Attendance and time
Geofencing: the radius that decides where a punch counts
Geofencing is drawing a circle of a chosen radius around a work location and accepting an attendance punch only when the employee's phone reports a position inside that circle. The employer sets the centre and the width once per office. A check-in from outside is refused, so the day is recorded only when the person is standing at the place they were assigned to.
Last reviewed: September 2026
Also called: geofence, geo-fencing, geofenced attendance, geo fencing
In plain English
You draw a circle around your workplace on a map. Staff can mark attendance only while they are inside that circle, not from home and not on the way in.
How it works in detail
A geofence is set once, while the business is being configured. Someone picks the office on a map and chooses how wide the circle is. The right width follows the building: a single counter needs a tight circle, a factory yard with the gate at one end and the shed at the other needs a wider one. Set it too tight and staff standing at the gate are refused. Set it too wide and a punch from the tea stall across the road passes.
Each employee is measured against the one office they are assigned to. Somebody sent to another branch for the day finds the check-in refused there, and an admin records the day instead. Phone location also behaves differently in a basement or deep inside a shed, so expect a few days a month to need a correction.
A worked example
The setup
Say Kavitha runs a counter at an outlet on INR 21,000 a month against 25 payable days in September. Two of those days she covered the head office.
The calculation
Her geofence recorded 23 check-ins. INR 21,000 / 25 = INR 840.00 per payable day. 23 days x INR 840.00 = INR 19,320.00, which sits INR 1,680.00 below her salary until the two head-office days are entered.The result
An admin records both days and the month pays the full INR 21,000. Her attendance shows 25 days, two of them marked as corrections rather than punches.
Common mistakes
- Setting the radius to the smallest circle that covers the building. Staff waiting at a gate just outside the line are refused, and each of those days lands on an admin to correct.
- Assuming a wide radius costs nothing. A circle that reaches the next street accepts a punch from someone who has not walked in yet, which is the behaviour the geofence was set up to stop.
- Telling staff nothing about where the circle sits. People who do not know the boundary blame the app, when walking twenty steps further in would have registered the day.
How VTClock handles it
VTClock accepts check-in and check-out only near the employee's assigned office and blocks off-site punches. Every check-in reaches the admin desk with a location pin, and admins can correct days.
Frequently asked questions
How wide should the radius around my office be?
Wide enough to cover every spot a working employee actually stands in, and no wider. Walk the site first: the gate, the parking, the far end of the shed, the back entrance staff really use. Set the circle to cover those points, then check the first week of punches and adjust once. A circle that reaches a neighbouring building is doing the opposite of its job.
What happens when an employee is sent to a branch they are not assigned to?
The punch is measured against the office that person is assigned to, so a check-in at a different branch will not be accepted. The day is not lost. An admin records it against the employee, and the month counts it like any other worked day. If someone covers other branches often, note it in writing so the corrections have a reason attached to them.
Does a geofence work reliably inside a basement or a large covered shed?
Phone location is weaker where the sky is blocked, so punches from a basement, a lift lobby or the middle of a covered shed can be refused when the person is genuinely there. Plan for it. Pick a check-in point near an opening, tell staff where it is, and let a supervisor flag the days that still fail so an admin can enter them.
Does a geofence remove the need for a written attendance rule?
No. The circle decides where a punch is accepted and nothing else. Shift timings, the grace window, what a late mark costs, how a missed punch is reported and who is allowed to correct a day are all policy your business writes down. Staff accept a refused punch far more easily when the rule behind it was explained before the app was switched on.
Related terms
- GPS attendanceGPS attendance is marking a working day from a phone, where the app reads the device's satellite position at the instant of the punch and stores it alongside the check-in time.
- Biometric attendanceBiometric attendance is recording a shift by reading a physical trait, usually a fingerprint, a face or an iris, on a device fixed at the entrance.
- Shift grace periodA shift grace period is a fixed window after the shift start time in which a check-in is still treated as on time.
- Late markA late mark is the entry an employer records when an employee checks in after the shift start time and after whatever grace minutes the policy allows.
- Attendance registerAn attendance register is the day-by-day record of who was present, absent, late or on leave across a wage period.
- Payable daysPayable days are the number of days a monthly salary is spread across, and the number of days in a given month the employee is actually paid for.
Modules that touch this
See how VTClock handles geofencing
Tell us how your team is paid and where attendance is recorded today. We will show you what the module does with it.