Compliance4 Oct 2026
Status on 29 September 2026: mandatory working-time registration in Belgium is planned from 1 January 2027. The legal text has not yet been published in the Belgisch Staatsblad. According to Deloitte Belgium (22 September 2026), the exact rules, exceptions and sanctions will only be fixed once the law is actually adopted and published.
You already log time. Every MSP does: minutes on tickets, hours on projects, because no hours means no invoice. But Belgium's planned rules are about something else: working time. When the day starts, when it ends, and when there was a break. This article is for owners of MSPs and IT service companies with staff in Belgium: what the difference is, where you get caught out, and how to run both from one system without asking your technicians to clock twice.
TL;DR
- Billable time = what you charge the customer. Working time = how long your employee actually worked. They're two different numbers.
- Time on tickets alone may not be enough to show working time: breaks, travel and internal work are often missing.
- Pick one system that records both, with an audit trail and an export for your social secretariat.
Billable time vs working time: not the same thing
It sounds like a detail, but these are two separate records with different jobs.
| Billable time | Working time | |
|---|---|---|
| What it measures | Time you charge to a customer | Time the employee actually worked |
| Unit | Minutes per ticket, task or project | Start and end of the day, breaks |
| Who needs it | Customer, invoicing, project tracking | Employee, payroll, social inspection |
| What it leaves out | Internal work, training, travel (often) | Nothing: non-billable work is still working time |
| What the sources stress | Is the invoice right? | Actual hours worked, not the schedule (SD Worx, Dutch) |
A technician who starts at 8:00, stops at 17:00 and takes a 30-minute break worked 8.5 hours. Their tickets might show 6. The rest is an internal meeting, a drive, an update that failed. Those 2.5 hours aren't a mistake: they're just invisible in your ticket data.
What Belgium plans for 2027
The short version (more in our guide to Belgium's planned time registration):
- An objective, reliable and accessible system. That's how Securex puts it, adding that this does "not necessarily mean time clock systems but rather a way to measure working time".
- Actual hours, not schedules. According to SD Worx, the working time actually performed has to be recorded.
- Retention. SD Worx reports that the data will have to be kept for five years.
All of this as reported, pending the final text. Details may still change.
Where MSPs get caught out
For an office with fixed hours, working time is easy. For an MSP, not so much. Four pressure points:
On-call and after-hours work
An alert at 23:00, a server that needs a restart in the middle of the night. Does that work show up anywhere as working time, or only as ticket minutes? Agree with your social secretariat how you'll record on-call duty and call-outs.
On-site work and travel
Technicians who drive from customer to customer don't start their day at your office door, so a wall-mounted time clock doesn't help much. How travel time counts will depend on the final rules and your sector: check with your social secretariat.
Remote and hybrid staff
SD Worx's list of possible exceptions includes teleworkers and travelling staff, alongside managerial and positions of trust, family businesses, sales representatives and homeworkers. That list is not final. Don't assume your remote staff will be out of scope.
Retainers where nobody logs non-billable time
On a fixed monthly fee, technicians often log nothing, or only what they "have to". Then you have neither billable time nor working time. It's also where your margin leaks.
One system for both: what to look for
A vendor-neutral checklist, whatever tool you pick:
- Day-level clocking and time on tickets in the same system, so you see both side by side.
- Breaks recorded separately.
- Approval of weekly timesheets by a team lead.
- Audit trail: every change stays visible, with who, when and the old value.
- Export to payroll or your social secretariat, and one you can show during an inspection.
- UI in your team's languages: Dutch and French matter in a Belgian team.
- Works on the road: clocking from a browser or phone, not only at an office terminal.
How Xcellerate OPS covers this
Xcellerate OPS keeps billable time and working time in one system. What you can use today (see the time & billing page):
- Start/end-of-day clocking: employees clock in and out with one click.
- Break registration: breaks are logged separately.
- Immutable audit trail: registered times can't be changed silently and every change is kept.
- Payroll export: registered hours go to payroll without retyping.
- Live timer and quick entry on tickets and project tasks, billable or not.
- Weekly timesheets with submission and approval, plus absence and attendance.
- Rate cards by person, team or client, so approved time flows to the invoice.
- Clockify import by CSV if you're still on another tool.
The timesheets team grid: total and billable time per technician, per day.
In settings you decide how strict it is: lock entries on or before a date, invoice approved time only, required fields (description, ticket or project task, work type) and who approves what.
Time settings: locking, approvals and required fields.
Xcellerate OPS helps you meet the planned requirements; it doesn't replace legal advice. The step-by-step setup is in Set up working-time registration in Xcellerate OPS.
A 4-week plan, well before 1 January 2027
Week 1: map it. Take one week of ticket data and compare it with your team's actual working days. How many hours are invisible? Who works on the road, from home or on call?
Week 2: set up clocking. Turn on clock-in/clock-out and breaks. Agree the rule for on-call and travel with your social secretariat.
Week 3: pilot with a small team. Have two or three technicians clock and log ticket time for a week. Approve the timesheets and check the numbers add up.
Week 4: connect payroll. Test the export with your social secretariat and ask whether your work regulations (arbeidsreglement / règlement de travail) need updating. Then roll out to everyone.
Ready to try it?
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More on OPS for your service desk and projects.
Sources: Deloitte Belgium (22 September 2026, Dutch); Securex (EN); SD Worx (Dutch).
