Working time records in Spain: what your company is required to do

Since May 2019, every Spanish company has been required to record its employees' working hours. Every company: it makes no difference whether you have one employee or two hundred, whether they work in an office or remotely, full time or part time. If you employ people in Spain, you must keep a working time register.

It is one of the most widely ignored labour obligations among small businesses, and also one of the easiest for the Labour Inspectorate to check. This guide covers the essentials.

What the law says

The obligation comes from article 34.9 of the Workers' Statute, introduced by Royal Decree-Law 8/2019. In short:

• The company must guarantee a daily record including the specific start and end time of each employee's working day.
• The register must be kept for four years.
• It must remain available to employees, their legal representatives and the Labour and Social Security Inspectorate.

The law does not impose a specific format. It can be paper, a spreadsheet or an application. But inspection practice and court rulings have drawn the real boundaries: the register must be reliable and unalterable. A spreadsheet anyone can edit at the end of the month is a weak defence.

What exactly must be recorded

At a minimum, the start and end time of each employee's working day, every day. Breaks are not required by state law, but recording them avoids arguments: if the day runs from 9:00 to 18:00 with an hour for lunch, a register showing only start and end suggests nine hours worked.

Some nuances worth knowing:

• Remote work: the obligation is identical. The record can be kept from home by telematic means.
• Split shifts: each stretch is recorded. Leaving at 17:00 and returning at 20:00 for a couple of extra hours is legal and must appear exactly like that.
• Overtime: the register is precisely how overtime is evidenced. It has its own legal cap (80 hours per year) and must be compensated or paid.

The fines

Failing to keep the register is a serious infringement under Spanish labour sanction law (LISOS). Penalties range from roughly 750 euros to more than 7,500 euros per company, and the Inspectorate can find one infringement per workplace. Add the indirect effect: without a register, in an overtime lawsuit the employee's account carries more weight than the company's.

Paper, spreadsheet or application

Any format is legal on paper. The difference is what holds up:

• Paper: valid, but awkward to keep for four years, easy to lose and hard to consult. Friday-afternoon batch signatures are also easy to spot.
• Spreadsheet: the problem is alterability. If the file can be edited without a trace, its evidential value is weak, both for you and against you.
• Time-tracking application: punches carry a server timestamp, cannot be modified without a trace, and exporting for an inspection takes minutes.

We built k-fichaje around that logic: every punch is stored with server time and cryptographically chained, so nobody (not even the company itself) can alter the history unnoticed. Corrections exist, but as added annotations, never on top of the original record. It is free for up to two employees, which is exactly where many small businesses start.

Checklist

1. Every employee records the start and end of their day, every day.
2. The register keeps the last four years.
3. Employees can consult their own records.
4. You can export any month's register in minutes, not days.
5. Changes to punches are documented with a reason and an author.

If any of the five points fails, you have a gap an inspection can find. The good news: closing it takes an afternoon. Register your staff in a time-tracking tool and show them how to use it.