Driving between two job sites: paid time, or not?

A tradesman leaves home in the morning for a first job site, then drives to a second one at midday, twenty minutes away. On the timesheet, only the hours spent on site get logged. The short answer: the morning drive is usually not working time, but the drive between the two sites almost always is, and it counts toward overtime. The rest explains why the line is drawn on very concrete details, and how to hold it without thinking about it every month.

Three trips, three rules#

French labour law does not treat every trip the same way. Article L3121-1 of the Labor Code defines working time as the period during which the employee is at the employer's disposal and follows instructions, unable to attend to personal matters freely. From that one sentence, three situations follow.

The first case stands apart: as long as a tradesman drives straight from home to the site, he stays in charge of his own trip, however long it is. Article L3121-4 of the Labor Code only requires a make-up, in rest or in money, when that trip clearly exceeds the usual commute between home and the regular place of work. The other two cases flip the switch: the moment a tradesman is sent on a required trip, during the day or through the company's premises, he is at the employer's disposal, and that time is paid as work.

What it changes in the hours#

The difference never shows up on an ordinary timesheet, which only logs arrival and departure from the site. Take a plumbing business of twelve people, where four tradesmen drive between two job sites three days a week, with about twenty minutes of uncounted driving at each change.

• 4 tradesmen × 20 minutes × 3 days a week: a little over 4 hours of driving a week, across the team.
• Over 46 working weeks, that comes to roughly 180 hours a year.
• At €28 an hour loaded cost, this hypothesis puts more than €5,000 a year of working time left off the books.

That figure leaves out the overtime premium: part of these hours, added to an already full 35-hour week, becomes overtime, paid or compensated with rest at a higher rate. Article L3121-27 sets the legal working week at 35 hours, and article L3121-28 states that any hour worked beyond it carries that premium. A trip nobody logged is not a trip that never happened: it is still owed, and claims for it can go back three years, the statute of limitations on wage claims.

When nobody tracks it, the company has to prove it#

Many employers assume that having no record works in their favour. It is the opposite. Article L3171-2 of the Labor Code requires the employer to keep the records needed to count working time as soon as employees do not follow the same collective schedule, which is the case the moment two teams are on different job sites. And in a dispute, article L3171-4 goes further: it is the employer who must give the judge evidence of the hours actually worked, not the employee who has to prove everything alone.

In practice, a tradesman who produces his schedules, the messages telling him to change job site, and his fuel receipts puts the company in a weak position if it has nothing to set against them. A judge does not rule on an abstract principle: he compares what each side brings. A company with nothing to show starts at a disadvantage, even when it is right on the substance.

What changes with an application built for the business#

An application built for the business ties every clock-in to the job site where it happens, not just to an arrival and a departure time. The tradesman clocks out from his phone when leaving one site and clocks in on arriving at the next: the trip is time-stamped, tied to both jobs, and sorted by the rules you wrote once (mandatory stop at the depot or not, direct trip from home).

At the end of the pay period, these hours flow into the export that feeds your payroll software or your accountant, in its format, with the premium already applied. Nobody reconstructs the week's trips from memory, and if a claim comes up, the record already exists and carries a date.

What not to do#

Skipping a written rule because a case seems rare is the most common mistake. Waiting for an employee to raise a claim before sorting it out costs more than telling, once, which trips pass through the depot from those that do not. On the other hand, paying every trip as working time out of caution gives up a distinction the law allows, and that stays legitimate when a tradesman drives straight from home.

Travel between job sites: the key takeaways#

A direct trip from home to the job site is usually not working time, unless it clearly exceeds the usual commute. A mandatory stop at the depot, and a trip from one job site to another during the day, almost always are, and count toward overtime.

The rule fits in one sentence, but it only holds if someone logs, for each tradesman, which job site he is on and the moment he changes. It is a simple habit, logged at the right moment rather than rebuilt on Friday evening, with a record that holds up the day someone disputes it. That is what clock-ins tied to the right job site do.