How a 55-Person German Logistics Company Reduced Overtime Disputes by 91%

Business: Logistics and freight company, Frankfurt, Germany (European Union). 55 employees across two depot locations, including drivers, warehouse staff and administrative team. Operations run 6 days per week with rotating shift patterns. The problem: Attendance across both depots was tracked by shift supervisors who sent daily updates to the operations manager via a group chat. Overtime was calculated manually at the end of each month by the payroll administrator, using supervisor-reported figures that were often inconsistent between depots. The company experienced an average of 8 to 10 overtime disputes per month, with employees challenging the payroll team's figures against their own informal records. German labor law requires accurate overtime documentation and the manual process created audit exposure that the operations director wanted to eliminate before a growth phase. The solution: Certiva Workforce Control configured for shift-based operations with multi-depot visibility. Employees clock in and out via mobile app with location verification. Shift supervisors see live attendance status for their depot. The operations manager has a consolidated view across both depots from a single dashboard. Overtime is calculated automatically based on recorded clock-in and clock-out data against shift rules configured for each role type. Exceptions are routed to the relevant supervisor for review and resolution before the pay period closes. The results: Overtime disputes dropped from an average of 9 per month to fewer than 1, an 91 percent reduction, in the first quarter after deployment. The payroll administrator reports that the monthly payroll preparation process dropped from 6 hours to under 2 hours because overtime figures are now pulled directly from the system rather than assembled from supervisor reports. The operations director cites the audit readiness as the secondary value: every shift record is timestamped, uneditable and retrievable within 30 seconds. The company completed a wage inspection in the second month of deployment and produced the complete documentation package in under 15 minutes. Key takeaway: Overtime disputes are almost always a data problem, not a judgment problem. When the record is accurate and unambiguous from clock-in onwards, the disputes stop because there is nothing to dispute. Book a demo to see how Certiva handles multi-location shift attendance with automatic overtime calculation for your team structure. Related reading: What is day-to-day visibility and why growing businesses lose it covers the information gap that creates this kind of problem. Certiva vs. QuickBooks Time covers the most common alternative for EU logistics teams evaluating time tracking.