Locked office door: regional holidays and why your time tracker must know them

When I moved to Germany to work, I had no idea how complicated the holiday system could be.

One morning in June, I drove 20 km to the office — and found a locked door and an empty parking lot. It was a regional public holiday. If you’ve lived in Bavaria for 15 years, that’s common knowledge. For an expat, it’s a trap.

Here’s what nobody warns you about: in Bavaria, whether Mariä Himmelfahrt (Assumption Day) is a day off depends on whether your town has more Catholics than Protestants — and it’s decided municipality by municipality. So two towns on the same river can run on different calendars: in Pegnitz the offices are closed, while 40 km downstream in Lauf an der Pegnitz everyone is at their desks.

The holiday chaos: 16 states, one spreadsheet

Now multiply that by 16 federal states. Tracking my actual working hours became a chaotic ritual. I tried paper notes, phone alarms, and increasingly complex Excel sheets. But Excel has no start/stop button, the formulas break, and a normal timer doesn’t understand German labour law.

Then I noticed everyone around me was solving this the same painful way — each colleague nursing their own Excel file, losing hours at the end of every month just to reconcile it with the corporate system.

Why we built Zeitbro

So we sat down and built the tool we all wished existed: a minimalist utility that does what other trackers do, but looks beautiful and actually understands German labour law.

That’s how Zeitbro was born. It automatically factors in the public holidays for your exact location and the legally required break deductions — in real time, compliant with the Working Hours Act (ArbZG). It’s built for the employee, not the HR department.

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