In German construction, the start, end and duration of daily working time must be recorded within seven days. What § 17 of the Minimum Wage Act and the Federal Labour Court require, and why a job report reconstructed in the evening often fails those requirements.
In the trades, the job report is the basis of invoicing: who was on which site, when, for how long, with what travel time. Less present is the fact that the same job report is a statutory record that has to be produced during an inspection by the German customs authority's Financial Control of Undeclared Work (FKS). And that the law is fairly precise about what it has to look like.
The duty: § 17 MiLoG
§ 17 (1) sentence 1 of the German Minimum Wage Act (MiLoG) obliges employers who employ marginal workers or employees in the sectors listed in § 2a of the Act to Combat Undeclared Work to record the start, end and duration of those employees' daily working time no later than the end of the seventh calendar day following the day of work, and to keep these records for at least two years from the relevant recording date (unofficial translation). § 2a (1) SchwarzArbG lists first: the construction industry.
Three requirements are contained in that. Start, end and duration must be recorded, not just the total. The record must exist by the seventh calendar day after the working day at the latest. And it must be kept for two years. Under § 17 (2) MiLoG the documents must also be kept available in Germany in the German language, and at the inspection authority's request also at the place of employment, that is, on site.
Customs does not ask how many hours it was. It asks from when until when, and when you wrote it down.
The ID requirement on site
Added to that is § 2a (1) SchwarzArbG: persons working in construction must carry their identity card, passport or equivalent and present it to the customs authorities on request. Under § 2a (2) SchwarzArbG the employer must, before the work starts, demonstrably inform each employee in writing of this duty and keep that notice (unofficial translation). That, too, is a document demanded during an inspection.
The general duty: the Federal Labour Court
Independently of the Minimum Wage Act, the German Federal Labour Court ruled in its decision of 13 September 2022 (1 ABR 22/21) that employers are obliged under § 3 (2) no. 1 of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (ArbSchG) to record their employees' working time. § 3 (2) no. 1 ArbSchG requires the employer to provide a suitable organisation and the necessary means (unofficial translation). That applies to all businesses, not only the sectors listed in § 2a SchwarzArbG. For trades outside construction, the question is therefore not whether to record, but how.
Why the evening job report is not enough
Common practice looks like this: the fitter fills in the weekly report on Friday or dictates the hours in the evening from memory, and the office transfers them into payroll software. That does not necessarily breach § 17 MiLoG; the seven-day window leaves room. But the record is then an estimate. Start and end are rounded, breaks deducted as a flat rate, travel added. During an inspection this shows when the times look identical week after week. And at invoicing it shows when the customer questions the hours and nobody remembers when the day really began.
Capture in the moment
A record that actually reflects start, end and duration is most easily created while time is passing: on arrival at the site, on leaving. Whoever speaks the job report while unloading the van and closes it while tidying up has a time-stamped entry that never needs the seven-day window. Scrypa Trades structures job reports and timesheets from what is spoken and transfers them into your payroll or time-tracking software, with date, employee, start, end and break.
This article gives a general account of the legal position under the German Minimum Wage Act, the Act to Combat Undeclared Work and the Occupational Safety and Health Act and is not employment law advice for individual cases. Whether your business falls under § 2a SchwarzArbG depends on how your trade is classified.
The figures in this article are illustrative and based on industry studies of voice-based documentation. They do not replace an assessment for your own organisation.