Since the ECJ’s ruling, it’s clear that working time recording is coming. As soon as the Bundestag passes the corresponding law, every company will be obliged to systematically document the working hours of its employees. This means that in just a few months, every company will need a working time recording solution. In the following, you’ll learn: Why you’ll be best off with working time recording via an app and how you can implement the whole thing in awork and the partner tool timeBro.
1. Recording working time via an app: modern work requires location-independent solutions
Recording working time via an app: modern work requires location-independent solutions
Previous solutions for recording working hours, such as chip cards or terminals, are location-bound. They are only suitable for checking attendance. But since physical presence is becoming less and less important in modern work, companies need solutions that also work for home office or while in the field – in other words, remotely. Nothing could be more obvious than tying working time recording to the respective work device and using a working time recording app for this purpose.
Excel & Co. are free – but cause high costs elsewhere
Recording working hours via app always has a price. Can’t it also be done for free? The idea of at least finding a free solution for an excessive burden enforced by law is understandable. But companies that have their employees fill out Excel spreadsheets or timesheets are tying their own hands with extra work.
The ECJ ruling requires that the timesheets be “accessible” – that is, that authorities and works councils can view them. This means that, in the case of tables, they would have to be collected, checked, consolidated, dated, and filed accessibly. Inquiries, reminders, and warnings also create disruptive meaningless communication.
3. ECJ requirements are automatically met by apps
According to the requirements defined by the ECJ, recorded times must in the future be “objective,” “reliable,” and “accessible.”
- Accessibility is ensured by entering and transparently managing all times in an app.
- “Objective” means, in the best case, only the recording of dates and times. However, depending on the law’s implementation, the recording of activity types and comments on activities can be added. In time tracking apps, corresponding functions are a matter of course. That means you can track exactly how much working time was spent on which projects or tasks.
- “Reliability” refers to, on the one hand, protecting recorded times from subsequent manipulation. Tables and timesheets cannot really meet this requirement. But it also refers to the timeliness, completeness, and accuracy of times. Let’s take the good old-fashioned entry of working times into an Excel template again. Be honest: Who remembers to enter the working times conscientiously into a spreadsheet every day? The result: The subsequent recording at the end of the week or even month is always inaccurate. Good apps offer automatic time measurement or notifications that remind employees to record their time every day.
4. Possibility of project time recording improves planning and efficiency.
Work time tracking is about the start, end, and total of working time. On the other hand, project time recording determines the distribution of working time among different projects, tasks, processes, or customers. Up until now, it has mainly been service providers such as agencies, IT companies, law firms, or architecture and engineering firms that record project times. It helps them to calculate projects profitably and plan their processes efficiently. But project time recording is also immensely valuable for other service providers and self-employed people as an insight-oriented form of working time recording.
Without question, knowledge of project times would also be very useful for any other company. Since working time recording has to be made anyway, and it is only a small step to project time recording, why not use the time to collect data via an app that helps optimize the respective business?
5. Working time recording via an app free of charge? Those who start with project time recording before the law comes into force will get both in one.
By the time the law comes into effect in a few months, all reasonable app providers will integrate the recording of pure working hours. Since there will certainly be a demand for working time recording-only apps, this will give rise to separate product versions and packages.
While existing customers of project time tracking apps will get these features as a free update, anyone looking for a solution only at the start of the law will have to pay a reasonable price for this benefit.
One more reason to start now, order the combo of free time tracking via awork and a one-time discount on automatic time tracking from timeBro!
Easy time tracking via app directly on your smartphone
With awork, you can start your working hours directly on projects or tasks. Time tracking via stopwatch or entering times afterward is also possible. With the new awork app, these functions now even come directly to your smartphone. The highlight: awork is completely free for teams of up to 10 people and three projects. This makes time tracking for freelancers, for example, child’s play. Simply open the app, start time tracking, and you’re done!
In addition to intelligent time tracking with uncomplicated evaluation as well as project and task management, the web app from awork has interfaces to 1,000+ other apps at the ready. For example, timeBro’s automatic time tracking is already integrated in awork.
Fully automatic time measurement on the computer with the timeBro app
timeBro s the perfect solution for anyone who often forgets to record their times or can’t remember exactly what they were working on. This is because the app records the duration of all computer activities, calendar appointments, and absence times for the user fully automatically. The special feature is timeBro’s employee-friendly data protection concept: all data is only stored offline on the respective device, i.e., there is no cloud – only the user has insight into his time measurement.
With this reminder, days can be reconstructed faster and more accurately – and times can be entered uncomplicatedly via drag & drop. timeBro and awork are connected via an interface. This means that projects can be imported directly – and the recorded times exported to awork with one click.
How automatic time recording works with timeBro
About our guest author
Our guest author Niclas Preisner, 31, worked as a young creative in several agencies and founded the startup timeBro three years ago. Over the past few years, he has become acquainted with working time tracking in hundreds of companies.