Time tracking in service and maintenance: when the drive counts and what applies after an emergency call

The limits in field service

Service and maintenance have no exception of their own in the Working Hours Act. The limits are the same as in the office; they are just reached faster on the road: the day starts in the company van, ends at the last customer or after an emergency call, and there is no time clock in between.

When the drive is working time

Many companies only count the day from the first customer. For employees without a fixed or habitual place of work, the Court of Justice of the EU decided otherwise: journeys between home and the first and last customers of the day are working time (judgment of 10 September 2015, C-266/14, Tyco). The technician drives to the employer's customers on the employer's instructions and cannot use that time freely. On 9 October 2025 the Court confirmed that trips set by the employer are working time for passengers too (C-110/24).

The judgment concerns working time in the sense of health and safety, meaning the daily limit and rest period. How the drive is paid may be regulated separately by an employment or collective agreement; the Court expressly left that open. Anyone who sets off at 7 am and is back at 5:30 pm has 9 hours 45 minutes of working time after a 45-minute break, even if the first customer was at 8 am.

Emergency service, late call-out and the next morning

A heating failure at 10 pm, work until 12:30 am, drive home until 1:10 am: work ends with the arrival home, and the eleven hours of rest under section 5(1) ArbZG run from then. The next start is 12:10 pm at the earliest. Section 5(2) ArbZG allows a shortening to ten hours only in a list of industries such as hospitals, restaurants and transport companies; service and maintenance are not among them.

On-call duty for the emergency service is not working time in itself, as long as the technician can choose where to be. Every call-out from it is, and according to the prevailing view in the specialist literature it interrupts the rest period, which then starts again. If the company requires such a short response time that free time is very significantly restricted, all of the standby can be working time (CJEU, judgments of 9 March 2021, C-344/19 and C-580/19).

Maintenance at the weekend

On Sundays, employees may not be employed in principle (section 9 ArbZG). Section 10(1) no. 14 ArbZG allows the maintenance of operating equipment insofar as the regular continuation of one's own or another company's operation depends on it. That fits the maintenance of a production line that only stands still on Sundays. In every case, the condition from the first sentence of the subsection applies: only if the work is not possible on a working day. Routine maintenance that could just as well be done on a Tuesday does not fall under it.

After a Sunday call-out, a replacement rest day is due within two weeks, after a public holiday on a working day within eight weeks, and at least 15 Sundays a year stay free (section 11 ArbZG). An emergency service rotating every other weekend quickly comes close to this limit.

What has to be recorded

Service and maintenance are not on the list in section 2a SchwarzArbG. The recording duty therefore follows from the Federal Labour Court's order of 13 September 2022, working time beyond eight hours per working day has to be recorded and kept for two years under section 16(2) ArbZG, and section 17 MiLoG applies to mini-jobbers. Things can be different when technicians install systems on building sites: then the company can count as construction, and the seven-day deadline applies to all employees.

There is no duty to record electronically today; it is contained in a draft bill of 18 June 2026. The slip of paper in the glove box is therefore allowed; it just often reaches the office only at the end of the month, and the morning drive is rarely on it.

Call-out, drive and service report in the app

In MetronHR, technicians clock in via the app, also without a network: the app stores the booking and transmits it as soon as there is reception again. Every time can be booked to client, project and service, to the minute and without rounding, so the drive and the work at the customer are visible separately. Overtime goes to the time account.

In the Professional plan, the booked times become a service report as a PDF, signed first by the company and then by the customer. The roster checks planned assignments against the rest period and the daily maximum and keeps the on-call duty by day and area. At the end of the month, the hours are in the monthly Excel overview and in the payroll file for DATEV.