Verifactu Delayed to 2028: What About Time Tracking Rules?

Two calendars, two laws: why Verifactu's delay changes nothing about time trackingWhen Spain's Ministry of Finance announced that the pending obligati...

Two calendars, two laws: why Verifactu's delay changes nothing about time tracking

When Spain's Ministry of Finance announced that the pending obligations under the Reglamento de sistemas informáticos de facturación — widely known as Verifactu — would be pushed back to October 2028, many business owners in Lleida, Barcelona and across Catalonia breathed a sigh of relief. The reasoning behind the delay is practical: aligning the new invoicing requirements with the mandatory electronic invoicing regime for businesses and self-employed professionals with annual turnover below eight million euros, so that companies do not have to absorb several technological overhauls in a short space of time. Previously, Verifactu was expected in January 2027 for certain companies and July 2027 for others.

That extra breathing room, however, has triggered a widespread misunderstanding. A number of SMEs have quietly assumed that if fiscal digitalisation has been postponed, the same must apply to the new time tracking rules. It does not. Verifactu belongs to the tax and invoicing sphere, while working time registration is governed by labour law and the Estatuto de los Trabajadores. There is no automatic link between the two, and treating them as one and the same is a compliance risk that Inspections can easily detect.

The obligation you already have — and have had since 2019

This is the point that gets lost in the noise: registering the daily working time of every employee has been mandatory in Spain since May 2019. Article 34.9 of the Estatuto de los Trabajadores requires companies to keep a daily record of each worker's start and finish times. Those records must be retained for four years and remain available to the workers themselves, their legal representatives and the Inspección de Trabajo y Seguridad Social.

In other words, no company should be waiting for a future Real Decreto to start tracking hours. Fichaje is already compulsory. What the forthcoming regulation aims to change is mainly how that record is produced and which guarantees the system must offer — not whether it must exist at all.

What the new digital time tracking framework is expected to change

The Ministry of Labour has been working on a regulatory development of the working time register for some time. As of early October 2026, the new Real Decreto had not yet been approved or published in the BOE, and its passage through the Council of Ministers was still pending. Until that happens, the additional requirements should not be presented as obligations already in force.

That said, the direction of travel is clear. Among the objectives under discussion:

Stronger guarantees of objectivity, reliability and traceability of the record.
Identification of interruptions and breaks within the working day.
Control over any modifications made to existing records.
Direct access for workers, their representatives and the Labour Inspectorate.
Electronic registers with identification mechanisms and telematic access.

Digitalisation sits at the heart of this approach. Companies that already rely on a digital punch-in system will find the transition far less painful than those still working with spreadsheets or paper sheets.

Practical steps for SMEs in Catalonia

Rather than waiting for the BOE, the sensible move is to close the gap between what the law already demands and what your business actually does. A few priorities stand out:

Record start and end times daily for every employee, including part-time and remote staff.
Keep records for four years in a format that can be produced quickly during an inspection.
Guarantee accessibility for workers and their legal representatives, not just for management.
Choose a system that already supports traceability, so future requirements do not force a second migration.

For a small firm in Tarragona or Girona with a handful of employees, a mobile-based punch-in tool removes most of the friction: staff clock in from their phone, the record is timestamped and stored centrally, and reports can be exported when the Inspectorate requests them. For larger organisations in Barcelona, the same logic applies at scale, with the added benefit that HR no longer has to reconcile handwritten sheets at the end of each month.

Why acting now is cheaper than reacting later

There is a temptation to treat the Verifactu delay as a signal that all digital compliance can wait. In practice, the opposite is true. The time tracking obligation is not a future risk — it is a present one, and it carries the possibility of penalties under the Ley de Infracciones y Sanciones del Orden Social. Waiting until the new Real Decreto is published means implementing a system under pressure, often at short notice and at a higher cost.

Companies that adopt a proper control horario solution today — one built around mobile or web-based fichaje, with reports ready for inspection and full alignment with the current normativa laboral — are effectively future-proofing themselves. When the digital register requirements finally arrive, they will already be compliant with the substance of them.

The message for Spanish SMEs is straightforward: Verifactu can wait until 2028. Your obligation to register working time cannot.

Put these ideas into practice

Talk to ALMC about a solution for your business. Explore your options or contact our team.

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