Mindestlohn documentation on German sites: what customs wants to see

The legal basis: §17 MiLoG and §19 AEntG

In the German construction industry, employers must record the start, end, and duration of each worker's daily working time — no later than the end of the seventh calendar day after the work was performed, and keep the records for at least two years (§17 MiLoG, the German Minimum Wage Act). The reason: construction tops the list of economic sectors in §2a SchwarzArbG (the act against undeclared work) to which this stricter recording duty applies. For posted workers, §19 AEntG (the Posted Workers Act) imposes the same duty — plus the requirement to keep the documents available in German for the entire duration of the employment in Germany. If you are a foreign subcontractor working on a German site, this rule applies to your crew from day one.

What exactly must be recorded

• Date and name of the worker
• Clock times for the start and end of the daily working time — not just the total ("8 hours" is not enough)
• Duration of the working time, minus breaks
• Recorded within 7 calendar days — monthly lists reconstructed after the fact do not satisfy the duty

What the FKS demands during an inspection

During site inspections, customs (Zoll) cross-checks three layers: the people actually present, the working-time records, and the payroll statements. Discrepancies — workers on site who appear in no record; 10-hour days where 8 were billed — are the entry point into deeper audits, all the way to estimated wage assessments. How such an inspection unfolds and which schedule of fines then applies is covered in our guide to undeclared work and customs inspections on construction sites (in German).

Your position as GC: the subcontractor's duty, your risk

The recording duty falls on the subcontractor (Nachunternehmer) as the employer — but through the guarantor liability under §13 MiLoG (guide in German) and the accusation of negligent ignorance, the issue lands on your desk as the general contractor. Four building blocks protect you contractually and organizationally:

1. Contractual obligation: the subcontractor commits to MiLoG-compliant working-time records and to producing them on request within [5] working days.
2. Spot checks: occasional plausibility reviews — does the crew size in the site diary match the timesheets submitted?
3. A uniform template: provide your subcontractors with a MiLoG-compliant timesheet — it raises the quality of the records noticeably.
4. Escalation: refusal to produce records = a documented written warning. Exactly this paper trail exonerates you later.

Working-time records are just one building block of your subcontractor file: which documents you should collect from every Nachunternehmer beyond that is covered in the subcontractor document checklist. And because minimum wage declarations and timesheets have to be re-requested continuously, they belong in systematic deadline management for certificates (guide in German) — not in a binder nobody maintains.