How to comply with working time records (Spain's RDL 8/2019) in your restaurant

If you run a restaurant, café or bar in Spain, working time records are not optional. Since March 2019, Spain's Royal Decree-Law 8/2019 requires every company to record each worker's start and end time, every single day. And hospitality is one of the sectors where the Labour Inspectorate (Spain's Inspección de Trabajo) carries out the most inspections.

In this article we explain exactly what the law requires, what the penalties for non-compliance are, and how you can comply the simple way without it eating into your day.

What exactly does Spain's RDL 8/2019 say?

Article 34.9 of the Workers' Statute (Spain's Estatuto de los Trabajadores), as amended by this decree, sets out three clear obligations:

1. Record each employee's working day every day, including start and end times.
2. Keep the records for 4 years and make them available to employees, their representatives and the Labour Inspectorate.
3. Organise and document the recording system through collective bargaining, a company agreement or the employer's own decision.

Note: the law does not require any specific format. It can be paper, Excel or a digital tool. But it does require the record to be reliable, tamper-proof and accessible. And that is exactly where paper and Excel fall short.

What must each record include?

Each working time record must contain, at a minimum:

• The employee's identification (name, DNI — the Spanish ID number — or an internal code).
• The date of the day worked.
• The start time of the working day.
• The end time of the working day.
• The total hours worked.
• The employee's signature or validation (recommended — not required by law, but backed by case law).

In addition, if your collective agreement requires it (and many Spanish hospitality agreements do), you will also need to record breaks and rest periods within the working day.

Penalties for non-compliance: up to €187,515

Not keeping working time records is considered a serious infringement under Spain's Law on Infringements and Penalties in the Social Order (LISOS). The fines are tiered:

• Minimum level: from €751 to €1,500.
• Medium level: from €1,501 to €3,750.
• Maximum level: from €3,751 to €7,500.

But that is per infringement detected. If the Labour Inspectorate finds that you are not recording the working day of several employees, the fines multiply. In cases of repeat offences, or when uncompensated overtime is also detected, the penalties can escalate to the very serious category, with fines of up to €187,515.

In hospitality, the combination of split shifts, overtime and part-time contracts makes the Labour Inspectorate especially strict. Not having a reliable record is a direct invitation to a fine.

The problem with paper and Excel

Many restaurants still use sheets signed with a pen or a shared Excel file. Technically it can be valid, but it has serious problems:

• It can be modified: an Excel file can be edited after the fact, and paper can be filled in all at once at the end of the month. The Labour Inspectorate knows this and scrutinises it closely.
• It gets lost: four years of paper sheets means folders upon folders that take up space and go missing.
• It doesn't cross-check data: you can't automatically compare clocked hours with contract hours to detect overtime.
• It doesn't scale: with 3 employees it's manageable. With 10 or 15, it's an administrative nightmare.

How to do it right with a digital system

A digital time tracking system solves all of these problems at the root:

• Tamper-proof records: every clock-in is stored with the exact date and time, with no possibility of retroactive changes.
• Instantly accessible: if an inspection comes, you can export the records for any period in seconds.
• Automatic calculation: the system compares clocked hours with contract hours and calculates overtime, additional hours and shortfalls.
• Visual verification: some systems, like Stellar HR, include a random verification photo to guarantee that it's the employee themselves who is clocking in.
• Guaranteed retention: the data lives in the cloud, available for years without taking up physical space.

The specific case of hospitality

Hospitality has particular features that make working time records especially tricky:

• Split shifts: a waiter working from 12:00 to 16:00 and from 20:00 to 00:00 needs four clock-ins per day (in and out for each block).
• Part-time contracts: the collective agreement requires recording the hours in special detail, including additional hours.
• High turnover: employees coming and going require an agile system where adding or removing someone takes seconds.
• Multiple locations: if you have more than one venue, you need a centralised system that doesn't depend on one sheet per venue.

How clocking in works in Stellar HR

In Stellar HR the process is very simple:

1. You place a tablet in your venue with the clock-in app open (it runs as a PWA, nothing to install).
2. Each employee has a 4-digit PIN. They arrive, type in their PIN and the clock-in is recorded.
3. When leaving, they repeat the process and the clock-out is recorded.
4. The system automatically calculates the hours worked and compares them with the planned shift.
5. If there is a difference (overtime, shortfall), it shows up in the report.

Everything is recorded with date, time, employee and venue. Ready to export at any moment, in the format your payroll advisor or the Labour Inspectorate needs.

Summary: what you need to do

1. Make sure all your employees clock in every day, both in and out.
2. Use a system that is reliable and tamper-proof. Paper and Excel are legally valid, but risky.
3. Keep the records for 4 years. With a digital system, this happens automatically.
4. Cross-check clocked hours against contract hours to catch overtime before the Labour Inspectorate does it for you.
5. Always have an export ready for a possible inspection.

Working time records don't have to be a headache. With the right tool, they run on their own and protect you in any inspection. The important thing is not to leave it for tomorrow, because the fine can arrive today.