Working Hours in Brazil: The CLT and the Electronic Time Clock

Brazil is one of the few countries where the law does not merely permit a time clock, it specifies one. The Consolidação das Leis do Trabalho (CLT) requires employers above a headcount threshold to record working hours, and a 2021 ministerial ordinance sets out exactly what a compliant recorder looks like, including a fully software-based option.

That combination makes Brazil unusually consequential for anyone choosing a time tracking tool. Get it right and your records are evidence. Get it wrong and, under settled labor-court doctrine, the employee's version of their hours is presumed true.

#Quick Reference

#The Core Rules

#44 Hours, Not 40

The constitutional standard is 8 hours a day and 44 hours a week. In practice most companies run 8 hours Monday to Friday plus 4 hours on Saturday, or spread the extra four hours across the week to give staff their Saturdays.

Anything above the contractual normal time is hora extra. The constitutional floor is 50 percent above the ordinary hourly rate, and collective agreements frequently push it higher. Work on Sundays and holidays commonly attracts 100 percent.

#The Two-Hour Overtime Ceiling

Article 59 caps overtime at two hours per day. This is a limit on the working day itself, not just on what is payable: a 12-hour day is not made lawful by paying for it.

#The Banco de Horas

Instead of paying overtime, an employer may bank the hours and give time off later. Article 59 allows this through:

• an individual written agreement, where the hours must be compensated within six months, or
• a collective agreement, where the window extends to twelve months.

The banked hours must be compensated hour for hour within the window. If they are not, they revert to payable overtime at the premium rate, which is the usual way a poorly tracked banco de horas becomes a liability.

#Rest Periods

• Between shifts (art. 66): 11 consecutive hours. This one is frequently breached by split shifts and late finishes followed by early starts.
• Weekly (art. 67): 24 consecutive hours, preferably on Sunday.
• Within the day (art. 71): a meal and rest interval of at least 1 hour and at most 2 hours where the shift exceeds 6 hours, and 15 minutes where the shift runs 4 to 6 hours. Collective bargaining may reduce the longer interval, but not below 30 minutes.

Since the 2017 reform, failing to grant the full intra-shift interval means paying only the suppressed portion, at a 50 percent premium, and that payment is indemnity in nature rather than salary.

#Annual Leave

Thirty days per twelve-month period, plus the constitutional bonus of one third of salary. Since 2017 leave can be split into up to three periods, one of which must be at least 14 days and none shorter than 5 days.

#Time Recording: Who Must, and How

#The Threshold

Article 74, paragraph 2 requires time records where the establishment has more than 20 employees. The threshold used to be 10; it was raised to 20 in September 2019.

Below the threshold, recording is not mandatory. Above it, it is, and the record must show actual times, not a pre-printed schedule everyone signs.

#Portaria 671/2021

Portaria 671/2021 consolidated the earlier ordinances 1.510/2009 and 373/2011 into a single instrument, and it recognizes three kinds of electronic recorder:

The REP-P is the one that changed the market. A software time clock, including a phone app, is a first-class compliant option and does not need union sign-off, provided it meets the technical conditions: registration of the program with the INPI, generation of the Arquivo Fonte de Dados (AFD) with a digital signature, and issue of an electronic receipt to the worker.

Receipts must be produced as signed PDFs and made available within 48 hours of the punch.

This matters beyond Brazil. Several jurisdictions are drifting toward mandatory electronic recording, and Brazil is the one that already wrote down what "electronic" has to mean.

One thing to be clear about, since the distinction is easy to blur: a general time tracking tool is not automatically a REP-P. Timesheet records working time, breaks, and overtime and exports those records, which serves internal control, project costing, and anyone outside the REP requirement. A company above the 20-employee threshold needs a system that meets the Portaria's technical conditions, and should confirm that with the vendor rather than assume it.

#The Five-Minute Tolerance

Article 58, paragraph 1 tolerates variation of up to 5 minutes per marking, capped at 10 minutes a day. Cross that threshold and the whole period counts as overtime, not merely the excess beyond the tolerance.

This is the detail that punishes rounding. A system that quietly rounds every punch to the nearest quarter hour will, on a day where the variation reaches 11 minutes, have created a full overtime entitlement rather than a one-minute one.

#Who Falls Outside the Working-Time Chapter

Article 62 excludes three groups from the chapter on working hours, and therefore from overtime:

• external staff whose hours genuinely cannot be controlled
• managers with real autonomy and a salary premium
• remote workers paid by production or task rather than by time

The third category came from the 2017 reform and was refined in 2022. It is narrower than employers often assume: a remote worker on a fixed monthly salary who is expected to be available during business hours is not paid by task, and remains inside the chapter.

