Working Time Records

Correcting a Record

This is not legal advice.

People forget to clock out, enter the wrong day, or record a break they did not take. Corrections are ordinary and a system that prevents them produces false records rather than accurate ones. For an additional implementation-oriented example, see this resource.

How the correction is made is what decides whether the file survives scrutiny. For additional workplace and technology context, see European Union portal.

Reviewed August 9, 2026.

Why it matters more than it sounds

The standard requires the record to be reliable.

A value that changed with no trace of the change is not reliable, and one visibly altered entry casts doubt on the whole file — an inspector who finds an erased and rewritten figure has a reason to question every other page.

Conversely, a struck-through entry with an initial, a date and a reason strengthens the file. It demonstrates that the record is maintained rather than assembled.

The four rules

One. Never overwrite. The original stays visible or retrievable. On paper: strike through, do not erase. Electronically: a change history, not a replaced value.

Two. Record who made the change. Employee, manager, administrator.

Three. Record when. The date of the correction, not only the date being corrected.

Four. Record why, briefly. Forgot to clock out. Wrong day entered. Break not taken. Three words is enough and it is what distinguishes a correction from an alteration.

Who may correct

A policy question that should be decided before the first correction, not during it.

The employee, for their own record, is the usual arrangement and the one that fits self-recording.

A manager or administrator, where the employee cannot — which needs the employee to be able to see the result.

And the thing to avoid: corrections made by somebody the employee cannot see. A record adjusted centrally, invisibly, is the arrangement that turns a compliance system into a dispute.

The retrospective entry

Different from a correction and worth separating.

A missing day, filled in later, is a reconstruction rather than a correction. It is sometimes unavoidable and it is weaker on the "objective" limb because it rests on recollection.

Mark it as such. An entry noted as reconstructed, with the date it was added, is honest and defensible. The same entry presented as a same-day record is not, and the difference matters if the file is examined.

And chase gaps within the week, while memory is reliable. A reconstructed month is worse than an acknowledged gap.

The pattern to watch for

Systematic corrections in one direction.

Overtime routinely edited down, breaks routinely added, late starts routinely adjusted. Each individual change may be legitimate; the pattern is what an auditor or a tribunal will notice, and it is visible precisely because the change history exists.

That is the history working as intended. A system where the pattern would be invisible is the system that fails the standard.

What to write down once

Half a page, agreed before the system goes live.

Who may correct what.

Within what period — corrections to the current month, older ones by exception with a note.

What reason codes are used, if any. A short closed list beats free text that nobody fills in.

And who reviews corrections, and how often. Part of the weekly check, and the point at which the pattern above becomes visible to somebody.

The short version