Venheim
Hands tying on an apron at the start of the shift

Time clock · § 26 AZG · § 16 ArbZG

Time tracking for hospitality – meeting § 26 AZG

Clock in, clock out and breaks on your own phone — with a location check. Complete, correction-proof and with an export that matches the working-time records. One price per site, the team included without limit.

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Try Premium for 30 days, no payment details. After that your business carries on free on the Start plan; records stay readable and exportable.

The sign-up form is in German for now. Inside the app, everyone picks their own language — nine languages, English included.

In short

For time tracking in hospitality, a time-clock app records clocking in, clocking out and breaks at the real time — on each person's own phone or on a tablet on the wall. That meets the ongoing recording duty in Austria and Germany. With Venheim the server checks proximity to the business, corrections need a reason and a log, and the hours go to payroll as a file: DATEV movement data (DE), raw-times CSV (AT).

What matters: § 26 AZG (Austrian Working Hours Act) requires start, end and breaks per day — traceable and complete. An Excel list filled in afterwards does not show when it was created. The time clock records every entry with its time; corrections need a reason and stay visible in the log.
The duty§ 26 AZG

The recording duty in Austria

§ 26 of the Working Hours Act obliges employers to record the start and end of working time and the rest breaks on an ongoing and reliable basis. The point: during an inspection by the labour inspectorate, or in a dispute about overtime, it must be possible to prove when work actually happened. A list filled in from memory at the end of the month does not do that — it is neither ongoing nor reliable. In hospitality, with its changing shifts and part-timers, that quickly becomes a problem.

Clock in and out with one tap on your own phone — the location check runs in the background; only the distance is stored, never the coordinates.Demo data from the sample business Cafe Sunshine, app shown in German
How it worksthe time clock

Time tracking in hospitality: how the time clock works

Clocking in with a location check

Clock in, clock out and breaks on your own phone. The server checks the position against the site and blocks outside the radius — only the distance is stored, no coordinates.

Correction-proof

Entries are never deleted, only voided or corrected — with a mandatory reason and a log. The original time stays untouchable.

Breaks and balance

The app pairs clock-in and clock-out, warns after more than six hours without a 30-minute break (§ 11 AZG) and keeps a monthly overview per person.

Wall tabletPIN instead of phone

One tablet on the wall instead of six phones

Your own phone stays the normal case — but in a kitchen where phones stay in the locker, and in teams where not everyone brings a smartphone, recording fails exactly there. For these businesses an old tablet hangs on the wall: on arrival you tap your own tile, enter your PIN and are in the kitchen five seconds later. After every entry the screen jumps back to the list — if the last name stayed up, the next person in a hurry would clock in on someone else's account, and a wrongly attributed record is worse than a missing one.

Said honestly, as with GPS: a PIN can be passed on. There is also no location check on the fixed device — and the entry does not claim one; it only records which device it was made on. When a tablet is retired, it is locked, not deleted: the entries of recent months must still be attributable to a device.

What the terminal deliberately does not show

The screen shows the number of people who do not have a PIN yet — never their names. Otherwise a time-clock terminal would be a staff directory for anyone standing in front of it. And the PIN appears exactly once during setup; there is deliberately no button to look it up again.

The language belongs to the person, not the device: everyone clocks in on the same tablet and still reads in the language set in their own profile.

Correctionsreason and log

Correcting without blurring the trail

Someone forgets to clock out, someone mistaps on arrival — that is not an exception but everyday life for any time tracking. The manager corrects the entry but has to type a reason for it; the original time stays on the entry and can be seen at a glance. Nothing is deleted: a wrong entry is voided, with a reason, and stays visible in the list. Who changed what and when is also in the business's log. That is the difference from an Excel cell you overwrite.