#Why the Records Decide the Case

This is the part that makes Brazilian time tracking different from a filing obligation.

Under Súmula 338 of the Tribunal Superior do Trabalho, an employer who is required to keep time records and does not produce them creates a relative presumption that the hours claimed by the employee are true. The employer can rebut it with other evidence, but the burden has moved.

The Súmula's own text still refers to the old 10-employee threshold, since it predates the 2019 amendment; the courts apply the 20-employee rule to facts arising after September 2019.

The practical consequence: in a country with a high volume of individual labor claims, your time records are not compliance paperwork. They are the defence file. Records that are complete, contemporaneous, and per-day are worth considerably more than a reconstruction produced after a claim lands.

#Inspection and Penalties

Enforcement runs on two tracks.

Administrative. The Auditor-Fiscal do Trabalho, under the Ministério do Trabalho e Emprego, inspects and issues infraction notices. Fines are set per infraction and per affected worker, and they escalate for repeat findings.

Judicial. The Justiça do Trabalho hears individual claims. This is where the larger exposure usually sits, because unpaid overtime carries knock-on effects: it feeds the FGTS deposit, the 13th salary, holiday pay, and the associated social contributions, so a successful overtime claim is rarely just the overtime.

Common findings:

• no records at all above the 20-employee threshold
• "British hours", meaning identical punch times every day, which the courts treat as evidence the record is not real
• the 11-hour inter-shift rest breached by rostering
• banco de horas balances left uncompensated past the window

#Practical Compliance Checklist

1. Count your headcount per establishment. Above 20 employees, recording is mandatory.
2. Pick a recorder type deliberately. REP-P if you want software with no union agreement; REP-A only if you have the collective agreement to support it.
3. Record real times. Identical daily punches undermine the record's credibility more than an untidy one does.
4. Watch the 11-hour rest when rostering late finishes against early starts.
5. Reconcile the banco de horas monthly and clear balances inside six or twelve months, depending on the instrument.
6. Keep records retrievable per employee, per day. That is the form a labor court will ask for.

#Common Questions

Is a phone app a legal time clock in Brazil? Only if it qualifies as a REP-P under Portaria 671/2021: registered with the INPI, generating the AFD with a digital signature, and issuing the worker an electronic receipt. A general time tracking app, a notes app, or a spreadsheet does not qualify simply by recording hours. Ask the vendor directly whether their product is a REP-P.

Do we need a union agreement to use software? Not for a REP-P. The collective agreement requirement attaches to the REP-A, the alternative system. This is the main practical advantage of the REP-P route.

What if we have fewer than 20 employees? Recording is not mandatory. Many smaller employers still record, precisely because of Súmula 338: without records you have less with which to rebut a claim, even where you had no duty to create them.

Are remote workers exempt from overtime? Only where they are genuinely paid by production or task under article 62. A remote employee on a fixed salary with expected availability is inside the working-time chapter, so time tracking for remote employees applies as it would on site.

How long do we keep the records? Keep them for at least five years, which matches the limitation period for labor claims arising during employment. Many employers keep them longer to cover the two-year window that runs from termination.

#Summary

• The constitutional standard is 8 hours a day and 44 hours a week, with overtime at 50 percent or more
• Overtime is capped at 2 hours a day; the banco de horas defers payment but not the obligation
• 11 consecutive hours between shifts, 24 hours weekly rest, and a 1 to 2 hour meal interval above 6 hours
• Time recording is mandatory above 20 employees under CLT art. 74
• Portaria 671/2021 recognizes software recorders (REP-P) without a collective agreement
• Under Súmula 338 TST, missing records shift the presumption to the employee's account of their hours

#Sources

• Consolidação das Leis do Trabalho (Decreto-Lei 5.452/1943) on planalto.gov.br
• Constituição Federal, art. 7
• Ministério do Trabalho e Emprego: Perguntas e Respostas, Portaria 671/2021
• Súmula 338, Tribunal Superior do Trabalho
• Lei 13.467/2017 (labour reform) and Lei 13.874/2019 (threshold raised to 20 employees)

#Where to Go Next

• Spain's time tracking law: Royal Decree-Law 8/2019 for the other jurisdiction that made daily records unambiguous
• The ECJ CCOO ruling: why time tracking is mandatory for the European parallel to Súmula 338's evidential logic
• FLSA overtime in the USA for the closest large-economy comparison in the Americas