Regulation in PracticeTime registration becomes mandatory from 1 January 2027. What that means in practice
On 30 September 2026, the Belgian National Labour Council issued advice on the introduction of mandatory time registration. The obligation applies from 1 January 2027, with a transition period until 1 April 2027. For many organisations this is the moment not only to choose a system, but to think about what that registration can mean beyond compliance.
Björn Slegers ·
It is now officially on its way: time registration becomes mandatory for Belgian employers. The National Labour Council issued its advice on 30 September 2026. The obligation starts on 1 January 2027, with a transition period running until 1 April 2027.
That sounds like a distant deadline. In practice, the runway is shorter than it looks. If you want to be compliant in January 2027, you need to choose, implement and embed a system in 2026.
What the obligation involves
The core is simple: employers must register the working hours of their employees. Start and end times, breaks, overtime. Not as a voluntary good practice, but as a legal obligation.
The transition period until 1 April 2027 gives room for a gradual rollout. But using that room to wait only postpones the problem.
Why this is more than a compliance exercise
You can treat time registration as a checkbox. Pick a tool, let people clock hours, done. That is the fastest route to compliance, and at the same time the least interesting one.
Because once you register working time structurally, you hold data that many organisations lack today. How does overtime relate to staffing? Where do absence peaks emerge? Does planned capacity match reality?
Those questions are not new. What is new is that the answers will now live in your own data, provided you collect it somewhere connected to the rest of your HR context.
Three questions to ask now
- Does the system you choose fit how your organisation works, or must your organisation adapt to the system?
- Does registered time end up in a silo, or does it strengthen what you already know about leave, absence and payroll?
- Who in the organisation will be able to work with that data, and with which question in mind?
The obligation is the same for everyone. What you do with it is not.
What we do with it
In Almuruna One, time registration is not a separate module with its own truth. Registered time flows through to leave, absence and payroll preparation. Those who register overtime see it reflected in the context in which it arose.
In our view, that is the only sustainable reading of this obligation: not one more system, but an existing connection that finally includes time.
How Almuruna One approaches time registration