How to set up geo-fenced attendance

How a geo-fence works

A geo-fence is a point on the map, usually the building entrance, with a radius around it. When an employee punches from a phone, the app reads the phone's location and checks whether it falls inside the radius. Phone location is an estimate. Outdoors with open sky it tends to be close; inside a concrete building, in a basement or among tall towers it can drift a long way. That drift, more often than dishonesty, explains rejected punches in the first weeks, so plan the radius and the fallback around it.

Choosing the radius for each site

Set the radius per site, not one number for the whole company. A standalone store or clinic might need 100 to 150 metres to cover the building and its parking. A factory campus or hospital needs to cover every gate the staff use, which can mean several spots rather than one large circle. Test at each site before rollout: stand at the farthest point where staff legitimately punch, such as the back store room or the loading bay, and check the reading. Widen the radius only as far as needed, and never so far that it takes in homes or shops nearby.

Who should be geo-fenced, and who should not

Geo-fencing fits staff who work at one known place: store staff, branch staff, nurses, plant and warehouse workers. It fits badly for field staff who start at client sites, who are better handled with a location-stamped punch and on duty requests. Staff who move between two or three sites in a week, such as an area manager or a visiting consultant doctor, need each of those sites set up as an allowed spot. Office staff on computers can be restricted to the office network instead, which avoids location readings altogether.

Fair rules and fallbacks

Tell employees in writing that location is checked only at the moment of punching, what happens when a punch is refused, and how to correct it. The usual fallback is a correction request approved by the manager the same day. Add phone binding, so each employee punches from their own registered phone, which stops one person punching for a colleague from the same spot. No location check is foolproof, so supervisors still matter: a store manager who knows who opened the shutter at 10 am is a check no app can replace.

Step by step

1. List every site and its entrances. Write down each location where staff punch, with the gates or doors they use. Note basements, upper floors and loading bays where staff might punch.
2. Mark each site on the map. Stand at the main entrance, read the latitude and longitude from a map app and record them. Take a second reading on another day to confirm the point.
3. Set a radius per site. Start with enough radius to cover the building and parking, test from the farthest legitimate punch point and adjust. Record the reason for any unusually large radius.
4. Create the spots in your attendance system. In ZeniaHR, capture controls let HR set check-in spots and a location rule for mobile punches, and optionally require browser location inside a spot for web punches.
5. Bind each employee to one phone. Register each person's own phone for punching. In ZeniaHR, phone binding approves the first phone automatically, while a later phone needs HR approval.
6. Pilot at one site for two weeks. Watch rejected punches daily, find out whether they came from drift or from people outside the site, and fix the radius or spot before wider rollout.
7. Roll out with a written fallback. Publish the rule, the correction process and whom to call when a punch is refused. Review rejected punches by site every month.

Frequently asked questions