Contents
The unfamiliar allocation
The agency worker's employer is the agency. The working time, however, has to be recorded by the hirer, that is the business where the work is actually done. That is logical, because only there does anyone know when the shift began and ended.
The duty applies in so far as a statutory instrument under section 3a AUeG on a wage floor is applicable. In practice that is the normal case for temporary agency work, because the wage floor ordinance applies throughout.
Alongside that, the agency remains responsible as the employer for payroll and for compliance with the Working Hours Act. Both therefore need the same figures, and both get them from the same record.
What the hirer owes in concrete terms
The start, the end and the duration of daily working time for each person deployed, by the end of the seventh calendar day following the day of work at the latest, to be kept for at least two years.
No form is prescribed. In practice it runs via timesheets that the hirer countersigns and passes to the agency, or via the hirer's time tracking system.
What the agency additionally has to keep available
Under section 17b AUeG the agency has to register with the customs administration for deployments in certain industries. Under section 17c(2) AUeG it has to keep the documents necessary for inspection available in Germany, for the duration of the actual employment, at most two years, and in German.
Here too, inspections are carried out by the undeclared work enforcement unit. Breaches of the record-keeping duty carry fines under section 16 AUeG.
What matters day to day
Friction usually arises at the same point: the hirer records its own workforce in its own system and the agency workers on paper, because they have no access. Then either the seven-day deadline or the piece of paper is missing.
It is cleaner to keep the people deployed in the same system, with a group of their own and an evaluation per agency. Then the deadline and the retention are right automatically, and the settlement with the agency rests on the same figures.
- Keep agency workers in your own system, not on paper alongside it.
- An evaluation per agency, so that the settlement has the same basis.
- Countersigning by the person deployed, which saves later discussion.
- Retention for two years, counted from the relevant point.
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: 2 September 2026