Přístupový systém / Attendance records
The law specifies what must be recorded but not how. Here is exactly what Section 96 requires, how working time recording differs from attendance recording and where errors most commonly occur.
Summary of applicable legislation as of October 2026. This is not legal advice; for contentious cases, we recommend consulting your lawyer or payroll accountant.
The employer is obliged to keep records for individual employees indicating the start and end of these periods:
The key is the word start and endA monthly total of worked hours is insufficient under the law, as it does not reveal when a shift started and ended. This is also the most common shortcoming in companies that maintain records in spreadsheets: the column with the number of hours is present, but the times are missing.
The Labour Code does not prescribe the form of attendance records. Paper is legal. The issue is not legality, but that paper-based records are difficult to retrieve and hard to defend in disputes regarding who entered what and when.
These two terms are commonly confused and account for most misunderstandings when selecting a system.
| Attendance records | Time and attendance records | |
|---|---|---|
| What is captured | Presence at the workplace: arrival, departure, break. | Work performed in categories defined by law: shift work, overtime, night work, and on-call duty. |
| Who requires this | For the employer's own records and for payroll purposes. | Labour Code, Section 96. |
| How it is created | By tapping at the reader, writing in, or logging in. | Calculation of attendance based on rules and shift schedules. |
| Where things get stuck | Forgotten badge taps, business trips, home office. | The system records badge taps but lacks rules, so you still maintain the statutory attendance record manually. |
When selecting a system, this is the question that needs to be asked of the supplier: Does it calculate categories based on the Labour Code from collected times, or does it simply show who clocked in and when? Cheap terminals from online shops usually support the latter.
The system records entry times at the gate or terminal and applies rules to generate categories required by law. Shift schedules define what constitutes a shift and overtime. Night work limits automatically split shifts. Corrections require approval and leave an audit trail. The output is both a report suitable for inspection and an export to payroll software.
For operations with fixed working hours and few staff, this may be unnecessary. Once shift work, overtime and allowances are introduced, manual record-keeping starts generating errors in both directions: sometimes to the employee's detriment, sometimes to the company's. How we build such a delivery we describe separately.
Source: Act No. 262/2006 Coll., Labour Code, Section 96; status as of October 2026.
According to Section 96 of the Labour Code, employers must record for each employee the start and end times of shifts, overtime work, other agreed overtime, night work, and periods spent on standby duty. A monthly total of hours worked is therefore insufficient; start and end times must be visible.
No. The Labour Code does not specify the form, so both a paper book and a table are legally acceptable. The difference lies in how easily information can be retrieved and how well they hold up if there is a dispute over working hours. The employer remains responsible for accuracy and completeness, even if the employee makes the entry.
Attendance records show when an employee was at the workplace. Working time records show how much and what kind of work was performed, i.e. Shift, overtime, night work and on-call duty. An attendance system collects the first data, and rules within it calculate the second. If the system only supports badge tapping at doors and lacks rules, you have attendance tracking, but you still maintain statutory working time records manually.
Deadlines vary depending on the document type and are based on regulations concerning the archiving of payroll and personnel records. The practical rule is to retain records for as long as they may be needed in a payroll or employment dispute, ensuring they remain retrievable. We assist with setting up archiving and exports during implementation.
We only need the number of employees, the number of doors, and whether you operate shifts. We will contact you within 24 hours on working days to discuss details and arrange an on-site inspection. The inspection and proposal are free and non-binding.
Call on working days; we will go through it together in ten minutes.
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