Restaurant time tracking: record every working day, no unexplained hours

Daily records must include the specific start and finish time of each employee’s working day. Article 34.9 of Spain’s Workers’ Statute, introduced by Royal Decree-law 8/2019, establishes this obligation. In a restaurant, it also covers employees hired for extra shifts, part-time employees and permanent seasonal employees during their periods of work.

The rota shows when someone was scheduled to work. The time record needs to show what happened: an early start to prepare the dining room, a late finish because a group stayed longer or a change of shift. Automatically copying scheduled hours can leave these differences out.

Identify the person, date and actual times. Your procedure should explain when work begins and how breaks are recorded, taking the collective agreement and working arrangements into account. Closing to customers is not necessarily the end of the working day if clearing up remains to be done.

The employer must ensure records are kept. Providing an app or a sheet does not complete that responsibility: the team needs instructions, a way to report problems and someone responsible for reviewing them. If a person works at several sites, check how their records are brought together for consultation.

On a split shift, recording the start and finish of each part separates work from the gap between services. Someone working from 12:00 to 16:00 and from 20:00 to 23:00 works seven hours in this example, not eleven. Recording only the first start and last finish would hide the four-hour interruption.

How a break within a shift is treated depends on its nature, the collective agreement and applicable arrangements. Explain the approach before introducing the system. People should be able to interpret the record without guessing whether a break counted as working time.

Daily records inform the working-time review, but do not by themselves determine how to treat each difference. Before finalising payroll, compare the contract, collective agreement, working-time arrangements and hours actually worked. Exceeding the rota does not automatically tell you which payment or compensation applies.

Part-time employment has specific obligations: record working time daily, total it monthly and give the employee a copy of the summary of ordinary and additional hours with the payslip. Article 12.4.c provides for a presumption of full-time employment if these obligations are breached, unless proven otherwise.

For overtime, article 35.5 requires daily recording and totals for the relevant pay period, with a copy of the summary given to the employee. Review compensation, limits and social security contributions with your payroll adviser; an app export does not replace that check.

Keep records for four years. Article 34.9 requires them to remain available to employees, their legal representatives and the Labour and Social Security Inspectorate. Organise permissions so requests can be met without exposing other people’s information where access is not appropriate.

Before relying on the archive, try retrieving a complete month for one employee: starts, finishes and documented incidents. Check that the document makes sense outside the software and can be matched to its summaries. A file you cannot open, or one dependent on a deactivated user, does not solve the access problem.

If you change providers, agree on export and retention before cancelling. Keep a copy of the historical records and check that the new system starts on the intended date, without gaps. The four-year requirement still applies to older records even after you stop using the app.

Article 7.5 of the LISOS classifies breaches of working-time recording rules as a serious offence. The general scale for these labour offences is €751 to €7,500. The level and amount depend on the facts and grading criteria; a missed clock-out alone does not determine a penalty.

A review may also reveal separate issues involving working hours, pay or social security contributions. These need assessment under their own rules and circumstances. Do not multiply the maximum fine by the entire workforce or assume every incident carries an automatic penalty.

If you discover that records have not been kept, introduce the procedure and preserve the evidence available for earlier periods. Document what was missing and what you have corrected. Do not fabricate retrospective clock-ins to make the archive appear complete.

Article 34.9 does not prescribe a specific medium. Organisation and documentation are established through collective bargaining or a company agreement; otherwise, the employer decides after consulting employees’ legal representatives. Check the applicable collective agreement and any implementing rules as well.

The medium must allow actual hours to be recorded, retained and consulted. With paper, define where sheets are stored and how corrections are documented. With spreadsheets, control access, versions and backups. With an app, test it during service and check what happens when the connection fails.

Do not choose solely on how quickly someone can clock in. Ask for a demonstration involving a split shift, a missed clock-out and a monthly export. Check that employees can consult the relevant records and that the restaurant keeps access to its history after the provider contract ends.

Assign an owner and a backup. During onboarding, explain where to clock in, how to record each part of a shift and whom to contact about mistakes. Run a test with the employee before their first service to identify access or device problems.

Review incidents often enough to clarify them while the team remembers what happened. Do not wait until payroll closes to ask about a clock-out from several weeks earlier. If the same issue recurs, change the procedure or fix the tool.

Before sending hours to your payroll adviser, check that no employees or working days are missing, corrections are explained and summaries match the records. Provide the required copies and archive the reviewed version. This routine spreads the work out and helps you explain differences when they arise.