Employee time tracking in Lithuania: what the law requires and how to choose software

Employee time tracking means recording the hours each employee actually works, including overtime, night work and work on public holidays. In Lithuania it is governed by Article 120 of the Labour Code (Darbo kodeksas): records are kept in timesheets (darbo laiko apskaitos žiniaraštis) in a format approved by the employer, and they may be completed and stored electronically. A small company with fixed hours can often manage with a well-organised spreadsheet; once shifts, several teams or remote work come into play, time tracking software linked to your accounting saves time and prevents errors.

What does the Lithuanian Labour Code require?

The employer must keep records of employees’ working time (Article 120(1)). The exception is employees whose working day (shift) length and number of working days per week never change – for example, always 8 hours from Monday to Friday.

Paragraph 2 of the same article lists what the employer must include in the records. These are the hours the employee actually worked:

• overtime;
• work on public holidays;
• work on rest days, if not scheduled;
• night work;
• work under an agreement on additional work.

The remaining paragraphs of Article 120 matter when you choose how to keep records:

• The employer sets the format. Timesheets follow a form approved by the employer, so the Labour Code does not prescribe a single mandatory template.
• Electronic records are allowed. Timesheets may be completed and stored electronically – paper is not required.
• Employees can record their own time. If employees organise their own working time, or are required to keep their own records, the employer may set rules for such record-keeping. This is relevant to remote work.
• Right to an extract. Employees may view their working time records and obtain an extract from the timesheet free of charge.

Other articles are relevant too. The standard working time is 40 hours a week (Article 112). Overtime may not exceed 8 hours in any seven consecutive days, or 12 hours with the employee’s written consent, and 180 hours a year unless a collective agreement provides otherwise (Article 119). If the company uses aggregated working time accounting, the regime is set out in Article 115.

At EU level, the Court of Justice ruled on 14 May 2019 in Case C-55/18 that Member States must require employers to set up an objective, reliable and accessible system for measuring the duration of each worker’s daily working time.

Article 120 does not set a retention period for timesheets. For how long to keep them and how to handle records in your situation, we recommend speaking to your accountant or a lawyer – this article is not legal advice.

What are the ways to track working time?

There are four common approaches: a paper timesheet, an Excel or Google Sheets spreadsheet, off-the-shelf software (or a module in your accounting program) and a custom system connected to your other business software. All of them are lawful as long as the timesheet format is approved and the records reflect the hours actually worked.

Features and prices of ready-made products vary, so check them on the vendors’ own websites. The key question is whether the software can export data to the accounting program you already use.

How to set up an Excel timesheet properly

An Excel timesheet works well when one person maintains it and the structure stays the same. To keep it from becoming a source of errors, follow a few rules:

1. One row per employee, one column per day of the month. Add total columns for hours worked, overtime, night work and work on rest days and public holidays.
2. A legend of codes in the same file. Codes (holiday, sick leave, business trip and so on) are set by the employer, so they must be documented and used consistently.
3. Locked formulas. Protect total cells so that nobody overwrites a formula with a number by accident.
4. One file per month. Save the approved monthly timesheet separately (for example, as a PDF) and do not edit it again.
5. A clear owner. Who fills it in, who checks it and by which day it goes to the accountant.

Once headcount grows, several people edit the sheet and copies with different figures appear, it is time to consider a system. Our article Excel vs CRM covers that switch in more detail.

What should time tracking software be able to do?

Good time tracking software does more than store hours: it calculates what you would otherwise total by hand. Before choosing a product or commissioning your own system, check for these features:

• Rotas and shifts – building schedules, shift swaps and aggregated accounting if you use it.
• Leave and absences – holiday requests and approvals, sick leave, business trips, unpaid leave.
• Overtime and limits – automatic calculation of overtime, night and public holiday work, with warnings as you approach the Labour Code limits.
• Remote work – clocking in and out from a browser or phone, with manager approval.
• Change history – who changed what in the timesheet, and when.
• Access rights – employees see their own data, managers their team’s, the accountant the summaries.
• Employee extract – a timesheet extract in one click (Article 120(5)).
• Export for the accountant – a monthly summary in XLSX or CSV that matches your accounting software’s import format.
• Accounting integration – hours flow into payroll without retyping.

If you also want to track hours by project or site and invoice clients on that basis, you need more than time tracking. In such cases, off-the-shelf software is often not enough.

What about GDPR and employee monitoring?

Working time records are employees’ personal data, so the GDPR applies, and Article 27 of the Labour Code requires employers to respect employees’ right to privacy and data protection. In practice this means a few rules:

• Collect only what you need. Start and finish times and reasons for absence are enough for time tracking; any extra data needs a clear purpose (GDPR Article 5).
• Inform employees. They must know what data is collected, why and for how long it is kept (GDPR Article 13).
• Treat biometrics with particular care. Biometric data used to identify a person is a special category of data (GDPR Article 9). Guidelines from the State Data Protection Inspectorate (VDAI) state that fingerprint access control generally cannot rely on employee consent unless a less intrusive alternative, such as a card or key, is offered.
• Use geolocation only with good reason. Continuous tracking of an employee’s location is monitoring, so first assess whether the purpose can be met in a less intrusive way; a data protection impact assessment may be required (GDPR Article 35).

If you are planning biometric readers or GPS tracking, we recommend consulting a lawyer or data protection officer before rolling out the system.

When is a custom system or integration worth it?

A custom system or integration pays off when working time data has to reach several programs and staff copy it across by hand every month. Typical signs:

• you already use a CRM, project or inventory system, but working time sits in a separate file;
• pay or client invoices depend on hours per project, site or order;
• you have several teams, sites or non-standard schedules that ready-made software does not support;
• your accountant receives several files in different formats every month and merges them manually.

If the main problem is simply passing data to the accountant, an integration is often enough: your existing timesheet or software is connected to your accounting program. If the process is more complex, a dedicated application is built around your rules.

Prices include all taxes. The final cost depends on the number of features and how many programs the system needs to connect to.

How can we help?

The Saitai.lt team reviews how you track working time today and suggests the simplest solution that fits: tidy up your existing spreadsheet, connect it to your accounting or build a dedicated application. The system can run on our servers, on a dedicated server or on your own infrastructure.

• Custom reporting and record-keeping software – time, orders and other data tracked around your process.
• Accounting software integration – data transfer to Rivilė, Centas, B1.lt and other programs.
• Business automation – when several programs need connecting and manual retyping has to go.