A geofencing time clock draws a virtual circle around your job site. Employees can only clock in when their phone is inside that circle — so no more punching in from the car or from home.
How geofencing clock-in works
You set the location’s coordinates and a radius (say, 150 meters). When an employee taps clock-in, the app checks their GPS against the geofence. Inside the fence, the punch goes through; outside, it’s blocked or flagged for a manager. It’s the simplest way to guarantee people are actually at work when they punch.
When a geofence is worth it
- Field and multi-site teams who work away from a fixed clock.
- Businesses with early clock-ins — stop the parking-lot punch.
- Cleaning, security, home care, construction — verify staff reached the right site.
ClockAll supports per-location geofences with a warn-or-block mode, records the punch location for the manager to review, and only checks GPS at punch time (never continuous tracking) — so it’s privacy-respectful and easy to disclose.
How big should the radius be?
Too tight and honest people get refused in a doorway; too loose and the geofence stops meaning anything. Phone GPS is typically accurate to somewhere between five and twenty metres outdoors, and worse indoors, near tall buildings, or under a metal roof — which is exactly where a lot of shifts happen.
- A single shop or restaurant: a radius that covers the building and its doorway, not the car park across the road
- A site with parking: include the parking, or people will be refused while walking in
- Warehouses and metal-roofed buildings: go wider — indoor GPS drifts badly, and a refused punch at 6am is a phone call you have to take
- Field and mobile work: a geofence per job site, not one giant circle covering the city
The default here is about 320 metres (roughly a thousand feet), which is deliberately forgiving. A geofence is there to catch someone clocking in from home, not to police which end of the building they are standing in.
Decide what happens when someone is outside it
This is the setting that matters more than the radius, and the two sensible answers are different products:
- Flag it. The punch goes through and a manager sees it on the exceptions list. Nobody is stuck outside, and a pattern is still visible.
- Block it. The punch is refused. Stronger, and it will eventually refuse somebody standing in the right place with a bad GPS fix.
Flagging is the better default for most teams. Blocking suits a single fixed site where everyone punches at the same door and there is a manager on hand when it goes wrong.
What it does not solve
A geofence proves a phone was near the site. It does not prove whose phone it was, so on its own it does not stop one person clocking in a friend who is genuinely in the car park. That is what the face check is for, and the two are meant to be used together: location answers where, the face check answers who.
Does a geofence track employees all day?
This is the question staff ask first, and the answer matters for trust: a well-built geofence checks location only at the moment someone punches in or out — not continuously in the background. It confirms the punch happened at the right site, then stops looking. ClockAll works exactly this way, records just the punch location for a manager to review, and offers a warn-or-block mode so you can start gentle. Being able to tell your team “we only check where you are when you clock in” is what makes geofencing something people accept rather than resent.
Related reading
Frequently asked questions
Does a geofence track employees all day?
No — a good geofencing time clock only checks location at the moment of a punch, not continuously. That keeps it privacy-friendly and simple to disclose in your policy.
What if GPS is off or inaccurate?
You can set the geofence to “warn” (allow but flag) instead of “block,” so a bad GPS reading doesn’t strand an on-site employee. Managers see the flagged punch and can approve it.