Spain's digital clock-in law slips again, now eyeing 2027

Spain’s digital clock-in decree missed the last Council of Ministers meeting of September, government sources confirmed this week — despite deputy prime minister and Labour minister Yolanda Díaz having declared the deal with the Economy Ministry closed and approval “imminent” barely two weeks earlier. At Evicron, an AI and custom software studio in Barcelona with over 200 projects delivered since 2019, we’ve been tracking this file for months because it’s the regulation with the most direct impact — and the most questions from the SMEs who write to us. The headline isn’t the latest broken date; it’s that Royal Decree-Law 8/2019 already requires companies to log working hours today, regardless of when the new decree lands.

What happened this week

The text was due before the Council of Ministers in July, got pushed to September “to address the Council of State’s objections,” and missed September too. This isn’t the first repeat of the pattern: the draft has slipped for nearly a year, each delay attached to a new date that then doesn’t hold. What’s different this time is that Díaz herself had closed the objections chapter with the Economy Ministry and announced approval “immediately” on September 9. Three weeks later, the decree still hasn’t reached the Council of Ministers, has no official date, and isn’t published in the official gazette (BOE).

Why it’s stuck: the standoff between Labour and Economy

The blockage doesn’t come only from the Council of State’s March 23 opinion — which put the reform’s cost to SMEs at €867-900M a year, as we covered when that figure first came out. It’s also a deeper disagreement between two ministries: Economy, led by Carlos Cuerpo, has spent months pushing for a longer transition period, sector-specific carve-outs, and measures to ease the administrative load on small businesses; Labour has defended the original timeline. Back in June, reports said Díaz had given ground to those demands and reworked the text to soften the impact on SMEs. If she did, it hasn’t been enough to unblock it: come September, we’re back where we started — no decree, no reliable date.

The precedent nobody wants to repeat

Several industry analysts keep drawing the same comparison: this timeline increasingly resembles Verifactu, the e-invoicing mandate that has also piled extension on top of extension. Given the pattern so far — a critical opinion in March, a delay in July, another delay in September — the most-cited scenario is no longer “before the end of 2026” but the first half of 2027, with up to an additional year of adaptation time for SMEs once it’s published. In other words: if you were holding off digitizing your clock-in system until the decree landed, the wait may run considerably longer than it looked a month ago.

What Royal Decree-Law 8/2019 already requires, decree or no decree

While the new text stays in the pipeline, the law in force since 2019 hasn’t moved an inch: every Spanish company, regardless of size or sector, must log the start and end of each employee’s working day daily, keep that record for 4 years, and make it accessible to the employee, their legal representatives, and the Labour Inspectorate. Failing to do so, or keeping an unreliable record, is a serious infringement carrying fines of €751 to €7,500 per workplace. We covered this in detail in our guide to what the law already requires — none of it has expired, because the law behind it hasn’t either.

What your business can do while the calendar stays up in the air

1. Stop planning around a date. With two confirmed delays and a third just added, any specific deadline you read today may not hold. Build your compliance around Royal Decree-Law 8/2019 as it stands, not a draft that can still change.
2. Don’t wait for the decree to go digital. An off-the-shelf digital clock-in system already costs less than the €55.4/employee/year average the Council of State estimated for the future reform, and avoids the most common inspection failures: incomplete records, missing signatures, or records that can’t be pulled up 4 years later.
3. Pick a flexible tool, not one tied to a specific draft. If the final decree changes adaptation periods or requires interoperability with the Labour Inspectorate, a system that already centralizes and exports its history adapts without friction; one built around the first draft might fall short.
4. If you manage several collective agreements, sites, or complex shifts, use this delay to properly evaluate a custom integration instead of forcing a generic SaaS tool into place at the last minute once the decree finally publishes.

We build and maintain QWorker, our time-tracking software, designed precisely so you don’t have to depend on any political timeline: clock-in from mobile, browser, or a shared NFC-enabled tablet, weekly digital signing of records, and the 4 years of history the law requires, ready for an inspection today. Plans start at €2.50/employee/month, with no lock-in and a free trial, no card required. And if your operation has quirks a standard SaaS tool doesn’t cover — multiple collective agreements, integration with an existing ERP, unusual shift patterns — our software consulting starts by understanding what you actually need before proposing anything.

The bottom line

Spain’s digital clock-in decree is without a date again: it missed September’s Council of Ministers meeting despite Díaz’s “imminent” a few weeks earlier, and the disagreement with the Economy Ministry over the impact on SMEs still isn’t fully resolved. The Verifactu precedent suggests approval might not arrive before 2027. In the meantime, Royal Decree-Law 8/2019 already requires logging and keeping working-hour records today, with fines already in force. Digitizing now, with a flexible tool priced below the Council of State’s own average estimate, beats waiting for the official gazette.

Want us to check whether your company’s time tracking would survive an inspection today? Get in touch: the first consultation is free, and we reply within 24 hours.