Compulsory time tracking: what the law says in Spain (2026)

Published on 10 June 2026

If you have employees, time tracking is compulsory in Spain. It is not a recommendation and it does not depend on the size of your company: it has been law since 2019. In this guide we explain in plain language what the rule requires, how to comply without going mad with paperwork and what you are risking if you do not.

What exactly does the law say?

The obligation comes from Real Decreto-ley 8/2019, of 8 March, which added paragraph 9 to article 34 of the Workers' Statute. Since 12 May 2019, every company must «garantizar el registro diario de jornada, que deberá incluir el horario concreto de inicio y finalización de la jornada de trabajo de cada persona trabajadora, sin perjuicio de la flexibilidad horaria» — guarantee a daily record of working hours, which must include the specific start and finish time of each worker's working day, without prejudice to flexible hours. That is the literal wording, and it is still in force today unchanged.

The aim of the rule is twofold: to control overtime and to protect workers' rights against unpaid hours. Behind it is the judgment of the Court of Justice of the EU of 14 May 2019 (case C-55/18), which required Member States to have an «objective, reliable and accessible» recording system.

The record must reflect each worker's actual working day, day by day, and be kept for four years.

There is a third requirement almost nobody mentions and that the Inspectorate does check: article 34.9 says that the record is organised and documented «mediante negociación colectiva o acuerdo de empresa o, en su defecto, decisión del empresario previa consulta con los representantes legales de los trabajadores» — through collective bargaining or a company agreement or, failing that, a decision by the employer after consulting the workers' legal representatives. If your collective agreement says nothing and there is no legal representation in the company, you decide; but if there is, it has to be consulted before the system is rolled out.

Who is required to keep working time records?

Every company with people employed under a contract of employment, whatever its size or sector. There is no minimum number of employees: if you have a single person under contract, you are already required to record their working day. The Ministry of Labour's Guía sobre el registro de jornada says so without qualification: it applies «a la totalidad de trabajadores, al margen de su categoría o grupo profesional, a todos los sectores de actividad y a todas las empresas» — to all workers, whatever their category or professional group, to every sector of activity and to every company — including sales staff, mobile workers and anyone working remotely.

• They are required: full-time and part-time contracts, permanent and temporary, in any sector (hospitality, retail, garages, offices…). And middle managers and positions of trust too, even where free disposal of their hours has been agreed: that does not exempt them from the record.
• Outside the obligation: the senior management staff of article 2.1.a) of the Workers' Statute — which is a special employment relationship, not «any boss» — and anyone who is not an employee: autónomos and worker members of cooperatives (we look at this in the article on autónomos).
• With a record regime of their own: part-time staff, who already had an obligation of their own in article 12.4.c) of the Workers' Statute, and workers on the special working hours of Real Decreto 1561/1995 — road transport, the merchant navy and cross-border rail services — who keep records of their own.
• Assignment and subcontracting: with a temporary employment agency, the one that records is the user company, because it is the one that directs and controls the activity. In article 42 subcontracting, the duty belongs to the contractor, even though it may agree to use the main company's clocking-in system.

What exactly you have to record

The law asks for the essentials, but do them properly:

• The start and finish time of each worker, every day. That is the only thing article 34.9 requires in writing.
• Strongly recommended, the breaks: without them, all the time between the recorded start and finish is presumed to be actual work, and that can turn against you.
• The record must be reliable, unalterable and impossible to manipulate after the fact, by neither the company nor the worker. The article does not say so; the Ministry of Labour's guide pins it down.
• It must be available to the workers, their legal representatives and the Labour Inspectorate. «A disposición» — available — means that it is at the workplace or immediately accessible from it. It does not require a copy to be given to each worker: that is only required for overtime and for part-time work.

And it is worth not confusing two different things: a working time record is not presence monitoring. The rule requires you to know when each person's working day starts and ends, not where they are or what they are doing during it. Anything that goes beyond that — location, cameras, access to devices — has limits of its own in article 20 bis of the Workers' Statute and in Ley Orgánica 3/2018 on data protection.

How to comply without drowning in paperwork

The law does not require any particular method, and it is worth saying so plainly because a great deal circulates to the contrary: digital clocking in is not compulsory today. The Ministry of Labour's guide says that «será válido cualquier sistema o medio, en soporte papel o telemático» — any system or means will be valid, on paper or electronically — provided it gives information that is reliable, unalterable and impossible to manipulate after the fact. These are the options, from the most fragile to the most solid:

Paper and Excel: legal, but fragile

A signature sheet or an Excel file comply with the law if they really are filled in day by day and are kept safe from later changes. The problem is not their legality, it is their weight as evidence: they are easy to complete after the fact, they get lost and they are a lot of work. In an inspection, a record anybody can rewrite is worth little.

Time tracking software: the most convenient option

A time tracking app records each clocking in with a timestamp, keeps it for the 4 years and lets you export the report in seconds. It is not what the law requires, but it is what makes proving you comply easiest.

A warning before you go on: if the system you choose uses geolocation, cameras or biometric data (fingerprint, face), you are into data protection territory and there are rules of its own. Fingerprints and facial recognition for clocking in are, according to the Agencia Española de Protección de Datos, the most problematic case of all: we cover it in the guide to clocking-in methods.

What happens if you do not keep working time records

Failing to record working hours is a serious infringement of article 7.5 of the consolidated text of the Act on Infringements and Penalties in the Social Order (Real Decreto Legislativo 5/2000), which since 2019 expressly names the «registro de jornada», the working time record. The fine, under article 40.1.b) of that same act, runs from €751 to €7,500 across its three bands. Those amounts are the ones set by Ley 10/2021 and have been in force since 1 October 2021: if you read figures of €626 to €6,250, they are from before that reform.

The amount is not multiplied by each worker: it is one infringement, not one per person. What the number of people affected does do is push the penalty up a band, because it is one of the grading criteria in article 39.2 of the LISOS, along with intent, turnover and repeat offending. And if you have several workplaces, the Inspectorate can draw up a report for each one.

We go into it in depth, with the bands and worked examples, in our guide to fines for not clocking in.