Working-time check: note, warning, breach — what each finding means

Zeitflex checks the recorded hours against the ArbZG (German Working Hours Act) and sorts each finding into one of three levels. This article explains what is behind each level, which rule triggers which finding, who sees the findings — and why a finding cannot simply be clicked away.

Where the check is and who sees it

On the dashboard there is the Legal check card: one line per person, most serious first, at most four people, period the last 14 days. A click takes you to the Working-time check page. There you choose the period at the top — Last 14 days, This week, Last week or This month — and see every single finding with person, day, rule, legal reference and severity.

Only owners and management may see this. The response contains the names and breaches of all employees; the server rejects requests from other roles. Employees see their own hours in full in the timesheet; a view of their own findings does not currently exist.

The check is part of the Starter and Pro plans and also runs during the 14-day trial. On the Free plan, Zeitflex does not check the hours against the ArbZG — but the hours are recorded and kept just the same; they are what fulfils the record-keeping duty (§ 16 (2) ArbZG, § 17 (1) MiLoG (German Minimum Wage Act)).

The three levels

The headline figures on the page count the three levels separately; next to them is the number of people affected. In the weekly report by email (below), notes are left out entirely.

What is checked — rule by rule

Three things about this table are not obvious:

• The working day is the Berlin calendar day of arrival. A night shift from 22 to 6 o’clock counts as one day, not as two halves.
• The weekly limit is a warning, not a breach, because § 3 ArbZG allows compensation to 8 hours on average over six calendar months. Zeitflex does not know the compensation period and therefore does not claim a breach.
• Missed shifts and core hours depend on how working time is organised in the business. In a business with flexitime or trust-based working time, no finding about missed shifts is created — there the plan is only for orientation. The core-hours finding only exists with flexitime, and it uses the core hours of the business. Both — the working-time organisation and the core hours of the business — are set by the industry template at sign-up; there is currently no field in the settings to change them afterwards. The core hours of an individual working-time model play no role in the check. Zeitflex also only reports missed shifts if the business has subscribed to the shift plan (Pro or trial).

The daily limit is normally 10 hours. If a collective agreement under § 7 ArbZG allows longer shifts with on-call readiness, it can be 12 hours. Currently only the Security service industry template brings this value; there is not yet a separate input field for it in the settings.

One further finding has the same form but does not come from the check: Flexitime account at the cap. It comes from the time account of payroll preparation (warning from 80 % of the agreed limit, breach above it) and refers to a breach of the works agreement, not of the law. You will not see it on the Working-time check page. More on this under Flexitime and overtime account.

For employees under 18, the JArbSchG (German Youth Employment Protection Act) applies instead of the ArbZG (§ 18 (2) ArbZG). These findings carry their own legal references and are stricter throughout — see Apprentices under 18. If no date of birth is stored for a person, the page shows this as a separate Not checked box — even when there are no other findings.

A second box reports the record-keeping deadline: clock-ins without an end on days before today. Under § 17 (1) MiLoG, start, end and duration must be recorded at the latest by the end of the seventh calendar day after the working day — calendar days, the weekend counts too. The box shows for each day how many days remain; from two days remaining it is marked “tight”. Only owners and management may add missing entries.

The weekly report by email

Once a week, Zeitflex sends the working-time weekly report for the completed previous week (Monday to Sunday). It goes to the owner’s address and to managers with a confirmed email address (confirm under Settings → Account), and contains one person per line and the wording of the finding — at most 30 lines. Notes are not included, only warnings and breaches. The report arrives even if nothing was found: “No issues. A clean end to the week.” is the message that documents in a dispute that a check took place. The Details in dashboard button in the report takes you to the reports.

The report checks less than the page: it knows neither the date of birth nor the shift plan. Findings under the JArbSchG and missed shifts therefore only appear on the Working-time check page and in the card, not in the email.

That is why the card shows 14 days and not 7: a finding from the weekly report should still be findable on the dashboard after you have read the report.

Why the finding does not simply disappear

Click a row on the page: below it you see the wording with the measured values, the rule in one sentence and How to fix it with a button to the right place. There is no “Close finding” button. A finding only disappears when the hours it is based on change — or the period no longer contains it.

There are exactly two ways to do this:

1. Correction in the timesheet. The most common reason for “11 hours in one day” is forgetting to clock out. Owners and management correct the entry with a reason of 5 to 500 characters; the original version is kept as a version. A clock-in cannot be deleted. For a missed shift, add the time as a late entry or record the absence (vacation, sickness) — if the shift was cancelled, it belongs out of the plan. See Correcting a forgotten clock-in.
2. Replanning in the shift plan. Rest periods and weekly hours result from planning — a late shift until 22 o’clock and an early shift from 6 o’clock are the classic case. The shift plan checks every shift before it is saved: overlap, rest period, absence, daily limit, 48-hour week, weekly target and mini-job limit. See Planning shifts.

Still stuck?

What breaks and rest periods require in detail is explained under Breaks and rest periods; the stricter limits for young people under Apprentices under 18. For everything else, Support is there for you.