§ Law & obligations · 5 min read
Customs audit: what you present to the FKS (German financial control of undeclared work)
What the inspector wants to see
The Finanzkontrolle Schwarzarbeit (FKS, German financial control of undeclared work) is part of customs. Its core question is: Who worked when and for how long? This means, per person and calendar day, the start, the end and the duration of working time.
The inspector does not need pay from this document — in Zeitflex, the working-time record deliberately contains no pay details. If the FKS also requests payroll records, these come from the payroll run by your tax adviser. Zeitflex prepares payroll; it does not produce it.
The one document: the audit folder (customs)
Zeitflex combines everything the audit requires in one PDF file per month — in the app it is called Audit folder (customs):
| Part | Content |
|---|---|
| Business log | One row per person: personnel number, name, working days, actual, target, difference, vacation, sick, number of corrections and late entries; the total below. |
| One sheet per person (A4 portrait) | One row per calendar day: date, day, start, end, break, actual, target, absence or remark. Weekends and public holidays in grey, changed days highlighted in colour. |
| Corrections and late entries | Complete for each person: date, type, before, after, reason, changed by, changed on. If there were none, this is stated explicitly. |
| Signature field | “Place, date” · “Employee” · “For the business”. |
| Footnotes | Legal basis, retention period, reading guide for breaks and target column, local time Europe/Berlin. |
Every sheet shows the status of the month-end close: “Month closed and locked on …” — or the note that the details may still change. That is exactly what an inspector wants to know.
How to generate the folder
- Open Month-end close on the left and choose the month.
- The month must be locked. If it is still open, the folder shows “Only available after closing.” — how locking works is explained under Month-end close in 10 minutes.
- In the Export step you will find the Audit folder (customs) card → **Download full folder**. Next to it, each person’s sheet can be downloaded individually in case the inspector only asks about specific employees.
- Print the file or hand it over digitally.
The folder is not a payroll export: it does not set the month to “exported” and does not appear in the export log. Who generated it and when is still logged — it contains personal time data. A tax adviser with the Download payroll exports permission can also download it via their portal — provided your plan includes the folder.
Without the Pro plan
You still have everything the law requires — just not as one document:
- Timesheet (every plan): open the timesheet and choose the month. The table shows start, end, break and duration per person and day; the history of an entry shows every correction with its reason.
- PDF payroll summary (from Starter): in the month-end close under Export — monthly totals per person, but with pay details that the inspector does not need for working time.
Why corrections are included
For an inspector, a record without a single correction over months is more suspicious than one with traceable changes. Zeitflex never overwrites times. Every correction creates a new version; the old one remains stored. A reason is mandatory — at least 5, at most 500 characters; without a reason, Zeitflex rejects the change.
How to add entries cleanly afterwards is explained under Correcting a forgotten clock-in/out.
People who have left and anonymised people
The folder’s list of people does not come from your current employee list, but from the frozen state of the month-end close. Anyone who worked in the audited month appears in it — even if the person left long ago.
Three months after leaving, Zeitflex anonymises the personal record: name, email, personnel number and login details are replaced by a pseudonym (“Former person” plus a fixed code). The times remain complete; the folder shows the person under their pseudonym with all daily rows and corrections. Art. 17 GDPR requires the personal reference to be deleted, § 17 MiLoG requires the record — both together are only possible this way. More under An employee leaves.
How far back?
The period is 24 months from the day of the respective record, i.e. record by record. An inspector in September 2026 may request records from September 2024. Zeitflex does not automatically delete working times after 24 months — the period is a minimum; the data remains for as long as your business exists (Retention periods).
If Zeitflex is currently unavailable
An outage on our side does not release your business from the recording obligation, and customs does not accept an outage notice as a record. Record the day on paper (name, date, start, end, breaks — one sheet per person), photograph the sheets and check the status page. As soon as it is working again: open the timesheet, click the day, Add late entry — every late entry is logged as a correction.
Still stuck?
If the folder is missing even though the month is locked, or an inspector asks for something you cannot find here, write to the support team — the basics are explained under Recording obligation and Retention periods.
Last checked on . We check every article against the application — if something no longer matches, that is a bug and not a difference of opinion.
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