Recording Project times
Under the Project Times menu, you can record the time you’ve spent working on projects.
You can choose between several different view options:
Work Week
Week
Day
Agenda
Form
Each view provides information about the duration of your recorded project times, the number of billable hours, and, if applicable, your recorded attendance.
Use the arrows next to the month and calendar week to navigate between weeks.
In the Work Week, Week, and Day views, you can record times using a click-and-drag action. Additionally, in every view, you can create a new entry by clicking the Record Project Time button.
In both cases, a pop-up window will open where you can enter the details of your project time, including:
Date
Color of the time entry
Time or duration
Project
Task
Activity
Billable status (if applicable)
Work location
Comment
Once all required information has been entered, save your entry.
In each of the views, you can click on the three dots to access additional options:
View total time information
For business trips, specify meals provided, which are needed for calculating subsistence costs.
Copy the entries of one day to another (if an administrator has allowed time entries in the past or future)
Insert breaks
Booking Non-Working Activities:
If you select an activity marked as “non-working time”, it will not count as working hours.
A time entry with such an activity can overlap with other recorded entries.
Break Regulations, Hour Limits & Core Working Hours:
If a break regulation has been configured and assigned to you in ZEP, it’s possible that a time entry may violate this rule.
ZEP will alert you with a red exclamation mark, which you can click for more information.
The same applies if weekly or monthly hour limits have been defined for you — a red exclamation mark will appear, providing details on the issue.
If your employer has set core working hours in ZEP, a blue notification will appear on days when those hours have been violated.
Recording travel times
You can record travel times — just like project times — via the Project Times menu.
To do so, select the relevant project and task, and then choose the activity “travel” (re).
Now, additional input fields will appear:
Work Location
This field is essential for the calculation of subsistence costs.
For a travel entry, specifying a location other than “primary workplace” is mandatory.
If you select a location other than primary workplace, a checkbox labeled "work location is project relevant" will appear.
Project-Relevant Location
Enable this checkbox if you want the subsistence costs to be calculated and charged to the project.
You should leave the checkbox unchecked in cases where, for example, you are away from the office for one project but spend part of that time working on another project that does not require travel.
In such a case, as an employee, you are still entitled to VMA, but these costs must not be charged — neither internally nor externally — to the project.
The checkbox only affects the subsistence costs calculation for the project — that is, how it appears on invoices and in revenue reports.
The subsistence costs calculation for your personal expense report (i.e., the employee reimbursement) is not affected by this setting.
Travel Activity
Outward / continue / return
Specify whether you are starting a trip (outward), continuing a trip (continue), or returning from a trip (return).
For outward and continuing trips, always enter the destination as the work location; for return trips, enter the starting point.
When traveling within Germany, this usually means the work location is "D (Domestic – off-site)".
Start / Destination
These details are displayed in your expense report and, for projects that include VMA (per diem) reimbursement, in the project billing as well.
Vehicle
If you actively drove (e.g., a car), select the corresponding vehicle.
If you traveled passively (e.g., by train or as a passenger), leave this field empty.
Passive travel times are treated by ZEP as break times and are not counted as working hours.Check whether the trip was made with a private or a company vehicle. For trips with a private vehicle, you will be reimbursed according to the mileage allowance. If colleagues traveled with you, you can optionally record this.
Trips made with a company vehicle appear on your expense report without reimbursement.Additionally, enter the distance between the start and destination locations.
For Austria, the following applies:
“During active travel time, the extension of the daily maximum working time may not exceed 12 hours if the work performed consists of driving a vehicle as instructed, provided that this is not the employee’s main activity.”
Examples & Tips for Recording Travel Times
The following section provides tips and examples for recording travel times and calculating per diem allowances.
Per diem allowances are automatically calculated in ZEP when the work location is not set to primary workplace.
and
Definition of overnight stay
For the calculation of per diems, it is crucial whether an overnight stay has taken place. If a definition for recognizing overnight stay times is stored under Administration > Travels > Per Diems, an overnight stay is recognized based on this definition.
An overnight stay is assumed if
a trip is present, i.e. the location of the time entries is for example not the "primary place of work"
and
there was an overnight stay (overnight stay according to your settings in "recognize overnight stay time")
Three-Month Rule
For the three-month rule, since 2014 a purely time-based assessment applies to determine interruptions.
An interruption of work at the same workplace restarts the three-month period if the interruption lasts at least four weeks.
The reason for the interruption is irrelevant — only the duration matters.
One-Day Trip
The simplest way to record your travel and project times is in the correct chronological order:
Outward journey
Project time
Return journey
Select an appropriate non-primary workplace as the work location so that the subsistence costs are calculated correctly.
The calculation period begins with the outward journey (or the first project time at a non-primary workplace) and ends with the return journey, or at 24:00 on the same day if no return journey was recorded.
If, on the following day, a project time is recorded at the work location “primary workplace”, ZEP will calculate the subsistence costs up to the end of the last recorded activity at the non-primary workplace.
Example:
08:00 – 09:00 Travel time (outward), location: D (domestic off-site)
09:00 – 12:00 Project time, location: D (domestic off-site)
13:00 – 17:00 Project time, location: D (domestic off-site)
17:00 – 18:00 Travel time (return), location: D (domestic off-site)
You were away from home for 9 hours (including a break between 12:00 and 13:00) and are therefore entitled to the statutory subsistence cost allowance of €12. For trips lasting 24 hours or more, the allowance increases to €24.
