Time Tracking Law in Portugal: What Employers Must Record

Yes, time tracking is mandatory in Portugal. Article 202 of the Labour Code (Código do Trabalho) requires every employer to keep a record of working time for its workers, from the first hire, whatever the company’s size or sector. The record must show when each person starts and finishes work and the breaks that do not count as working time. It must be kept for five years, and failing to keep it is a serious administrative offence.

If you are a foreign company hiring in Portugal, this is one of the first compliance duties you inherit, and it applies even to remote and schedule-exempt staff. Below is what the law says, how to apply it in practice and where it differs from the separate right to disconnect.

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TL;DR

Article 202 of the Labour Code obliges employers to record working time, and a breach is a serious administrative offence (contraordenação grave).
Log start and end times plus unpaid interruptions, so that hours per worker, per day and per week can be calculated. Keep the records for five years.
Remote workers are covered too, but the data protection authority (CNPD) says tools must not collect more than start, end and break data.
The right to disconnect (Article 199-A) is a separate duty that protects rest periods. It does not replace time recording.
If you have no Portuguese entity, an Employer of Record can run the records for you.

What Portuguese law requires
What you must record
Daily and weekly limits the records must prove
Remote workers and monitoring limits
Working time law and the EU framework
Penalties for not keeping records
Do not confuse tracking with the right to disconnect
A practical compliance setup
Our perspective
How we can take this off your hands
FAQ
Sources

What Portuguese law requires

The obligation sits in Article 202 of the Código do Trabalho. According to the text of the article, employers must keep working-time records, including for workers who are exempt from a fixed schedule, in an accessible place and in a form that allows immediate consultation.

A few points that surprise foreign employers:

No size threshold. A practical guide to Article 202 explains that the duty applies to every employer, from the first worker, and covers permanent, part-time, fixed-term, temporary agency, seasonal and remote staff. Self-employed workers and people on civil (non-employment) contracts fall outside it.
No prescribed technology. The law does not say you must use a clock, an app or a spreadsheet. It says the record must exist, be complete and be immediately consultable.
Schedule-exempt staff are not exempt from recording. Having an exemption from a fixed timetable changes how you organize their hours, not whether you log them. Senior managers may have different obligations if a specific exemption covers them, so confirm their contract terms before you leave them out.

Law 93/2019 reinforced the enforcement regime around these records, which is why labor inspectors (ACT, Autoridade para as Condições do Trabalho) routinely ask for them.

What you must record

The record must show the start and end times of the working period and the interruptions or breaks that are not part of working time. From those entries you must be able to determine the hours worked per worker, per day and per week.

In practice, each worker’s daily entry should hold:

Date and worker identification.
Time work started.
Start and end of each unpaid break, including the lunch interval.
Time work ended.
Total hours for the day, rolled up weekly.

The record is not just a statement of what the schedule says. It should reflect what actually happened, including overtime. That matters because overtime must be separately tracked and paid, and the log is the evidence behind payroll.

How long to keep the records

Under Article 202(4), the working-time record must be kept for five years, together with the declaration under Article 257 and the agreement under Article 226(3)(f). Plan your storage accordingly: a system you cancel after two years must still let you export older data.

Work done outside company premises

For work performed away from the company, the worker must submit the record for validation, so that the employer holds it within 15 days, according to the consolidated text of Articles 197 to 233 of the Labour Code. Build a monthly or fortnightly validation routine into your process rather than leaving it to chance.

Daily and weekly limits the records must prove

The point of tracking is to show you respect the limits. Under the Labour Code, normal working time cannot exceed 8 hours a day and 40 hours a week. The same guide notes a rest interval of 1 to 2 hours and at least 11 consecutive hours of rest between two daily work periods.

Flexible arrangements such as an hours bank change how those limits are averaged, but not the duty to log. If you run one, read our guide to the banco de horas rules and notice period. For the broader picture of schedules, overtime and inspection risk, see our Portugal working hours checklist.

Item	What the law sets	Where it comes from
Daily normal working time	Up to 8 hours	Labour Code, per the OCC practical guide
Weekly normal working time	Up to 40 hours	Same
Daily rest between shifts	At least 11 consecutive hours	Same
Record retention	5 years	Article 202(4)
Off-site record validation	Held by employer within 15 days	Labour Code, Articles 197 to 233

Remote workers and monitoring limits

Remote employees are inside the scope of Article 202. The parliamentary documentation on the article states that the record includes telework staff who are exempt from working hours. It also records that a teleworker may perform supplementary work only if the employer asks in writing.

The harder question is how. The CNPD’s guidance on distance control in telework (17 April 2020) says that tools combining time tracking with extensive personal data are not admitted. Examples include browser pages visited, terminal location, peripheral usage, images of the work environment, or time per task. The need to record working time can be met by solutions that reproduce the start, end and lunch break entries without collecting more than necessary.

