What a Labour Inspection Accepts as an Attendance Record

What Hungarian labour inspectors actually check in working time records, which forms pass, and the typical mistakes that fail in practice.

27 August 2026 · 11 min read

The inspector does not ask whether you have an attendance sheet. They check whether what is put in front of them proves anything.

The two are not the same, and at many companies the difference only emerges on the day of the inspection. The folder is there, the spreadsheet is printed, and yet the finding is a breach, because the document suffers from a flaw that nobody at the company thought of as a flaw.

Below I have gathered what the authority actually demands, which forms meet that demand, and which typical solutions fail in practice. The court decisions I refer to are listed at the end.

The law says less than you might think

Section 134 of the Labour Code (Mt.) requires the employer to keep records of the duration of ordinary and overtime working hours, standby time and leave, and since 2019 also of voluntarily agreed overtime.

How these records must be kept, however, the law does not say at all. There is no prescribed form, no mandatory paper format, and no provision that obliges either party to sign. Many people also misread this in the opposite direction: the absence of a signature is not in itself a breach, but the absence of authenticity is.

The details come from case law. Two decisions of the Curia shape today's interpretation:

Uniformity Decision 1/2022 of the Curia (Hungary's supreme court) held that the law does not require the records to be kept at the place of work, but they must be kept in an objective, reliable, up-to-date and verifiable way. Its reasoning confirmed that being up to date does not mean documenting every event as it happens. This allows central records, even ones kept in the cloud, as long as the data can be produced during an inspection.

An earlier Curia decision held that the employer chooses the method of record keeping and may involve the employee in maintaining it, provided that the employer instructs and monitors them and ensures, under a rule set in advance, that any gaps are filled.

The same uniformity decision set the standard: the records must be objective, reliable and verifiable, for the authority and the employee alike. These three words decide the disputed cases.

So there is more room for manoeuvre than most companies use. The requirement, however, is stricter than most companies meet.

The four requirements

Whatever form the employer chooses, it must meet four things.

Completeness of content. The records must show the start and end times of ordinary and overtime working hours, and the duration of standby time and leave. According to the Curia, recording the start of work late is not in itself a breach, as long as the day's data is entered the same day, but the start and end times must be clear from the records. The total of hours worked is not enough on its own, because it does not show whether rest periods were observed.

Being up to date. The records must be complete for the day of the inspection and for the past. According to case law, confirmed by the Curia's 2022 uniformity decision, this does not mean that every event must be logged immediately, but it does mean that the data for the day in question must be entered on that same day.

Authenticity. The truthfulness of the data must be certified. The law does not say that this must be by signature, but in practice that is the established form. If the employee keeps the records, the employer has to instruct them, check the records and make sure any gaps are filled the same day. Without a trace of this, authenticity is easy to dispute.

Verifiability. The records must be retrievable for both the employee and the authority. During an inspection the data are compared with other records: the work schedule, the leave register, payroll, even the guard log or the cleaning log. Where these contradict one another, authenticity is called into question.

What is accepted

The form can be chosen freely. Each one comes with its own conditions.

Handwritten paper sheet. Acceptable: yes. What to watch: the start and end of the day in question must be on it, not added afterwards.

Excel or another spreadsheet. Acceptable: yes. What to watch: retrievability and traceability of changes.

Access control system data. Acceptable: yes, once processed. What to watch: the raw log of entries and exits is not complete on its own, without handling of absences, leave and breaks during working time.

Time and attendance software. Acceptable: yes. What to watch: employee confirmation and the existence of an audit log.

Work schedule communicated in writing. Acceptable: yes. What to watch: under Section 134(3) of the Mt., it requires month-end certification and up-to-date recording of deviations.

The schedule-based approach is the least well known. If the employer communicates the schedule in writing, then with month-end certification and up-to-date recording of any changes, it also serves as the record of ordinary and overtime working hours (Section 134(3) of the Mt.). Standby time and leave still have to be recorded separately. For a fixed working pattern this significantly reduces administration.

An access control system is not records in itself. It captures entry and exit times, which is useful basic data, but it does not tell you whether work was done between the two, and it does not handle leave, sick pay or breaks during working time. It becomes a record only when this data is processed, supplemented and certified.

Electronic record keeping, incidentally, puts the employer in a distinctly better position, because the system records with a timestamp when the data was entered. With paper, this cannot be proved afterwards.

What is not accepted

These mistakes recur in cases before the authorities and the courts.

Records made after the fact. In an older case the managing director stated in the minutes that the records are prepared retrospectively, and the employees who were heard confirmed it. From that point the company has nothing left to prove.

The pre-filled sheet. If the finishing time is already there at the start of the day, it is not a record but a plan. According to the Curia, pre-filled data cannot by definition be up to date, because it relates to a day on which the work has not yet been done. The proper route to a schedule-based simplification is the month-end certification of a schedule communicated in writing.

Missing start and end times. A daily number of hours or a bare attendance tick is not enough, because it does not show the actual time worked, so compliance with rest periods cannot be checked either.

Monthly signature without checks. If the employee keeps the sheet and nobody on the employer's side checks it, the authenticity of the records is hard to defend.

Contradiction with other records. If the attendance sheet and the payroll, the schedule or another log (for example a security guard's log) give a different picture, the authority may question the reliability of the entire records, not just the day concerned.

No documentation of the schedule. This is rarely thought of. If the schedule was not communicated in writing, the simplified approach based on month-end certification cannot be used either.

Exceptions and borderline cases

Flexible working arrangement. If the employer has handed over the right to schedule working time in writing (Section 96(2) of the Mt.), there is no need to record ordinary and overtime working hours or standby time (Section 96(3)). Executive employees work on a flexible arrangement by law (Section 209(4)), whereas teleworkers do so only if scheduling has been handed over to them in writing. Leave records are still mandatory in these cases. If an employee is flexible on paper but in practice the employer schedules them day by day, the exception is hard to rely on.

Home office. It does not in itself mean a flexible working arrangement. If the employee works from home but to a set schedule, records are required just the same. The Curia's 2022 decision gave room for manoeuvre in exactly this situation, by not tying the place of the records to the place of work.

Retention period. There is no clear statutory provision on how long employment records must be kept, which is a recurring practical problem. There are two anchors, though: employment claims lapse after three years (Section 286(1) of the Mt.), and as a general rule the labour authority cannot open proceedings more than three years after the breach was committed (Section 5/A(2) of the Labour Inspection Act). A starting point is how long a claim can be enforced in relation to the data in question, and how long the authority can investigate. On this question it is worth agreeing an internal rule with the company's accountant and legal adviser, because the data protection side is also involved here: personal data stored for longer than necessary is a risk in itself.

Review your own

Seven questions that anyone can use to go through their own records. Three randomly chosen months are enough.

For every working day, are the start and end times recorded, or only the number of hours?

When is the data entered: on the day itself, or all at once at the end of the month?

Who certifies the records, and is that certification visible on the document?

If the employee keeps the records, is there a visible trace of the employer's checks?

Do the records match payroll and the schedule? Compare one month item by item.

Was the schedule communicated in writing? If you use the month-end certification method, this is a precondition.

Can you produce the sheet for a given month for an employee who left two years ago within ten minutes?

The seventh question is the most revealing, because during an inspection, having the document and being able to access it amount to the same thing.

If you are looking for a software solution to the problem, there is one thing worth keeping in mind. A system is good when the employee records and confirms their own data and the employer's checks also leave a trace in the system, since then the data and its authentication are created together, with a timestamp. The B OnSite Employee Portal works on this principle, but the point holds for the choice in general, whichever product someone ends up with.