What to check before choosing a time tracking app: clock-in methods, art. 119 compliance, corrections with approval, reports, multiple sites, payroll link, data and total cost.
Translated from Romanian. This article covers Romanian labour and tax law; the Romanian version is canonical and is updated first.
Time tracking should run by itself. In many companies it does the opposite: hours are gathered from attendance registers, messages and spreadsheets, corrected at the end of the month, and mistakes only show up on the payslip or during a Labour Inspectorate (ITM) check. There are dozens of time tracking apps on the market, and on paper they all “do time tracking”. The difference only shows after a few months of use. Below are the criteria worth comparing them on — from how people actually clock in to what the solution really costs.
A time tracking app automatically records when each employee starts and finishes work, breaks, overtime and absences. Clocking in happens from a phone, from the browser, at a station by the entrance (with a QR code or a card) or by an operator who clocks in the whole team. The data ends up in one place, where managers, HR and — for their own time sheet — each employee can see it.
The difference from a paper register or a spreadsheet isn’t just speed. A digital record clearly answers four questions: who worked, when, how long and where — exactly what art. 119 of the Labour Code requires. Complete solutions then connect time tracking with leave, work schedules, overtime and payroll.
If clocking in takes more than one gesture, people postpone it, forget it or do it “at the end of the week”. A good app needs no training: one button to clock in, one to clock out, a clear message when something is wrong. Many features don’t make an app complicated — what matters is how well they fit together.
An office, a field team and a production hall don’t clock in the same way. Check whether the app covers your case: clocking in from a phone or the browser for office and field staff, a physical station with a QR code or card at the entrance of a production site or shop, collective time tracking done by a team leader on a construction site. Also ask what it does against “buddy punching”: a QR code that changes periodically, clocking in allowed only from the company network, location recorded.
The Labour Code requires a daily record of hours, with the start and end time of the working day, available at the workplace for inspectors. The app has to produce exactly that, for any employee and any day, with a history of changes — who changed an hour, when and why. A simple monthly total is not enough during an inspection.
A manager should be able to see at any time who is at work, who is absent and who is working from home, without calling each person. Reports belong here too: hours worked against the norm, absences, overtime — per employee, per team, per site — exportable without manual processing.
However good the system, someone will forget to clock in or will clock in wrongly. What matters is how it gets fixed: the employee flags it, the manager or HR approves it, and the correction stays in the history. An app in which anyone can change anything without a trail is a risk during an inspection, not a solution.
Stand-alone time tracking means doing the work twice. Check whether the app takes into account approved leave, shifts and schedules, overtime and time-off-in-lieu balances, business trips and public holidays — and whether hours reach payroll (or an export for your accountant) without copying them by hand.
Part-time norms come with different breaks than full-time, night shifts cross midnight, and overtime thresholds differ from one company to another. The app should be configured around your flow — not you around it: schedules, breaks, thresholds, approval rules, role-based permissions.
Today you have one office; in a year you may have three sites and new teams. Ask how multiple locations are handled (employees, clock-in stations and reports for each site), how teams and managers are added, and what happens to the cost as headcount grows.
Time records contain personal data, and GDPR responsibility stays with the employer. Ask for clear answers: where the data is stored, who has access, how often backups are made, whether there is a data processing agreement (DPA) and what happens to the data if you stop using the app — do you get it exported, and is it deleted?
Moving from paper to digital takes setup, importing employees and a few days of getting used to it. Check whether you get help getting started, whether support is in Romanian and how quickly it responds, and ask for a written offer that includes everything: the subscription, implementation, data migration, support. A low price per employee means nothing without the rest.
Before choosing, ask for a demo on a real case from your company and check:
Workly time tracking was built around the reality of Romanian companies: one clock-in method chosen for the whole company — a grid, clocking in from a phone or browser, a Kiosk with a rotating QR code and NFC card or collective time tracking — with start and end times for every person, and every change recorded in the audit log (there is no history screen in the app). The data is linked to leave, shifts and overtime; the worked days flow into payroll, with export to SAGA, and support is in Romanian. The easiest way is to see the flow on your own company, in a demo.
Still on paper? You can start from our free attendance register template (a document in Romanian), then move to digital time tracking when you’re ready.
Informational article, accurate at the date of publication. Not legal advice. For your company’s specific obligations, check the legislation in force or consult a specialist.
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