Updated 2026-07-25 · 3 min read
Who this is for. This is Spanish employment law and it applies to salons in Spain, including the many run by owners who don't read Spanish. If your salon is in the United Kingdom, Ireland or the United States, this does not apply to you: your own country's rules govern who records working time. If you employ anybody in Spain, read on.
It's one of the questions we get most, and a very fair one: *«if the salon is mine and I'm self-employed, do I have to start clocking myself in and out? And my sister, who comes to help on Saturdays?»*. Let's clear it up name by name, because the confusion here can be expensive — not because of the time record itself, but because of what tends to come to light when the Inspectorate pulls on the thread.
The rule, in one sentence
The time-record obligation covers the working time of employed staff — that is, your employees with an employment contract. You, as the self-employed owner, are not obliged to record your own hours.
You can clock in voluntarily if it helps you see how many hours you really put in (it opens a lot of owners' eyes), but that's your choice, not a legal duty.
The dangerous bit: «the one who helps on Saturdays»
Here's the real risk, and it isn't the time record: it's registration. If somebody works in your salon — your sister on Saturdays, a friend over the Christmas rush, the trainee who covers on her own — and she isn't registered with Social Security and on a contract, you have a far bigger problem than a clocking-in notebook. Having staff off the books is the most serious and most common breach the Inspectorate finds in salons, with penalties far above those for the time record.
And there's a domino effect worth understanding: when an inspection arrives over the time record, the first thing the inspector does is count how many people are working and cross-check them against the registrations. The time record is, very often, the door through which undeclared work is discovered. Which is why getting up to date on clocking in also forces you to sort out who's properly registered — and that's healthy.
So who clocks in at your salon? Case by case
- You, self-employed owner: not obliged. Voluntary.
- Your employee on a contract (full or part time): obliged, no exceptions.
- Seasonal or part-time staff: obliged exactly like permanent staff, as long as they have a contract.
- The person «who helps out»: if she works, contract and registration first, and then she clocks in. If not, she shouldn't be working.
- A working partner: depends on how she's classified (a company partner under the self-employed regime doesn't clock in as an employee; on an employment contract, she does). Confirm it with your accountant.
How to comply without getting tangled
If you have a team you need a digital time-record system — and with the new decree, one that's digital and tamper-proof. The good news: for a small salon this is a couple of taps a day per employee today, not a project. If you already use ClaudIA for WhatsApp and your calendar, the time record is included from the Pro plan: you activate your employee, give her a PIN, and she clocks in on the salon tablet or by WhatsApp. You can activate yourself too if you want; and if not, no worries — your duty is to record your team, not yourself.
Summary for the fridge door: you don't clock in as an obligation, your team does, and the genuinely urgent thing isn't the notebook — it's that everybody working in your salon is properly registered. The first is fixed with a good system; the second, with your accountant and without delay.