Time Tracking for Retail Stores: Complete Guide 2026

📌 In brief: The retail sector has unique time tracking challenges: rotating shifts, part-time staff, multiple locations, seasonal peaks… This guide explains how to comply with Spanish labor law practically, without making your life complicated.

Retail is different (and your time tracking should be too)

Managing a store isn’t like managing an office. Your employees don’t work 9-to-6, Monday through Friday. In retail:

• Shifts change every week based on needs
• Staff rotate between morning, afternoon, and weekends
• There are brutal peaks during sales, Black Friday, and Christmas
• Many employees are part-time or seasonal reinforcements
• You may have multiple stores with employees moving between them

And yet, you have to comply with exactly the same time tracking law as an office where everyone arrives at 9 and leaves at 6.

This guide is written for you. For the store manager, the area supervisor, the owner of a small chain. For anyone who needs time tracking to work without becoming a full-time job.

What does Spanish law require from stores?

The same obligation as any company: record every employee’s working hours. Since May 2019 (Article 34.9 of the Workers’ Statute), and soon with stricter requirements when the new Digital Registry Royal Decree is approved.

What you must comply with:

✅ Record entry, exit, and breaks for each employee, every day they work ✅ Keep records for 4 years ✅ Allow employees to access their own data ✅ Have records available for Labor Inspection ✅ Coming soon: Mandatory digital registry (paper and Excel won’t be valid)

What doesn’t matter:

• How many stores you have
• Whether shifts change weekly
• Whether you have part-time employees
• Whether it’s peak season or not

The law is the same. But the way you comply can (and should) adapt to your reality.

The 5 most common mistakes in retail

1. The notebook nobody fills in

“We have a notebook in the stockroom where everyone writes down their time.” Sounds good, but:

• Half the time they forget
• There’s no verifiable timestamp
• It can be filled in later without control
• It doesn’t differentiate between stores if you have several

With the new Royal Decree, notebooks will no longer be valid as a primary system.

2. Not tracking overtime during peak season

Sales season arrives. The team works overtime without anyone counting it. When you do payroll, you discover you have a massive budget hole.

A good time tracking system shows you overtime in real time, before it gets out of control.

3. Losing track of who’s at which store

If you have multiple stores and rotating employees, knowing who’s where (and how many hours each person has worked) becomes a puzzle.

4. Managing onboarding and offboarding manually

You hire reinforcements for Christmas. When the season ends, you need to offboard them. If the process is slow or complicated, you end up with incomplete records or “ghost” employees in the system.

5. Not having a backup plan when technology fails

The system goes down on your busiest sales day. What do you do? If you don’t have an alternative procedure, that day has no records. And the Inspection won’t accept “the system was down” as an excuse.

How time tracking should work in your store

Option 1: Each employee clocks in from their phone

Each employee has the Cleverfy app (or accesses it via browser). When they arrive at the store, they clock in. When they leave, they clock out. Breaks too.

Advantages:

• Everyone clocks from their own device — no bottlenecks
• If you enable geolocation, you know they clocked in from the right store
• Works the same at any location

Ideal for:

• Stores with few staff
• Employees with smartphones
• Chains where staff rotate between stores

Option 2: Tablet in the backoffice (kiosk mode)

Place a tablet in the stockroom or back office. Each employee clocks in with their personal PIN.

Advantages:

• Doesn’t depend on each employee having a phone
• Fixed and controlled clocking point
• Set up in 5 minutes

Ideal for:

• Stores with many part-time employees
• When you don’t want personal phones used
• Businesses with a single clocking point

Option 3: Combination of both

Tablet in store for daily use + mobile app for exceptional cases (employees going directly to a meeting, trade shows, etc.).

Managing multiple stores

If you have more than one store, Cleverfy lets you:

• Create each store as an independent work center
• Assign employees to one or multiple stores
• See clock-ins from all stores in a single dashboard
• Verify by geolocation that clocking happened at the right store
• Compare hours between stores to spot deviations

Example: María normally works at the downtown store, but this week she’s covering the shopping center location. She clocks in at both locations and you see everything unified.

Automatic overtime tracking

One of the most useful features for retail: Cleverfy automatically calculates each employee’s overtime.

How it works:

1. You define each employee’s schedule (20h/week, 40h/week, etc.)
2. The system compares clocked hours with the planned schedule
3. In the dashboard, you see accumulated overtime in real time

Why it matters:

• During peak season, overtime skyrockets without you noticing
• You can make decisions before costs get out of control
• No surprises on payroll

Temporary staff and high turnover

Retail has high turnover: seasonal reinforcements, weekend students, internship contracts…

With Cleverfy:

• Onboarding an employee takes less than 1 minute
• When their contract ends, you deactivate them with one click
• Their records are kept for the 4 years required by law
• You don’t pay for inactive employees

What happens when the Inspection comes

The Labor Inspection arrives. They ask for the past year’s time records.

With a digital system:

1. You log into Cleverfy
2. Select the date range
3. Export a report (PDF or Excel)
4. Hand it over on the spot

Without a digital system:

1. You search for notebooks from the last 12 months
2. Try to decipher 15 different people’s handwriting
3. Realize pages are missing
4. Fine

Penalties for non-compliance range from €70 to €7,500 depending on severity.

Case study: Fashion chain with 3 stores

Situation:

• 3 stores in the same city
• 12 employees total (mix of full-time and part-time)
• Staff rotating between stores as needed
• Strong peaks during sales and Christmas

Before:

• Each store had its own notebook
• The area manager collected data manually each month
• Never matched payroll
• Impossible to know overtime until month-end

After (with Cleverfy):

• Tablet in each store + app for managers
• Individual PIN clocking + geolocation
• Single dashboard to see all 3 stores
• Real-time overtime alerts

Cost: €18/month (12 employees × €1.50) Management time: 30 minutes/week reviewing the dashboard

Frequently asked questions

What happens if an employee forgets to clock in?

You receive an alert. You can add the clock-in manually (it’s recorded as a correction, which is what the law requires).

How do I manage split shifts (morning and afternoon)?

The employee clocks 4 times: morning entry, morning exit, afternoon entry, afternoon exit. The system adds it all automatically.

Can I see who’s working right now at each store?

Yes. The dashboard shows in real time who has clocked in and hasn’t clocked out yet.

Does it work without internet?

The app saves clock-ins locally if there’s no connection and syncs when it returns. You never lose a record.

What if an employee works at multiple stores the same day?

They can clock in/out at each location. The system records everything with the corresponding geolocation.

How do I verify they actually clocked in from the store?

With geolocation enabled, each clock-in records GPS coordinates. If someone clocks in from home, you’ll see it.

Start today

Time tracking in retail doesn’t have to be a headache. With the right tools, you can:

• Comply with the law without complications
• Have visibility across all your stores
• Track overtime in real time
• Manage onboarding and offboarding in seconds

Try Cleverfy free for 14 days — no credit card, no sales calls.

Set it up in less than 10 minutes and tomorrow your team will already be clocking in.

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Legal note: This article is informational and does not constitute legal advice. The time tracking obligation has been in force since May 2019 (Art. 34.9 Workers’ Statute). The new Digital Time Registry Royal Decree is currently being processed as of publication date.