Japan requires objective working-hour records; Everhour adds structured team controls for approvals, limits, and payroll review.
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 |
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This page is for teams that need a practical way to record working time for employees in Japan. The goal is a usable weekly or pay-period record that shows who worked, which day they worked, the work period, breaks, overtime, night work, and any project or client allocation needed for billing.
Japan requires employers to ascertain each worker's working-hour status under the Industrial Safety and Health Act. The Industrial Safety and Health Regulations allow time cards, computer-use records, or other objective and appropriate methods, and those records must be preserved for three years. A time-tracking system should support that recordkeeping job without turning payroll review into spreadsheet cleanup.
A useful Japan time record starts with employee name, date, start time, end time, break time, total working time, workplace or location if relevant, and the task, project, client, or cost center. Payroll-facing records also need clear separation between regular hours, overtime, day-off work, and work between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m.
Employers must prepare a wage ledger for each workplace and enter wage-calculation information, wage amounts, and other required particulars without delay each time wages are paid. Time records should feed that ledger cleanly. For project billing, the same entry can carry billable status, rate basis, comments, and JPY amounts, so one approved record supports both payroll review and client invoicing.
Japan's standard working-hours limit is 8 hours per day and 40 hours per week, excluding break time. Overtime or work on days off generally requires a written Article 36 agreement with the majority union or majority representative, filed with the relevant government agency. Time tracking should show daily, monthly, and annual totals before payroll closes.
Article 36 monitoring needs more than a weekly total. Regular overtime is limited to 45 hours per month and 360 hours per year. During extraordinary workload increases, overtime plus holiday work must remain under 100 hours in any month, the rolling monthly average cannot exceed 80 hours, annual overtime is limited to 720 hours, and only six months per year may exceed 45 hours.
A free weekly total is enough for a freelancer, a one-person business, or a small client job that only needs a simple JPY invoice backup. That approach breaks down when several employees, multiple projects, approvals, night work, day-off work, and Article 36 monitoring all feed the same pay period.
Everhour fits the managed workflow side: team settings define working days and hours, managers approve or reject submitted time, admins lock approved periods, and personal tracking limits keep entries inside policy. That structure gives accounting and managers a cleaner handoff than a one-time export or manually edited spreadsheet.
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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Japan does not require one specific time-tracking software system. Employers must ascertain each worker's working-hour status, and the Industrial Safety and Health Regulations recognize time cards, computer-use records, or other objective and appropriate methods. The selected method must produce usable records and preserve them for three years.
The Labor Standards Act covers worker rosters, wage ledgers, and important labor-relations documents. It states a five-year retention period, but a transitional provision currently deems that period to be three years until otherwise provided by law. Employers also need wage ledgers prepared per workplace each time wages are paid.
Article 36 limits matter once an employer extends working hours or requires work on days off under a filed agreement. Time records need monthly and annual views because the ordinary limit is 45 hours per month and 360 hours per year, with separate caps for extraordinary workload increases.
Night work should be identifiable because the Labor Standards Act requires at least a 25% premium for work between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. Overtime also has its own premium rules, including at least 50% for overtime beyond 60 hours in a month, so mixed time categories need separate labels.
Employee time records that identify workers are personal data under Japan's Act on the Protection of Personal Information. Businesses handling that data must specify the purpose of use, avoid use beyond that purpose without advance consent unless a statutory exception applies, apply necessary and appropriate security measures, and supervise employees who handle the data.
Everhour Team Management lets admins set working days and hours, personal tracking limits, roles, project assignments, and approval workflows. Managers can review submitted time, approve or reject entries, and lock approved periods before payroll, billing, or reporting uses the records.
Everhour Reporting turns logged time, budgets, costs, and project data into configurable reports with columns, grouping, filters, date ranges, and exports. Teams can review project, client, member, billable time, labor cost, and invoice status data before JPY billing or internal analysis.
Set team rules, review submitted hours, lock approved periods, and hand clean records to payroll or billing. Everhour gives Japanese teams structured time control without spreadsheet-based approval drift.
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