And an entry sent in late never looks like a punctual one. Tapping in the cold room without a signal creates an entry with two clocks: the real time of the tap — which counts — and the time the server received the row. This shows as “transmitted offline”, in the view and in the monthly report; a shift added by the manager is marked “added later” accordingly. Whoever reviews the records sees what was created live, what came in from a dead zone and what someone entered by hand.

One person's month: every shift with clock-in, clock-out and total — below it the individual entries, which can be corrected or voided, each only with a reason.Demo data from the sample business Cafe Sunshine, app shown in German
The balancecontract from a date

What keeps the hours balance honest

A balance is only worth as much as the target it calculates against. Two things home-made hour lists almost always get wrong:

The contract applies from a date

Weekly hours and hourly rate are not a single value you overwrite but a history with steps. If you raise a part-timer from 10 to 24 weekly hours in September, July still stays July: balance, reports, CSV and the monthly package calculate every week with the contract that applied in that week. Before, a single change on the staff record would have rewritten every month of the year retroactively, without anyone noticing.

Leave does not create minus hours

In many systems, whoever was on leave for two weeks came back eighty hours in the red. Here leave, sick leave and public holidays reduce the weekly target instead of leaving it standing — by a rule that roster, assistant, replacement search and reports share. Time off in lieu deliberately does not reduce it: it works off extra hours, that is its purpose.

PayrollDATEV and CSV

From the time clock to payroll — no retyping

The recorded times flow as CSV into the § 26 export and into the monthly Excel report for the monthly package for the tax advisor — daily rows per person plus a monthly total, including former employees. For payroll in Germany there is the DATEV export: movement data per person and day, with the business's wage type — the accounting firm imports instead of retyping timesheets. In Austria the same route delivers the raw times as CSV (staff number, date, start, end, break, hours, absence); the business agrees the import mapping once with its accounting firm. We spell it out this precisely because a “BMD export” would promise more than the file delivers.

  • CSV export under § 26 AZG, at any time
  • Payroll export: DATEV movement data (DE) · raw-times CSV (AT)
  • Working-hours sheet in the monthly package
  • Export stays free — even with an expired subscription

In Germany

In Germany the same recording serves the duty under § 16 (2) ArbZG — since the Federal Labour Court decision 1 ABR 22/21, working time has to be recorded systematically, and electronic recording is the usual way. The legal reference and the public holidays depend on the country of the organisation — operation stays the same.

With the rosterone set of data

Roster and time clock — one set of data

Whoever plans and clocks in separate tools reconciles by hand at the end of the month. Here the roster for hospitality supplies the target and the time clock the actual hours — the target-versus-actual comparison per person is there without any effort, and the GPS-checked times are the same ones that go into the monthly package and the DATEV export. Respect for the team follows the same principle as clocking in: the roster shows who works when — not where anyone is.

In the logbook

Time tracking is one building block of the digital operations logbook — together with roster, HACCP and the tax package. To the operations logbook.

Offline

No signal in the cold room? No problem.

Clocking in and out, temperatures, cleaning and maintenance ticks, stocktake counts and inspection dates work without a connection — the app can even be restarted with no signal. Every entry keeps the time it was tapped and is sent automatically later: time-clock entries for up to 3 days, everything else for up to 7 days. Nothing is thrown away. Approvals, orders, reports and chat need a connection — they depend on data only the server knows at the moment of the decision.

Price

One price per site, unlimited team

€39.90 Pro·€69.90 Premiumper site per month. Prices shown are final prices — as a small business under § 6 (1) no. 27 of the Austrian VAT Act (UStG), we do not charge VAT. The Start plan is free for good — with roster, time clock, chat and HACCP recording including Excel download.One-off €199.00 setup fee with monthly payment — waived with annual payment. All prices

