Employee time tracking that is fair and compliant

Employee time tracking that works for both sides

Employee time tracking should answer three questions: how many hours were worked, on which projects, and are those hours correct? The tool should give managers reliable totals for payroll, invoicing and planning. It should also give employees a simple way to log their time and see their own balance.

Many tools do more than that. They collect activity data, take screenshots or rank staff by hours. zeitfair takes a narrower approach. It records working time clearly, keeps the data in the EU and shows managers team and project views rather than league tables of individuals.

What the law requires for working-time records

Requirements differ between countries, but they point in the same direction: employers need reliable records of working time, and those records must be handled under data protection law.

The EU baseline

In case C-55/18, decided on 14 May 2019, the Court of Justice of the European Union held that member states must require employers to set up an objective, reliable and accessible system that measures the daily working time of each worker. The ruling is based on the Working Time Directive (2003/88/EC). Informal estimates or end-of-month reconstructions are unlikely to meet that standard.

Germany

Under section 16(2) of the Working Time Act (ArbZG), employers must record working time beyond the statutory eight hours on each working day and keep these records for at least two years. Recording all working time from the start is a simple way to meet this duty and to prove compliance.

The United Kingdom

The UK is no longer bound by EU case law, and its rules differ. Under regulation 9 of the Working Time Regulations 1998, employers must keep records that are adequate to show compliance with the working-time limits, including the weekly maximum and night-work limits, and keep them for two years. The regulations do not prescribe a particular tool.

This overview is general information, not legal advice. Check your obligations with a lawyer or your data protection officer before you roll out a system.

Tracking hours without surveillance

Accurate hours come from people logging time without friction. A timer they can start in seconds, and easy corrections when something was missed, do more for data quality than any monitoring feature.

What to record

Record what the law and your payroll need: start and end times, breaks, projects or tasks, and absences. That is enough for working-time compliance, overtime and invoicing. Anything beyond that should have a clear purpose, or it should not be collected.

What not to record

Avoid tools that take screenshots, log keystrokes, track mouse movement or score activity. These features collect far more personal data than working time requires, and they damage trust quickly. Under GDPR, they often fail the principles of minimisation and transparency. If a tool uses AI to score individual performance, the EU AI Act may also classify it as high-risk.

zeitfair does not offer these features, and it does not score individuals.

Employees see their own data

Fair time tracking gives employees the same view managers have of their own time. With employee self-service, each person can see:

• their own entries, including breaks and project assignments,
• their running overtime or flexi-time balance,
• their monthly time statement (Zeitnachweis) as a PDF, and
• their absence requests and approval status.

This turns time tracking into a tool employees use for themselves, not a record kept about them. It also makes errors easier to spot early. When an employee notices a missing entry, they can correct it, and the change is logged in the audit trail.

Team and project insights, not individual scores

Managers need to know whether a project is on track, whether a team is overloaded and whether absences are piling up. They rarely need a ranking of individual hours. zeitfair shows totals per team and per project. That supports planning and budgeting without turning time data into a performance score.

For payroll and client billing, exports are available as CSV and PDF reports. For a deeper look at how project time works, see project time tracking. For the daily entry side, the timesheet app guide covers how employees log their hours.

Employee time tracking and GDPR

Working-time data is personal data, so design choices matter as much as features. Four principles do most of the work:

1. Purpose limitation and minimisation. Collect working time, projects and absences. Do not collect activity data you do not need.
2. Transparency. Employees should know what is recorded, why, and who can see it (GDPR Articles 5 and 13).
3. Storage limitation. Set a retention period that matches the legal requirement, and delete records when it expires.
4. Processor contracts. A provider that processes data for you needs a data processing agreement (Article 28).

In Germany, section 26 of the Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG) sets additional rules for employee data, and a data protection impact assessment (Article 35) may be needed for larger rollouts. Document your choices in that assessment, since it is the natural place to show why each data field exists.

For the full compliance picture, read our guide to GDPR time tracking.

How zeitfair supports this

• Hosting in the EU. Data is stored in Frankfurt, Germany.
• DPA online. The data processing agreement is available to customers online.
• Roles. Owner, Admin, Manager and Employee roles limit who sees what.
• Audit log. Changes to time entries are recorded.
• Export and deletion. Data can be exported and deleted.

Works council and employee consent

In Germany, introducing a time recording system usually requires works council co-determination. The Federal Labour Court confirmed this in its decision of 13 September 2022 (1 ABR 22/21). Start that conversation early. Bring the works council into choices about which fields are recorded, who can see them and how long they are kept. A transparent design makes that discussion much easier.

Outside Germany, the same principle applies in practice. Explain the system to employees before launch, share what it records and give them a clear way to ask questions.

How to roll out employee time tracking

A rollout that staff accept usually follows a few steps:

1. Define the purpose. Write down what you need the data for: payroll, working-time compliance, project costing or all three.
2. Limit the fields. Record only what supports that purpose.
3. Set roles. Give managers team totals and give each employee access to their own records.
4. Set retention. Agree how long records are kept and when they are deleted.
5. Brief employees and the works council. Explain what is recorded, how corrections work and where to find their own data.

Keep the first version small. A short list of fields, a clear correction process and one pilot team will show quickly whether the setup works in practice. Then review the setup after a few months. If a field is no longer used, stop collecting it.

Get started

zeitfair is free for up to three users. You can set up your team in a few minutes, invite employees and start the timer. When your team grows, move to a paid plan. Basic costs 3.90 euros, Pro 6.90 euros and Business 9.90 euros per user per month.