A practical summary of that guidance adds that geolocation is not required by Article 202. The telework rules in the Labour Code also oblige the employer to respect the employee’s privacy, working hours and family rest time, and prohibit control means that affect privacy.

So the compliant design for a remote team is simple:

A clock-in/clock-out tool with break entries.
No screenshots, keystroke logging, webcam checks or GPS.
A periodic validation step by the worker.
Meetings scheduled within working hours, preferably with 24 hours’ notice, as the telework provisions set out.

Biometric clocking

Fingerprint or facial-recognition clocks bring GDPR and CNPD questions on top of the labor rules. Do not roll them out before checking the current CNPD position with a Portuguese data protection adviser. A simple card, PIN or app entry avoids the problem.

Working time law and the EU framework

Portugal’s rule is consistent with EU law. In its judgment of 14 May 2019 (case C-55/18), the Court of Justice held that Member States must require employers to set up an objective, reliable and accessible system for measuring each worker’s daily working time. States may choose the modalities.

Portugal already had an explicit written duty in Article 202 before that ruling. For a multinational with teams in several countries, this means a time system that works in one EU country may need adjusting to Portugal’s specific content and five-year retention.

Penalties for not keeping records

A breach of Article 202 is expressly a serious administrative offence under paragraph 5. Fines are set by Article 554 of the Labour Code on a sliding scale tied to company turnover and to whether the breach was negligent or deliberate. One Portuguese analysis of the fine scale puts the range at 6 to 95 units of account, which at €102 per unit is roughly €612 to €9,690 per infringement, before repeat-offence penalties and ancillary sanctions. Check the current unit value and scale with your legal adviser, because it is updated over time.

There is a second cost: without reliable records, an employer struggles to contest an employee’s overtime claim. The log protects you as much as it protects the worker.

Do not confuse tracking with the right to disconnect

Searchers often meet two Portuguese rules at once, and they are different. Article 202 records working time. Article 199-A imposes a separate duty to abstain from contacting workers during rest periods, except in force majeure. Both are serious offences when violated.

The contact ban applies to companies with ten or more workers and covers any means of communication: calls, messages, emails or other digital contact. Legal commentary dates the right to disconnect from 1 January 2022, including for remote workers.

A useful consequence: your time records show when rest periods begin, which tells managers when not to message. Brief managers on both rules together.

A practical compliance setup

Choose the tool. Any system that records start, end and breaks, is immediately consultable and exports five years of data.
Set the policy. Written procedure on how and when staff log time, including remote staff and overtime approval.
Validate. Remote and off-site workers confirm their entries; the company holds them within 15 days.
Link to payroll. Overtime and holiday calculations should be driven by the log. See our notes on salary payment requirements and Portugal’s 22-day holiday rules.
Protect privacy. No monitoring beyond what recording working time needs.
Store and review. Retain for five years and spot-check quarterly.

Our perspective

Most foreign employers we meet assume Portugal works like their home market: trust the salaried employee, skip the timesheet. Then an inspector asks for the record, and there is none.

We see time recording as a payroll and compliance discipline, not a surveillance exercise. When the log is simple, validated and tied to payroll, overtime disputes shrink and inspections become routine.

That is why we handle it as part of employment administration: contracts, payroll, working-time records and HR support under Portuguese law, with English-speaking support. A company hiring its first person in Lisbon or Porto should not have to learn Article 202 the hard way.

Paulo

How we can take this off your hands

If you want to hire in Portugal without setting up a local entity, our Employer of Record service covers hiring, onboarding, payroll and legal compliance under Portuguese employment law, including the administration around working time. We also offer payroll services in Portugal for companies that already have staff and want accurate, compliant monthly processing.

To discuss your setup, contact our team.

FAQ

Is time tracking mandatory for small companies in Portugal?

Yes. Article 202 has no size threshold, so the duty applies from the first worker. It covers part-time, fixed-term and remote employees as well as full-time staff.

Do remote employees have to clock in?

Yes, their working time must be recorded too. The CNPD says the tool should only reproduce start, end and lunch break entries, without screenshots, location tracking or other extensive personal data.

How long must working-time records be kept?

Five years, under Article 202(4) of the Labour Code. They must also be kept somewhere that allows immediate consultation.

What happens if an employer does not keep records?

It is a serious administrative offence. Fines depend on turnover and on negligence or intent, and one analysis puts them at roughly €612 to €9,690 per infringement.

Is the right to disconnect the same as time tracking?

No. Time tracking (Article 202) records hours worked. The right to disconnect (Article 199-A) bans work contact during rest periods for companies with ten or more workers.