Time tracking in IT companies: what applies to on-call duty and night call-outs

The limits in IT

There is no industry rule of its own for IT and software companies in the Working Hours Act. The general limits apply, with two points written for running systems: the Sunday exception for data networks and computer systems, and the question of when on-call duty becomes working time.

On-call duty or standby duty

On standby duty, the person stays at a place the employer determines and has to work at once when needed. All of that is working time (CJEU, SIMAP of 3 October 2000, C-303/98, and Jaeger of 9 September 2003, C-151/02). On on-call duty, the person chooses where to be and only has to be reachable. Then only the time of the actual call-out is working time.

The Court of Justice draws the line at the restrictions: if requirements such as a very short response time very significantly determine the person's free time, all of the on-call duty is working time (judgments of 9 March 2021, C-344/19 and C-580/19). Anyone requiring a response time of ten minutes until login should check this beforehand. And a call-out from the living room counts just like one in the office: five minutes of reading a ticket and a restart are working time.

The call-out at 3 am and the next morning

An alert at 3 am, twenty minutes of work until 3:20 am: according to the prevailing view in the specialist literature, this call-out interrupts the rest period, and the eleven hours of section 5(1) ArbZG start again afterwards. The next start would then be 2:20 pm, not the usual daily stand-up at 9 am. Section 5(3) ArbZG allows cuts to the rest period caused by call-outs during on-call duty, amounting to no more than half the rest period, to be compensated at other times. This applies only to hospitals and care facilities.

A collective agreement, or a works agreement based on one, can adapt the rest period for on-call duty to the particularities of the service, for example by compensating cuts caused by call-outs at other times (section 7(2) no. 1 ArbZG). Without such a rule, only planning helps: whoever can be called at night gets a later start the next day or no appointments in the morning.

Maintenance windows on Sundays

Sundays and public holidays are work-free in principle (section 9 ArbZG). IT has an explicit exception: section 10(1) no. 14 ArbZG allows work to keep data networks and computer systems working. The condition is in the first sentence of that subsection: only if the work cannot be done on working days. A migration that can only run on a Sunday without downtime for customers can fall under it. A release that could just as well run on a Tuesday does not.

Anyone who works on a Sunday gets a replacement rest day within two weeks, after a public holiday on a working day within eight weeks (section 11(3) ArbZG). At least 15 Sundays a year stay work-free (section 11(1) ArbZG). With a weekly on-call rotation, it pays to count the Sundays.

Home office, trust-based hours and overtime

The Working Hours Act applies at the kitchen table just as in the office. Since the Federal Labour Court's order of 13 September 2022, the employer has to record working time in principle; the court derives the duty from section 3(2) no. 1 ArbSchG. No form is prescribed today, and recording may be delegated to the employees themselves. A duty to record electronically is only contained in a draft bill of 18 June 2026; until it becomes law, it is a draft.

In IT, the standard employment relationship is the rule. Of 1.21 million dependent core employees (aged 15 to 64, excluding people in education) in the economic section information and communication, 127,000 were in atypical employment in 2025 according to the microcensus, that is fixed-term, part-time with at most 20 hours a week, marginal or temporary agency work. That is just over one in ten; across all industries it was almost one in four. The typical question in IT is therefore not the mini-job limit, but the eleventh hour of the day and the overtime nobody notes down.

Working time, project time and on-call duty in one system

In MetronHR, teams clock in in the browser, in the desktop app for Windows and macOS or via the app, to the minute and without rounding. Every time can be booked to client, project and service, so support and project work do not end up in the same pot. Forgotten times can be added for past days, and overtime goes to the time account.

In the Professional plan, the roster records on-call duty by day and area, so it is visible who has to be reachable in which week. The call-out at night is clocked like any other working time. At the end of the month, hours per person are in the monthly Excel overview and in the payroll file for DATEV.