Breaks – automatic & compliant

The German Working Hours Act (ArbZG) prescribes minimum rest breaks for employees: if working time exceeds six hours, at least 30 minutes of rest must be taken; anyone working more than nine hours is entitled to at least 45 minutes. These statutory minimums are non-negotiable – they apply whether you work in the office, from home, or on a business trip.

For employees and freelancers who document their own working time, this means: breaks must be correctly recorded and deducted from the gross working time so that the reported net working time complies with the legal framework.

When you enter start and end times, Zeitbro takes the time you were present in between and deducts a break in three tiers. The defaults follow the ArbZG statutory minimums (30 minutes for more than 6 hours of work, 45 minutes for more than 9 hours); you can change them in the settings.

Here is how the automation then works with the default values:

Not every working day looks the same – which is why all thresholds and break durations are individually configurable in Zeitbro's settings. Under Work Settings → Break Settings (3-Tier) you set the break for each of the three tiers (0, 30 and 45 minutes by default) and the two thresholds between them (6 and 9 hours by default).

Important: the statutory minimum breaks under the ArbZG are independent of these settings. Zeitbro's configurable values are convenience defaults for automatic calculation – they do not replace the obligation to actually comply with the legal minimums.

Manual break entries are easy to forget or estimate inaccurately. This leads to an incorrect net hours balance – either too much overtime is reported or the documentation does not reflect reality. Automatically calculated breaks solve this problem because they are consistent and traceable.

Zeitbro stores the deducted break value for each working day and displays it in the monthly overview. At a glance you can see whether your break practice meets the legal requirements – and you always have a clean basis for your records.