Time tracking and Croatian Labour Law: what every employer must have

A labour inspectorate visit is announced. Or it isn’t. Either way, one of the first requests from the inspector will be to see the working time records. If they don’t exist, or are incomplete, fines follow.

This isn’t a new obligation, but since 1 October 2024, the rules are stricter. The new Ordinance on the Content and Method of Keeping Records on Employees (NN 55/2024) defines exactly what must be in the records, in what form, and how long it must be kept.

What the law requires

Every employer, regardless of company size and number of employees, must maintain three types of records:

1. Employee records for workers employed under employment contracts
2. Records of other persons performing work under other contracts (service agreements, student contracts, etc.)
3. Working time records for each employee

This is not a matter of good organisation. It is a legal obligation.

What working time records must contain

For each employee, the records must capture:

• Regular working hours per day
• Overtime work (with date and number of hours)
• Night work
• Work on Sundays and public holidays
• Annual leave, sick leave, and parental leave
• Daily and weekly rest periods

A simple “record of arrivals and departures” is not sufficient. It must be clear how many hours each employee worked, on which day, whether it was overtime, and in which category it falls.

Format: paper or digital

The Ordinance allows both paper and electronic records. Both are formally valid.

In practice, paper or Excel-based records create a problem: there is no automatic validation of completeness, aggregating data per employee over longer periods requires manual work, and during an inspection you end up collecting documents from folders.

An electronic system that maintains records automatically provides instant access for any day and any employee, without manual calculation.

How long to keep records

Employee and working time records must be kept for at least six years from the end of the calendar year to which they relate.

For pension rights, data on work history must be available for 40 years after the end of the employment relationship, and payroll data must be kept indefinitely.

This means “deleting old files” is not an option. Anyone maintaining paper or Excel records must have an organised archive for each of the past six years, available on request.

What are the penalties

For legal entities, fines for failing to maintain records range from €8,090 to €13,270 per offence.

In addition, the inspectorate can order supplementation or correction of records and schedule a follow-up inspection. Repeat offences carry higher penalties.

Where companies go wrong

Several patterns repeat themselves:

Excel that isn’t kept up to date. An employee hands in a slip of paper, someone enters it into Excel once a week. At an inspection, the previous week’s records are incomplete.

Records without overtime. Only basic working hours are logged, and overtime hours are not recorded. Formally a violation, even if the hours were paid.

Unorganised paper archive. Documents from previous years are not organised or accessible. An inspector asks for a specific employee’s records for 2022, and it takes an hour to find the right folder.

Forgotten service contracts. Records exist for permanent employees, but people on student contracts or service agreements are not recorded at all.

How a digital system solves the problem

UnitLook includes a working time module integrated with projects and tickets.

Each employee logs hours daily against a specific task or ticket. The manager sees a weekly overview per employee in real time. At the end of the month, there is an automatic report per employee, broken down by day, ready for payroll.

For an inspection: a view of records for any date, any employee, in a few clicks. No folders, no manual gathering.

Because the records are tied to actual work (ticket, project, client), the data is useful not only for legal compliance but also for invoicing and profitability analysis.

Quick summary

The law is clear, and the new Ordinance NN 55/2024 has been in effect since October 2024. Every employer must maintain records — no exceptions. The only question is how.

Paper or Excel records satisfy the formal obligation but carry operational risk: incomplete data, archive disorganisation, and manual work every time a review is needed.

A digital time tracking system integrated with business processes solves both the legal obligation and the operational problem at once.

If you’d like to see how this works in practice, a demo takes 45 minutes.