Registering travel time as utilization

We got instructed at work, that we have to register all our travel time to and from customers in our internal system. This needs to be done, so that the management can run utilization reports on these hours together with the actual hours at the customer present.

For example, I drive 3 hours to a customer, work there for 8 hours and drive 3 hours back. This means according to the system my utilization would be 14 hours (= 175% utilization). As a result, my boss will tell his management how well he utilized his people because it's so much over 100%

I think that's not really fair, since we don't get paid for travel time. So they basically include the non-working time into the utilization time. It all looks great on the utilization figures, but it doesn't say that I am doing so much overtime for nothing... or am I missing something?

If you drive yourself to the customer, then the travel time counts as "work" time.

If you catch a train or fly, then the travel time counts as your own personal time (like if you were on a lunch break).

German work law says that as long as you are actively participating in the travel, ie driving or map reading as a passenger, then the travel to and from a customer counts as work.

Is it correct that you're simply being asked to record utilization time? This sounds like a project management/productivity issue and not a payroll/actual contracted working hours thing.

Presumably, nothing has changed from your perspective. E.g. you still worked in the same manner before the management request, only until then, it never went into your IT systems? (You're still getting the same salary, and you're still doing the same work + hours + travel etc..?)

It seems that all that is being asked is "registering" travel time in the system. So why not record it? Unless of course that internal system is not a project management thing, but links with SAP/Sage/Payroll products, and then I would begin to wonder for what purpose the data is being collected.

Coming back to the travel time = work time, legally it depends on quite a few factors, and my best advice would be that if you do have serious doubts, seek legal advice: I listed below some factors I think may be important:

Whether you're employed as:
- Beamte (e.g. some )
- or normal Angestellte/Arbeitnehmer

As well as:
- What's in your contract (specifically with regards to working hours, or core working hours, payment, usual base/station of employment) as well as appendices/amendments to the contract
- What is Tarifvertrag / Ausser Tarifvertrag
- What may/may not be other additional blanket agreements (if your company has an active Betriebsrat/Workers council.)

Contractually speaking:
If you're fortunate enough to have "Vertrauensarbeitszeit", then usually travel time can be considered as working time too (you can perform work on a train with a laptop etc..), and you then balance out your over hours resulting from excessive travel. Just don't expect to claim overtime payments.

If you don't have that flexitime, the least you can pursue is a "balancing out of hours" where it can be proved there is some contractual obligation + discrepancy. Generally speaking though, I've never seen/heard of travel time specifically being financially compensated. Depending on the line of work, travel time may be a given anyway. There is also the "12 hour rest period" rule (applicable to expecially shift workers) which may come into play, but I'm not sure about that.

Travel expenses/Pauschalen are of course another matter...