Travel crossing midnight
You always record travel based on the calendar day, meaning that a trip spanning midnight must be entered in two parts.
For the first part (“until 24:00”), enter the location reached by that time (regardless of whether you traveled by plane, train, or car).
For the second part (the following day starting at 00:00), enter the destination location.
Ensure that each trip begins with exactly one outward journey and ends with exactly one return journey. Any travel segments in between must be recorded as continued travel.
Midnight Rule:
The midnight rule allows absences from two calendar days to be combined in order to qualify for subsistence cost allowances. However, this may only be done if no overnight stay occurred.
The midnight rule applies when:
The trip began after 16:00 and ended before 08:00,
and
No overnight stay occurred (according to your settings in Detect Overnight Stays).
Arrival & Departure Rule Without Minimum Absence Duration
If a trip begins with an outward journey and is not completed on the same calendar day, it is considered an arrival day.
If an overnight stay follows, the daily subsistence allowance for absences exceeding 8 hours will be applied — even if the actual absence duration is less than 8 hours.
If a trip continues on the next calendar day and concludes with a return journey on that same day, it is considered a departure day.
If an overnight stay occurred before that day, the daily subsistence allowance for absences exceeding 8 hours will also be applied — even if the absence duration is less than 8 hours.
A maximum of one full 24-hour daily allowance is calculated per day, even if multiple arrivals and departures occur within the same day.
Multi-Day Travel
Multi-day trips should be recorded in the same way as single-day trips — starting with one outward journey and ending with one return journey.
All travel times in between should be entered as continued travel.
If no return journey is recorded on the same day, ZEP automatically assumes it is a multi-day trip.
Subsistence costs are then calculated as follows:
From the start of the outward journey until 24:00 of the same day, and
From 00:00 of the following day until the return journey is completed.
Weekend
ZEP takes into account that employees may receive tax-free subsistence costs if they remain at their external work location over the weekend — even if no work was performed on those days.
Subsistence costs are calculated for unrecorded intermediate days (e.g., Saturday and Sunday) if the following conditions are met:
The last entry of a given day (e.g., Friday) is an external assignment (i.e., the location is not “first workplace”) and is not a return journey.
No more than three consecutive days pass without any time entries (e.g., Saturday, Sunday, and a public holiday).
The first entry after the break (e.g., Monday) is at the same location as the last entry before the break (e.g., Friday) and is not an outward journey.
The intermediate days are counted as 24 hours of absence each.
If you have activated the Austrian 24-hour rule, you must record a continued travel time of “0 hours” for both Saturday and Sunday; otherwise, the weekend will not be included in the calculation.
To prevent subsistence costs from being calculated for the weekend, record a return journey on Friday.
Example:
An employee could technically travel home over the weekend but decides to stay privately at the external work location instead. In this case, they should not receive subsistence costs for that period.
To ensure this, the employee records a return journey with a duration of “0” on Friday and an outward journey with a duration of “0” on Monday. As a result, no subsistence costs are calculated for that weekend.
If the work performed on Friday and Monday is booked to a project that, according to project settings, passes subsistence costs on to the customer, then those weekend subsistence costs will also be reflected in the project revenue (and included in the invoice if the Invoicing module is used).
Trips longer than 3 months
You have the option to define special locations (Other Travel) for which the calculation of subsistence costs does not take overnight stays into account.
In these cases, the calculation is based solely on the time between the first and last time entry of each day.
A typical use case for this functionality is long-term external assignments that last longer than three months.
Background – German Tax Regulations:
In Germany, subsistence costs for business trips are generally tax-free only if the employee is not assigned to the same location for more than three months.
For assignments exceeding three months, there are no binding legal rules governing the reimbursement of subsistence costs.
With ZEP, you can decide how to handle this situation:
Option 1:
After the 3-month period, the employee records their working time again at the standard location and therefore no longer receives any subsistence costs.Option 2:
You continue to pay subsistence costs even after the three-month period, but overnight stays are not considered, and these payments are typically not tax-free.
To do so, define a location in ZEP marked as Other Travel and specify the desired daily allowances.
After the three-month period, the employee records their working time at this special location and receives the corresponding subsistence costs.
The same rule applies when billing subsistence costs to customers:
For locations marked as Other Travel, overnight stays are not taken into account in the calculation.
Employee Contribution to Travel Time
A travel activity (re) can also be recorded with identical from and to times — meaning a duration of 0.
This is useful for employees whose travel time to the customer is not counted as working or project time, but who still receive subsistence costs and possibly travel expense reimbursements.
These employees record such zero-duration entries as outward and return journeys to mark the start and end of the time period relevant for calculating subsistence costs.
To do this:
Enter the same time in the from and to fields.
Select the activity re (travel activity).
Enter the relevant travel data.
If travel expenses (calculated from the Vehicle, Private, Kilometers, and Passengers fields) should not be reimbursed, enter “–” or “0” in those fields.
We recommend that each trip starts with an outward journey and ends with a return journey, and that all project times during the trip are booked to a non-standard workplace.
Even if you omit the outward and return journey entries and only record your working time at the non-standard workplace, ZEP will still calculate subsistence costs for that period. The trip will then automatically end with the next project time entry at the standard workplace.
Please note:
If you have project time entries at a non-standard workplace on two consecutive days, ZEP interprets this as a multi-day trip and calculates subsistence costs until 24:00 / from 00:00 accordingly.