Driver working-time tracking: obligation, practice, pitfalls

Since the decision of the German Federal Labor Court of 13 September 2022 (1 ABR 22/21), one thing is clear: employers in Germany are obliged to record their employees' working time. The court derived this duty from the Occupational Safety Act — implementing the European Court of Justice's so-called time-clock ruling of 2019. For transport operations, where the timesheet is often still filled in by hand at the end of a shift, this has concrete consequences.

What exactly is required

The Federal Labor Court established the duty but prescribed no particular method. What must be recorded:

• Start and end of daily working time
• The duration, so overtime and rest periods are traceable
• The record must be objective and reliable — not based on the driver's memory or goodwill alone

The handwritten timesheet meets the requirement in principle, but in practice it's the weakest link: it's filled in afterwards, rounded, estimated — and thus contestable.

Why transport operators are particularly affected

An office job has fixed rooms and fixed hours. A transport operation doesn't. The driver starts at changing locations, has waiting times, breaks between routes and an end that depends on the last patient. This very irregularity makes manual recording error-prone:

• Waiting time at the patient: working time or break?
• The drive to the first location: does it already count?
• The ten minutes of handover at shift end that nobody notes down?

Over the month these add up to considerable inaccuracies — sometimes to the driver's disadvantage, sometimes the operation's. Both are a problem.

GPS-based tracking as a workable solution

The most elegant answer to this irregularity is automatic recording that starts where the work happens: in the vehicle. When the driver starts their shift in the app and works through the routes with a tap, working time emerges as a by-product — objective, timestamped, with no separate effort.

The decisive advantage: recording happens at the moment things occur, not from memory after hours.

A clean handling of the movement data is essential here. GPS tracking touches on data protection — it may serve working-time recording, not gapless surveillance. A good system records the time without turning the driver into a transparent person.

The three most common pitfalls

1. Not separating breaks cleanly

Anyone who fails to document the statutory rest break risks double trouble: with the customs authority during an audit and with the driver during payroll. The break must be distinguishable from working time.

2. The drive to the first location

Whether the travel time to the first patient counts as working time depends on the individual case and the contractual arrangement. What matters is that you have a clear, consistent and documented practice — not three different ones depending on the driver.

3. Retroactive changes without a log

Corrections to recorded times are permitted but must be traceable. A system that logs every change protects both sides.

Conclusion

The obligation to record working time isn't harassment but a chance to get rid of one of the last paper processes in transport work. Recording the time automatically where it arises saves the timesheet, gains legal certainty and, incidentally, provides solid figures for your own costing. MITA Base records working time directly from the driver app — as a by-product of the route, not an extra task.

The transition works best step by step: run digital recording in parallel with the old paper sheet, compare for a month — and you'll quickly see where the old method was inaccurate.