Time recording for drivers by app

Why working time has to be recorded

Employers must record the start and end of daily working time; the Federal Labour Court derived this from section 3, paragraph 2, no. 1 ArbSchG (German Occupational Health and Safety Act) in its ruling of 13 September 2022. For driving staff in road transport it is expressly stated in section 21a, paragraph 7 ArbZG: working time must be recorded, the records must be kept for at least two years, and the driver receives a copy on request. In the driver app, they can see their times at any time under “My times”.

Time recording does not replace the tachograph. Driving and rest times under Regulation (EC) No 561/2006 continue to be evidenced via the driver card; working time also includes loading, waiting and the pre-departure check.

What FleetCred checks for every shift

Corrections with a reason

If a driver has forgotten to clock out, they report it in the app with the day and a short description. The office receives an email, enters the time retrospectively and marks the report as completed. Every correction needs a reason, the original time is retained, and everything appears under activities. In the app, a corrected time is marked “corrected by the office”.

Hours account, leave and requests

Each employee gets a working time model with target hours per weekday and leave entitlement, if necessary valid from a set date, for example when switching to part-time. From this, FleetCred calculates target, actual and balance day by day: public holidays according to the federal state of the place of work, leave and sickness counted like target hours, half days, time off in lieu taken from the account. If the statutory break is missing after more than six hours, it can be deducted; the recorded time remains unchanged. FleetCred also counts night, Sunday and public holiday hours for the supplements.

Employees request leave, time off in lieu and overtime in the app. The decision is made by the supervisors of their group, for example administration or shunting; they see the duty roster, who is absent at the same time and the account balance afterwards. FleetCred calculates leave on joining and leaving pro rata under section 5 BUrlG (German Federal Leave Act). Once a year every employee receives a reminder of their remaining leave and when it expires, and FleetCred stores it as proof, because without this reminder leave does not expire.

Month-end closing and payroll export

At the end of the month you close the month: the values are frozen and stored as a PDF with a checksum; times and absences are then locked and can only be reopened with a reason. For payroll, the monthly values are available as a file for DATEV LODAS or Lexware lohn+gehalt with your wage types, as CSV or Excel, separately for subsidiaries. Temporary agency workers are paid by the agency; for the agency there is the record of hours as a PDF.

The personnel form holds the details needed for payroll: address, tax ID, tax class, church tax, social security number, health insurer, bank details, marital status, children and severe disability. Employees enter them in the app, and the office checks and accepts them; FleetCred verifies the tax ID, social security number and IBAN with their check digits. The details are encrypted and visible only to company admins. From a degree of disability of 50, FleetCred adds the additional leave under § 208 SGB IX to the leave account.

Export for ATOSS and payroll

If you use ATOSS or another time management system, FleetCred supplies the bookings as a CSV file: personnel number, date, time and booking type. You set the separator, date and time format and the codes for clocking in, out and breaks as your ATOSS administrator specifies. Via a secret retrieval address, a scheduled task fetches the previous day's bookings every night.

Without a time management system, you use the monthly report as Excel: per driver, working days, working time in hours and minutes and as a decimal number, breaks and, with the duty roster, target hours and difference, plus all days and all bookings with corrections.

Location and works council

You decide whether the location is saved when clocking in. At most one point is saved on clocking in and one on clocking out, never while on the road and never during breaks, and after a period, by default 90 days, FleetCred deletes the coordinates. If a driver does not allow location access, the clock-in still goes through and is noted as “no location”, unless you have set “only on premises”.

Electronic time recording, especially with location, is a technical device for monitoring. If there is a works council, it has a right of co-determination under section 87, paragraph 1, no. 6 BetrVG (German Works Constitution Act); it is best to regulate the introduction in a works agreement.

Set-up and price

The platform admin activates the add-on, after which the clock-in card appears in the driver app. The mandatory pre-departure check requires the Vehicles add-on. The add-on is charged per active driver per month. Request a quote

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