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Questions12 answers

Frequently asked questions

What does § 26 AZG require of a hospitality business?
The start and end of working time and the rest breaks, per person and per day, recorded on an ongoing and reliable basis. During an inspection by the labour inspectorate, or in a dispute about overtime, it must be possible to prove when work actually happened. A list filled in from memory at the end of the month does not do that. The duty applies regardless of the size of the business, temporary staff included.
How do the working hours get to payroll as an export?
As a file, without retyping. For Germany there is the DATEV export with movement data per person and day and the business's wage type. In Austria the same route delivers the raw times as CSV (staff number, date, start, end, break, hours, absence); the business agrees the import mapping once with its accounting firm. On top come the CSV export under § 26 AZG and the working-hours sheet in the monthly package. The export stays free, even with an expired subscription.
Is an Excel sheet still enough for § 26 AZG?
The law does not prescribe any particular software, but it does require ongoing, reliable records of the start, end and breaks of working time. An Excel list filled in after the fact is exactly not that — it can be changed at any time and proves no real times. Inspections increasingly expect recording that is close to real time and hard to manipulate. A time clock that records at the real time on site and logs corrections meets that expectation far better.
How does the location check (GPS) work?
When someone clocks in, the server checks the submitted position against the site's stored coordinates and blocks outside the radius. Only the distance in metres is stored, not the raw coordinates. Honestly: coordinates are values from the device, so the block is a plausibility check and a deterrent, not proof. A site without stored coordinates clocks in without a GPS requirement.
Does this put the team under surveillance?
No — and that is a design principle, not a promise: the check happens only at the moment of clocking in or out, never in between. There is no continuous tracking and no movement profiles; only the distance to the business in metres is stored. So the manager does not see where someone is — only that the location was plausible when they arrived. The measurement tolerance is also capped at 50 metres.
Does the recording duty apply to small businesses and part-timers too?
Yes. § 26 AZG makes no exception by business size, and marginally employed staff must be recorded too. In Germany the recording duty also applies regardless of size; for mini-jobs, § 17 MiLoG (Minimum Wage Act) explicitly requires the records. So the small teams with part-timers are not exempt — they just less often have a system for it.
Can times be falsified afterwards?
No — clock entries are never deleted, only voided or corrected, each with a mandatory reason and a log. The original time stays untouchable; whoever corrects leaves a traceable trail. A deputy manager may not change anything on their own entries.
Does this apply in Germany too?
Yes. In Austria the basis is § 26 AZG, in Germany § 16 (2) ArbZG together with the Federal Labour Court decision 1 ABR 22/21 on recording working time. The app records and exports the same way in both countries; the legal reference depends on the country of the organisation.
Does time tracking on the phone work without an app from the store?
No. Venheim runs in the browser and can be added to the phone's home screen as a tile. A push reminder reports a forgotten clock-out.
What about people who do not carry a smartphone?
For them a tablet hangs on the wall: tap your own tile, enter your PIN, done — after every entry the screen jumps back to the list so that nobody accidentally clocks in on someone else's account. On the fixed device there is no location check, and the entry does not claim one; it records which device it was made on. Retired terminals are locked, never deleted, so their entries stay attributable.
We changed weekly hours — are the old months still right?
Yes. Weekly hours and hourly rate apply from a date: the contract is a history, not an overwritable number. If someone moves from 10 to 24 weekly hours in September, balance, reports, CSV export and monthly package still calculate July with 10 hours. Only the template roster does not adjust itself — it plans the future; the report flags it separately if it still follows the old pattern.
Does leave create minus hours in the balance?
No. Leave, sick leave and public holidays reduce the weekly target instead of leaving it due — the same rule applies to roster, assistant, replacement search and reports. Time off in lieu deliberately does not reduce it: it exists to work off extra hours. “Not available” does not reduce it either, because it is not paid leave but just a blocked cell in the roster.

Record working time properly

Store the site coordinates, invite the team, let them clock in. Set up within one shift.

Start free

Try Premium for 30 days, no payment details. After that your business carries on free on the Start plan; records stay readable and exportable.

The sign-up form is in German for now. Inside the app, everyone picks their own language — nine languages, English included.