Record-keeping duty
The record-keeping duty is the duty to record working times. It follows not from one provision but from several that differ in scope, deadline and addressee.
As of:September 2026
The four bases at a glance
First, section 3(2) no. 1 ArbSchG as interpreted by the Federal Labour Court on 13/09/2022 (1 ABR 22/21): the start, the end and the duration of daily working time are to be recorded for all employees. The provision names no deadline and no particular form.
Second, section 16(2) ArbZG: working time beyond eight hours a working day is to be recorded and kept for two years. That is the older and considerably narrower duty; it covers only the extra work.
Third, section 17(1) MiLoG: the start, the end and the duration within seven calendar days, to be kept for two years. It applies to marginally employed people everywhere and to all employees in the industries in section 2a SchwarzArbG.
Fourth, section 17c AUeG for temporary agency work, with the same seven-day deadline. There it is the hirer that has to record, not the agency.
What follows from that in practice
Anyone who knows only section 16 ArbZG records extra work alone and does not satisfy the duty from the Occupational Safety and Health Act. Anyone who knows only section 17 MiLoG and is not in a section 2a industry records only for mini-jobbers and overlooks the same point.
The broadest duty is the one from the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the strictest the one from the Minimum Wage Act. A system that records the start, the end and the duration daily for everyone satisfies all four at once.
MetronHR works these figures out itself: time accounts, premiums, overtime and the limits of the German Working Hours Act, with every booking.
Delegation is possible, responsibility is not
The recording can be assigned to the employees. The Federal Labour Court and the European Court of Justice expressly allow that.
The employer remains responsible. They have to ensure that recording actually happens and is correct, and that means looking when records are missing or implausible.
Example: a trades business with twelve employees
- Ten permanently employed journeymen, two mini-jobbers in the office.
- Section 3(2) no. 1 ArbSchG: recording for all twelve.
- Section 17 MiLoG: additionally a seven-day deadline and two years of retention for the two mini-jobbers.
- If the business operates in construction, section 17 MiLoG applies via section 2a SchwarzArbG to all twelve.
Common mistake
The seven-day deadline gets assumed to apply to the whole business or to none of it. Both are usually wrong: it hangs on the type of employment and on the industry, and in many businesses it applies to only part of the workforce.
Further reading
- Section 3(2) no. 1 ArbSchG, Federal Labour Court of 13/09/2022, 1 ABR 22/21
- Section 16(2) ArbZG
- „The employer is obliged to record employees' working time beyond the daily working time in section 3, first sentence, and to keep a list of the employees who have consented to an extension of working time under section 7(7). The records are to be kept for at least two years.“
- Section 17(1) MiLoG, section 2a SchwarzArbG, section 17c AUeG
This is not legal advice; for a specific case at your workplace you are better off asking someone qualified to give it.
Published by: AMNAU GmbH
Editorial responsibility: Ugur Aydogan, Product development.
Last reviewed: September 2026
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