Whether the time spent on a business trip counts as working time and gets paid comes down to two questions: health-and-safety law and pay. teamspace records travel time separately from other working time, values it by your rules and carries it into billing. Part of time tracking online.
In short
Whether travel time counts as working time comes down to two separate questions. For health and safety, instructed travel time counts as working time under the German Working Hours Act (ArbZG) when the employee works during the journey or is instructed to drive; simply being a passenger without a task is often not counted. On the pay side, travel ordered by the employer generally has to be paid: the German Federal Labour Court ruled on 17 October 2018 that necessary travel time to an external place of work is to be paid like work.
The amount and the terms can be set by the employment or collective agreement, for instance with a separate travel-time rate. The daily commute between home and workplace does not count as working time. This page explains the rules and is no substitute for legal advice; how you record and value travel time cleanly is shown in the rest of the page.
Two questions
Whether travel time counts as working time is answered differently for health-and-safety than for pay. The two belong apart.
On the project
Travel time arises on the road, not at the desk. In teamspace, employees book it as a separate category straight onto the project, in the browser or via the installable web app. That way it stands apart from other working time, ready for reporting and billing.
Travel days count towards the work, but are shown separately in billing. What is booked on the road is ready for the invoice later, without retyping.
What the system knows
How travel time is valued and paid sits as configuration in the system, not in a side note. Whoever books picks the category, teamspace applies the rest.
Travel-time pay
separate from the regular hourly rate
Valued per booking
billable or internal
Feeds the account
visible as valued working time
Assignment
booked onto the right job
From trip to invoice
The trip is created as a job or appointment. That establishes the travel time is instructed, not privately motivated.
Employees record travel time as a separate category on the project, per leg or as a daily flat rate, on mobile or at the desk.
The booking is valued as billable or internal and submitted for approval. The status stays traceable from draft to approved.
Valued travel time feeds the time account and, where billable, flows with its rate into the invoice.
First call
In 30 minutes we go through your rules: a separate travel-time rate, billable or internal, hand-over into the invoice. At the end you know whether teamspace maps your travel logic cleanly.
Around the trip
teamspace values the time of a trip as working time and bills the costs of the trip separately. These use cases share the same data.
Bill travel costs, meal allowances and receipts of a trip and pass them on to the client.
Learn moreHours on project, phase and task, distinguished as billable or internal.
Learn morePlan-actual live, premiums by tariff, payout or time off.
Learn moreReplace the Excel template with a cloud app with an optional GoBD mode.
Learn moreHours record per client as a PDF at the touch of a button, travel time included.
Learn moreClock in and out at the terminal, in the app or in the browser.
Learn moreWhat it is about
Travel time is the time employees spend on an instructed business trip travelling to an external place of work. It is distinct from the working time on site and from the daily commute. Whether it counts as working time for health and safety, and how it is paid, follows the German Working Hours Act, case law and the employment or collective agreement.
So the valuation does not depend on anyone's memory, teamspace holds it as a rule in the system: travel time is booked as a separate category, paid with its own rate and valued as billable or internal per booking. That keeps it traceable which travel time feeds the time account and which is charged to the client.
Time tracking runs exclusively in the EU, in an ISO 27001-certified data centre in Frankfurt am Main, GDPR-compliant with a data processing agreement as standard. Recording happens in time tracking, billing in the invoicing software. The contracting party is 5 POINT AG, a German public limited company.
Part of time tracking online
Travel time is booked through time tracking and billed in invoicing. Digital timesheet, activity record, project hours and overtime run in the same system. The overview page shows how the whole module fits together.
To time tracking onlineRelated modules
The booked travel time does not end in time tracking. It runs on into the project, the invoice and payroll preparation.
Booked travel time lands on project and phase and carries plan-actual, contribution margin and utilisation.
Billable travel time becomes a billing basis without export, with its own rate next to hours and travel costs.
Valued travel time, overtime and absences run prepared into payroll, without double entry.
On the first call we clarify how travel time should be valued, paid and billed at your company. A short conversation, a clear picture.
