A company accuses an employee of not clocking in and loses the case for having no time records

Catalonia’s High Court of Justice has partially upheld the appeal of an employee whose company accused her of not clocking in. The outcome carries an uncomfortable twist for any employer: the duty to keep the time record falls on the company, the company did not produce it, and without that document the Court would not treat its version of events as proven.

What the parties were arguing

The company argued that the employee was not meeting her schedule and left no record of her working time. The daily record, which would have made it possible to check who worked and when, never reached the case file. The one who should have produced it was the company, because it is legally responsible for creating and keeping it.

The case also came with a preliminary hurdle. At first instance the claim had been dismissed on the grounds that there was no genuine employment relationship, so the lower court never even assessed the dismissal. The High Court reversed that finding, held that the matter fell under the social (employment) jurisdiction and, on the merits, ruled the dismissal unfair. It ordered the company to reinstate the employee or compensate her, at the company’s choice, with back pay of 74.07 euros per day from the dismissal until effective reinstatement.

Why the missing record turns against the company

Article 34.9 of the Workers’ Statute leaves no room for doubt. The daily record belongs to the employer: it must be kept, retained for four years and made available to the workforce, their representatives and the Inspectorate. When that record is missing, the evidentiary gap is not borne by the employee, who had no duty to create it, but by the company.

The company argued that the employee did not clock in. Proving that would have been simple by producing the mandatory time record, but that record never reached the case file. Without it, the Court was not bound by the company’s version and could depart from the facts it took for granted. The burden of proving that point lay with the company, and the document it needed to do so was never produced.

This approach connects with a settled line in the employment courts. In overtime claims, courts have long shifted the cost of a missing record onto the company, not onto the employee bringing the claim. The Catalan ruling applies the same logic in reverse: when it is the company that attacks by relying on working time, it too needs the record to sustain its case.

And if the employee doesn’t clock in, what can the company produce?

If the employee wasn’t clocking in, how does the company prove she wasn’t? The company has to be able to show that it kept the record the law requires. That record is more than the employee’s punches. It is the daily document it is required to keep for every employee, with the totalling of hours and the detail of each day.

In that record, days without a clock-in are logged as an incident and documented with their date. The company tracks the month, closes it per employee, records the days the clock-in was missing and passes that summary to the worker. With that, it reaches court with its own document, kept over time and communicated, reflecting both what was worked and the missing entries. Add to that the formal requests to clock in and any other evidence of activity.

That is exactly what the company in the case lacked. By producing no record at all, it could not prove its accusation, and that missing record counted against it.

How Cleverfy solves it

That document is precisely what Cleverfy generates on its own. It stores each employee’s daily record, with the exact time of entry, exit and breaks, and totals the hours by day and by month. Its monthly closing produces a per-employee document, automatically detects incidents (days without a clock-in among them) and lets you send that summary to each worker. Everything is kept for the four years the law requires. If working time ever ends up in court, the company arrives with a complete, maintained record, rather than with nothing to show, as happened to the company in the case.

General legal information, not legal advice. Source: High Court of Justice of Catalonia, Social Chamber, judgment of 6 July 2026 (appeal 6726/2025, ECLI:ES:TSJCAT:2026:5831). Check the ruling in the ruling on CENDOJ.