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The decisive question: who caused them
Anyone leaving early, working less or taking a flexi-day of their own accord builds up negative hours that they have to make good. That requires an agreement governing the account and the settlement.
Where work is missing because the business has none, by contrast, the business bears the risk. Section 615 BGB calls that default in acceptance: the entitlement to pay remains, and the time lost may not be booked as negative hours. The same applies to operational disruptions, materials failing to arrive or cancelled orders.
What never leads to negative hours
Illness, leave and statutory public holidays. For those days the target time is credited, because the Continued Remuneration Act and the Federal Leave Act order that they be paid. Anyone booking them as absences produces a negative that the business caused itself.
Likewise not: ordered short-time work, release from work by the employer, and periods of a ban on employment.
Setting off against the salary
A deduction from the current salary for negative hours is permissible only where an effective agreement exists and the person is responsible for the hours. The attachment exemption limits in section 850c ZPO have to be observed.
The same applies on departure: a negative balance may only be withheld where it rests on the person's own decisions and the agreement provides for it.
Example: two weeks without orders
- Target time for the month: 160 hours.
- Worked: 118 hours, of which 42 hours were lost for want of orders.
- Permissible balance: 0 hours. The business bears the 42 hours under section 615 BGB.
- Only flexi-days taken by the employee themselves could have produced a negative.
Common mistake
A lull in orders gets written into the time account so that it will be "made up later". That shifts the entrepreneurial risk onto the employees and does not hold up in court.
This is not legal advice; for a specific case at your workplace you are better off asking someone qualified to give it.
- Section 615 sentence 1 BGB
- „Where the party entitled to services is in default of acceptance of the services, the party obliged to perform them can demand the agreed pay for the services not performed as a result of the default, without being obliged to perform them subsequently.“
Published by: AMNAU GmbH
Editorial responsibility: Ugur Aydogan, Product development.
Last reviewed: 2 September 2026