Fines for not clocking in: what failing to keep working time records costs (2026)

Published on 8 March 2026

Not recording your employees' working hours is not an oversight without consequences: it is a serious infringement that the Labour Inspectorate can penalise with up to €7,500. We explain the real bands, how the fines are worked out and, above all, how to avoid them for good.

How much is the fine for not keeping time records?

Failing to keep working time records 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, among the working-time matters it covers. The penalty runs from €751 to €7,500.

An important point about the figures: these amounts are those of article 40.1.b) of the LISOS as worded by Ley 10/2021, in force since 1 October 2021. The old bands — €626 to €6,250 — are still going round the internet, and they were repealed years ago. If you come across those figures, the text is out of date.

The penalty bands

• Minimum band: from €751 to €1,500.
• Middle band: from €1,501 to €3,750.
• Maximum band: from €3,751 to €7,500.

The band is decided using the criteria in article 39.2 of the LISOS: negligence and intent, fraud, failure to comply with earlier formal requests from the Inspectorate, the company's turnover, the number of workers affected and the harm caused. Repeat offending is an aggravating factor in its own right, under article 41.

On the «per company or per worker» question, which is where the exaggeration is worst: the amount is not multiplied by each person on the payroll. It is one infringement, not one per worker. But the number of people affected does push the penalty towards the middle or maximum band, and if you have several workplaces the Inspectorate can draw up a report for each one.

How you can get caught

The Labour Inspectorate can ask for the records during a visit, following a complaint from a worker, or in sector campaigns (hospitality and retail are watched closely). If you cannot produce the records for the last 4 years, which is the retention period in article 34.9 of the Workers' Statute, there are grounds for a penalty.

Two nuances that work in your favour and that almost nobody mentions:

• The inspector may warn and issue a formal request instead of imposing a penalty «cuando las circunstancias del caso así lo aconsejen y siempre que no se deriven perjuicios directos a los trabajadores» — when the circumstances of the case so advise and provided no direct harm to the workers follows (article 22.1 of Ley 23/2015). It is not a right of yours, it is a power of theirs, but it happens: if the problem is a formal one and there are no unpaid hours behind it, the usual outcome is a formal request.
• Infringements in the social order become time-barred after three years from the date of the infringement (article 4.1 of the LISOS). Note: that does not reduce the duty to keep the records, which remains four years.

The aggravating factor: overtime

The real risk is not only the fine for not keeping records, but what the record uncovers or hides. If the Inspectorate finds overtime neither paid nor contributed for, penalties are added for each infringement, on top of having to pay those hours and pay contributions on them. And here the scale does change: social security contribution infringements are worked out on the contributions not paid, not on a fixed band. That is where the figures shoot up.

Remember too that overtime carries obligations of its own, independent of the daily record: totalling it in the pay period and giving the worker a copy of the summary with their payslip (article 35.5 of the Workers' Statute), and informing the workers' legal representatives monthly (third additional provision of Real Decreto 1561/1995). We set it out in how to work out overtime.

How to avoid the fines altogether

It is very simple: keep a record that is daily, reliable, impossible to manipulate after the fact and kept for 4 years, and organise it through a collective agreement, a company agreement or, failing that, after consulting the workers' legal representatives, as article 34.9 requires. You choose the format: the law accepts paper and digital. Time tracking software saves you the work of squaring and exporting, but it is not a legal requirement.