German employers have a real working-time recording duty. Everhour adds project budgets and billing workflows around approved time.
Enter your time in and out for each day. Overtime and gross pay are calculated automatically.
| Day | Time In | Break Start | Break End | Break | Time Out | Total |
|---|
The calculator gives you the number — Everhour takes it from there.
One click and you're timing. Start a timer, add an entry, edit the details. This is exactly how it feels in Everhour.
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Use this page to plan the fields and workflow for employee time tracking in Germany. The practical goal is a daily record that shows when work started, when it ended, total working time, and overtime where it exists. Germany's Federal Labour Court held on September 13, 2022, that employers must introduce and use a system for recording employees' working time under Section 3(2)(1) of the Occupational Safety and Health Act.
The system does not have to be electronic in every case until German legislation sets more specific rules. Paper records can still be sufficient depending on the activity and company. An app becomes useful when employees work across clients, locations, projects, or remote setups because it keeps entries searchable, consistent, and easier to review before payroll, billing, or management reporting.
A usable German time record starts with the beginning and end of daily working time. Those two timestamps produce the duration of work, including overtime for employees within the scope of the rule. The record also needs a clear work date, employee name or ID, project or cost center where relevant, and a separate break field so paid work time does not absorb unpaid rest periods.
German working-time rules make break and rest details operational, not decorative. Employees need a pre-established break of at least 30 minutes when working more than six hours and at least 45 minutes when working more than nine hours. No work period may exceed six hours without a break. Employees must generally receive at least eleven uninterrupted hours of rest after daily working time ends.
A Germany-focused setup should use German-language labels where employees enter time and euro-denominated outputs where the record feeds billing or payroll review. That does not change the legal record, but it reduces mistakes when employees select time categories, break types, clients, and billable status. A practical structure separates working time, break time, overtime, time off, and non-billable internal work.
German working time generally may not exceed eight hours per working day. It may extend to ten hours only if the average remains eight hours per working day over six calendar months or 24 weeks. Marginally employed workers and workers in sectors named in the Act to Combat Undeclared Work have an extra recordkeeping rule: start, end, and length of daily working time must be recorded by the end of the seventh calendar day and kept for at least two years.
A simple daily total can work for a small team with one location, stable schedules, and no client billing. It stops working when managers need approvals, correction history, budget control, or clean handoff to payroll and invoicing. German employee time data is personal data, so GDPR and BDSG Section 26 require a lawful employment-related basis and a disciplined approach to access, retention, and monitoring.
Everhour fits the managed workflow when tracked time must connect to project budgets, client billing, and repeat review cycles. Project Budgeting supports hour-based and money-based budgets, recurring periods, budget alerts, budget protection, expense inclusion controls, multiple billing methods, and client-level budgets. That turns approved employee time into budget status and billing context instead of leaving it as isolated timesheet rows.
This content is for general information only, may not be fully up to date, and is provided without any warranty or liability.
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Yes. Germany's Federal Labour Court held on September 13, 2022, that employers must introduce and use a system for recording employees' working time under Section 3(2)(1) of the Occupational Safety and Health Act. The decision follows the CJEU standard that EU member states must require an objective, reliable, and accessible system for measuring each worker's daily working time.
The core fields are the beginning and end of daily working time, total duration, and overtime where it exists for employees within the scope of the rule. Add date, employee, project or cost center, break time, and approval status for operational use. Breaks need their own field because German rules set minimum rest breaks after six and nine hours of work.
No. Germany's required working-time recording system does not have to be electronic in every case until the legislature sets more specific rules. Paper records can be sufficient depending on the activity and company. An app is still practical when the employer needs searchable records, manager approval, project allocation, remote entries, or consistent retention across multiple teams.
For marginally employed workers and workers in sectors named in the Act to Combat Undeclared Work, employers must record the start, end, and length of daily working time no later than the end of the seventh calendar day after the work. Those records must be retained for at least two years.
Employee time data is personal data. Employers need a lawful basis under the GDPR, and Germany's BDSG Section 26 permits employee data processing where necessary for hiring, carrying out or terminating the employment contract, or satisfying employee-representation rights and obligations. Where a works council exists, design choices can trigger co-determination rights.
Everhour Project Budgeting turns approved time into budget status by tracking hour-based or money-based budgets as employees log work. Teams can use recurring budget periods, threshold alerts, budget protection, expense inclusion controls, multiple billing methods, and client-level budgets for retainers or multi-project client work.
Everhour Timesheets let employees submit weekly project hours or working hours for review. Managers can approve, reject, or partially approve submitted time, and approved entries stay locked for regular members. That creates a review step before payroll, invoicing, or reporting uses the time data.
Move from one-off daily entries to approved time, budget alerts, and billing-ready records. Everhour connects employee tracking to Project Budgeting so German teams can manage hours and costs together.
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