have as an employer and how to comply without spending half a day filling in Excel spreadsheets.

What is time tracking?

Time tracking is the daily, mandatory record of each employee’s working day: the time they start work and the time they finish. Its purpose is to combat precarious employment, give visibility to overtime and ensure that the rest periods and working-time limits set out in the Estatuto de los Trabajadores (Spain’s Workers’ Statute) are respected.

This record is mandatory for all workers, whether full-time or part-time, and regardless of whether they work on site or remotely. It makes no difference whether a company has two employees or two hundred: the obligation is the same.

The time-tracking law: from Real Decreto-ley 8/2019 to digital clock-in

The obligation originates in Real Decreto-ley 8/2019, de 8 de marzo (the Royal Decree-Law of 8 March 2019), on urgent measures for social protection and combating precarious employment. It amended Article 34 of the Estatuto de los Trabajadores and established that, from 12 May 2019, every company must guarantee a daily record of working time.

Since then, the rules have been progressively tightened. The lawmaker’s clear trend is towards a digital, reliable and tamper-proof record: the aim is to do away with easily manipulated paper-based systems and with sign-in sheets that get filled in at the end of the month. The new requirements point towards clock-in data being accessible electronically to the Inspección de Trabajo (Spain’s Labour Inspectorate), to workers’ legal representatives and to each employee in respect of their own data.

In practice, this means that a modern time-tracking system can no longer be a paper timetable: it must record every clock-in with a timestamp, store it securely and allow it to be consulted whenever the authorities require.

What obligations does the employer have?

If you are a business owner or an HR manager, the law requires you to comply with several specific points:

• Record each worker’s working day every day, with the start time and the finish time.
• Keep the records for 4 years. During that period they must be available and easily accessible.
• Make the records available to workers, to their legal representatives (trade unions, works council) and to the Inspección de Trabajo y Seguridad Social (Labour and Social Security Inspectorate).
• Negotiate the recording system through a collective agreement, a company agreement or, failing that, by decision of the employer following consultation with the workers’ legal representatives.

An important nuance: the record must reflect the actual working day, not the theoretical one in the contract. If a part-time worker puts in extra hours, the record must capture them. That is precisely one of the things the Inspectorate scrutinises most closely.

What are the offences and penalties?

Failing to keep a record of working time, or keeping it incorrectly, is considered a serious offence in matters of labour relations under the Ley de Infracciones y Sanciones en el Orden Social (LISOS, Spain’s Law on Offences and Penalties in the Social Order). The amounts have been revised upwards in recent years, so today’s penalties are considerably higher than in the original wording of the law.

Broadly speaking, the fines are structured as follows:

• Minor offences: from around 70 € at the lowest grade.
• Serious offences (this is where the failure to record working time falls): from around 751 € at the minimum grade up to close to 7,500 € at the maximum grade.
• Very serious offences: these can comfortably exceed 200,000 € in the most serious cases.

What is more, the penalty applies per workplace, not just once per company. In other words, a chain with several premises could rack up several fines in a single inspection. On top of this, the absence of a record usually leads to regularisations of unreported overtime with the Seguridad Social (Social Security), which multiplies the real cost of non-compliance.

What must the time record look like?

The law does not impose any specific technology, but it does require the record to be objective, reliable and accessible. In practice, a good time-tracking system must:

• Record the daily working day on an individual basis, with the exact clock-in and clock-out times.
• Be reliable and tamper-proof, so that the history cannot be altered to suit anyone.
• Be kept for the required 4 years and be exportable whenever the Inspectorate requests it.
• Allow consultation by the worker, by their representatives and by the labour authority.

Paper records are permitted, but they are the most problematic option: they get lost, they get filled in after the fact and they are very easy to challenge in an inspection. That is why the clear recommendation is to opt for a digital system, ideally with a mobile app so that each person can clock in from wherever they work — something essential in remote-working models or for staff who are on the move.

Frequently asked questions about time tracking

Are SMEs and self-employed people with staff also obliged to comply? Yes. The obligation does not depend on the size of the company. Any business with employees must record working time, including self-employed people who have staff on their payroll.

Do you have to clock in when working remotely too? Yes. Time tracking is just as mandatory remotely as it is on site. The practical solution is a system that lets you clock in from a mobile or a browser.

Do I have to record overtime? The record must reflect the actual working day, so any hours worked beyond the ordinary schedule will be captured. Overtime also has its own rules on compensation and social-security contributions.

How long do the records have to be kept? Four years, and they must be available to workers, legal representatives and the Inspección de Trabajo.

LapsoWork: simple, law-compliant time tracking

Complying with the time-recording obligation need not become an administrative burden. With LapsoWork your employees clock in with a couple of taps from their phone or computer, and every clock-in and clock-out is recorded with a timestamp, stored securely and ready to export in the event of an inspection.

The system works on both iOS and Android, performs equally well in the office and remotely, and integrates with the rest of your people management: holidays, shifts, payroll and documentation. So, on top of complying with the law, you gain visibility over your team’s hours and save yourself hours of administrative work every month.

If you would like to see how it works with your own workforce, you can request a demo or take a look at our pricing for SMEs.