Custom time tracking software: when a generic app falls short

Since May 2019, every company in Spain has been legally required to record each employee's daily working hours, with fines of up to 7,500 EUR for getting it wrong. Most firms tick the box with a generic app costing 2 or 3 EUR per employee per month. The trouble starts when shifts rotate, people work on site without coverage, or the hours need to end up in payroll without a detour through Excel.

What does Spain's time registration law actually require?

Royal Decree-Law 8/2019 has required every company in Spain to keep a daily record of each employee's working hours since 12 May 2019, with actual start and end times. It applies to any business with salaried staff, whether it employs 3 people or 300. Records must be kept for 4 years and made available to the Labour Inspectorate, to employees and to their representatives. A template signed at the end of the month does not count: the record has to be daily and reflect reality.

Non-compliance is classed as a serious infringement, with fines between 751 and 7,500 EUR per company. The Labour Inspectorate has been running targeted time registration campaigns for years, and a weak record also works against the employer in any overtime claim: without reliable data of your own, the employee's version tends to prevail. The government has also signalled its intention to require a digital record that inspectors can access remotely, so paper sheets and spreadsheets have a limited shelf life.

When is a generic clock-in app enough?

If you run a single work centre, schedules are stable and everyone works with a computer or a phone, a SaaS clock-in tool is more than enough. These apps cost between 1.50 and 3.50 EUR per employee per month, are up and running in an afternoon and cover the essentials: web or mobile clock-in, monthly reports and legally compliant record keeping. For a 15 person office that is roughly 450 EUR a year, less than any custom build.

At ASD Solutions we say it plainly: if your case is standard, buy a SaaS, not a development project. Selling custom software to a company that does not need it is the fastest way to burn a client. The warning sign is not headcount, it is what happens after people clock in: if someone exports a CSV every month and spends hours reworking it in Excel for payroll, the generic app is no longer solving your problem.

When does custom time tracking pay off?

Custom pays off when your company's reality does not fit the fields of a generic app. Rotating shifts with handovers, night and holiday supplements defined by a collective agreement, several work centres with different rosters, staff on site or on the road without stable coverage, or the need to match hours against production orders. Each of these forces manual data fixes, and two or three combined turn time tracking into 8 or 10 hours of admin work every month.

The maths is simple. If an admin spends 10 hours a month reconciling clock-ins, at 20 EUR per hour that is 2,400 EUR a year on work that adds nothing. A 3,000 or 4,000 EUR build that removes the process pays for itself in under two years, and the software becomes company property. We cover the full decision criteria in our guide on custom software versus a commercial product.

How do you handle clock-ins on site, in the field and on the road?

A typical case: a distribution company with 25 delivery drivers needed each driver to clock in and out of their route, with location, and the data to reach the payroll advisor without manual steps. The answer was a mobile app that works offline, stores clock-ins on the phone itself and syncs when the signal returns. That is exactly where custom earns its keep: the generic app kept flagging false absences whenever a driver spent the day in an area with no data coverage.

In manufacturing the pattern repeats in a different shape: shared tablets on the shop floor, shift-based clock-in with operator handovers and automatic calculation of supplements under the sector agreement. In construction, geolocated clock-ins per site, which also help prove presence to the main contractor. These are 3 to 6 week projects that replace a mix of generic app, paper sheets and a consolidation spreadsheet.

How much does custom time tracking software cost?

A custom time tracking system typically lands between 1,500 and 6,000 EUR depending on scope. A basic web and mobile clock-in with reporting runs from 1,500 to 2,500 EUR. Add shift management, geolocation and offline mode and it moves to between 2,500 and 4,000 EUR. If it also integrates with payroll or your ERP, the range reaches 4,000 to 6,000 EUR. At ASD Solutions the price is fixed before work starts, by the same senior engineer who then delivers the project.

Compare that with a SaaS for 40 employees at 3 EUR per person: 1,440 EUR a year, every year, plus the admin hours the app never removes. A custom build is paid once, the client owns the code and maintenance is optional: one-off fixes from 300 EUR or a technical retainer from 500 EUR per month if you want continuous improvement. From year three onwards the balance usually tips towards the custom build.

How does clock-in data connect to payroll and your ERP?

The real value of custom time tracking is not the clock-in button, it is what happens afterwards. The system can generate the exact monthly file your payroll advisor uses, push hours straight into your ERP's payroll module or match clock-ins against work orders so you know the real cost of each project. This kind of ERP and CRM integration typically costs between 1,500 and 4,000 EUR and removes the manual step that causes the most errors.

Then there is the compliance layer: records are kept for 4 years in your own database, hosted wherever you decide, with a full audit trail for inspections and GDPR-compliant handling of location data, active only at the moment of clock-in. And no third-party dependency: if a SaaS provider raises prices or shuts down, your records and history go with it. With your own build, the code and the data are yours.