What is mandatory today
Article 34.9 of the Estatuto de los Trabajadores, added by Real Decreto-ley 8/2019 (a royal decree-law), requires the company to guarantee a daily record of working time, with the specific start and end time of each employee. How it is done is organised through collective bargaining, a company agreement or, failing that, a decision by the company after consulting the employees’ legal representatives.
The records must be kept for four years and be available to employees, their representatives and the Inspección de Trabajo y Seguridad Social (the Labour and Social Security Inspectorate).
The law does not say in what medium. The 2019 guide from the Ministerio de Trabajo (the Ministry of Labour) says that any system, on paper or electronic, is valid as long as it gives reliable information that cannot be modified or tampered with afterwards.
For part-time staff, working time is recorded day by day and totalled every month, and the employee receives a copy with their payslip (article 12.4.c). Overtime is also recorded day by day (article 35.5).
Not keeping the record is a serious offence under the Ley sobre Infracciones y Sanciones en el Orden Social (the law on labour offences and penalties, article 7.5), with the fines set in article 40.
The royal decree on digital recording: where it stands
The Ministerio de Trabajo prepared a royal decree to make the record digital. The draft published for public consultation in October 2025 said that every company would have to keep it “by digital means” (paper only when a technical incident prevents it), with the hour and minute of the start and end, breaks, whether the work is on site or remote, the type of hours, who makes each change and who authorises it, and with immediate access for the Inspectorate, remote access included. The technical requirements were to be set out in a later regulation.
On 19 March 2026, the Consejo de Estado issued opinion 188/2026, which concludes that it should not be approved as it stood, because of data protection objections and because it went beyond what the law allows. Since then, according to the press, the Government has announced its approval several times, but as of 19 October 2026 it has not gone through the Consejo de Ministros or been published in the BOE (Spain’s official gazette). In addition, on 6 October a general election was called for 29 November.
When it is approved, the final text will set the deadlines and the adaptation period. Until then, nobody knows for sure what they will be.
Real Decreto 723/2026 (BOE of 15 September 2026), which is sometimes confused with this one, is a different decree: it requires written information on the essential elements of the contract, such as the length and distribution of working time, shifts and agreements on overtime. It says nothing about the format of the record.
What a good record must already have
- Personal: each person records their own start and finish, and nobody does it for them.
- Reliable: the time is set by the system, not by the person entering it.
- Tamper-proof: if a record has to be corrected, a trace remains of what was changed, who did it and who authorised it.
- Accessible: employees, their representatives and the Labour Inspectorate must be able to access it.
- Kept for four years.
- With what each case requires: the monthly summary for part-time staff and the record of overtime.
This is what the Ministry’s guide already asked for in 2019 and what the draft royal decree spelled out. A record that meets it today is the best starting point for whatever comes next.
When an off-the-shelf app is enough
If what you need is for each person to clock in and out and your staff have a stable timetable, an off-the-shelf time-clock app solves it well and quickly. Check that it keeps the history of changes, that it exports the records and that the Inspectorate and the employees’ representatives can access it.
When it makes sense to build it into your software
- When staff work shifts, afternoons or timetables that change every week and you already have your own scheduling system: the record can come from the same schedule and compare what was planned with what was actually worked.
- When you have part-time staff and the monthly summary has to go with the payslip.
- When clocking in has to serve other purposes: hours per project or per client, or an alert when someone goes over their working hours.
- When you do not want yet another program, with another username and password for each person.
Nobody can sell you a “certified” system
Today nobody can sell you a “certified” system for digital time recording: the specifications have not yet been published, and the draft left the technical requirements to a later regulation that does not exist either. What you can ask for is that the system meets what the law and the Ministry’s guide already require today, and that the supplier commits to adapting it when the final text comes out.