Pin every site on a map, choose how far around it counts, and your team can only clock in and out when they are really there. The check runs on our servers rather than on the phone, so it cannot be talked round. It sits on top of the ordinary clock in app — same one tap to start a shift, same automatic timesheet at the end of it.
“The app is simple to use, reliable, and makes managing holidays, absences, and staff records straightforward. The system has saved us a significant amount of administration time.”
Jordan Ingoe, CLI ManchesterThree decisions per site, and you are done. There is no hardware to fit, no beacon to install and nothing for your team to learn — the clock in button behaves exactly as it did before.
Pin the site
Search an address or postcode, or drop the pin where you are standing. Name it something your team will recognise — Head Office, Riverside Depot
Choose the radius
Anywhere from 25 metres to 5 kilometres, and 100 metres to start with. Phone GPS lands within 10–50m, so a tighter ring risks refusing people who really are there
Let the server decide
The app shows the distance before anyone presses the button, but the decision is made on our servers using the position sent with the event — not on the handset
A geofence is only useful if it is honest about its own limits. Here is exactly what TimeTally checks, what it refuses, and what it deliberately leaves alone.
Each work location is a point on the map plus a radius. Inside it, clocking in behaves normally. Outside it, the site's own rule decides what happens next.
Somebody standing well inside a large depot is on site even when a different site's centre happens to be nearer. TimeTally judges by which area actually contains them, not by which pin is closest — the alternative refuses people who are demonstrably at work.
Block them and nobody clocks in or out until they are on site. Allow, but flag it and they clock in as normal while you see it happened away from site.
It is set per location, not per company, so the fixed office can be strict while the site with the notorious signal black spot is lenient.
A lenient clock-in still records how far away they were, and still says so to their manager. Nothing is lost by being generous.
Too far from site tells them how far, and from which site. That one is solved by travelling.
No usable location means the phone gave us nothing to check. That one is solved by sharing it.
A fix too vague to trust means the phone offered a position it could only place to within a few hundred metres. That one is solved by stepping outside, not by walking to work — which is why we keep it separate from the first.
A location is read when someone clocks in and when they clock out. That is the entire list. Breaks and shift start and end are recorded but never location-checked, and nothing reads a position while a shift is running.
Nor does it stop buddy punching. A geofence knows where a phone was, not who was holding it, so a colleague on site can still clock a friend in. What it stops is clocking in from home, from the car, or from anywhere that is not work — which is the problem most businesses actually have.
If the worry is the number rather than the place, tamper-proof timesheets stop hours being typed in afterwards. Most teams that turn one on turn on both.
The things worth knowing before you switch it on, rather than after.
Location checks only apply when everyone in the organisation records time by clocking in and out. Leave the manual hours form switched on as well and the geofence becomes decoration — whatever it turns away, the form quietly grants. TimeTally enforces that condition rather than letting you configure something that does nothing, and offers to make both changes together when you turn it on.
Turning the master switch on changes nothing by itself. An employee is only location-checked once they are assigned to a work location, or once they are working a shift at a Location that has a geofence. Everyone else clocks in exactly as before, and their phone is never asked for a position — so no permission prompt appears for people the feature does not apply to.
There is a per-person exemption for field staff, and for anyone whose phone cannot get a reliable location. It takes one switch and applies straight away, so a driver stuck outside a depot with no signal is unblocked in seconds rather than at the end of the week. Exempt people keep clocking in normally; they are simply not checked.
Put a shift at a Location with a geofence and that becomes the site they have to be at for that shift, whatever they are normally assigned to. A per-shift switch turns the requirement off again for site visits, deliveries, or a day somewhere the signal is known to be poor. And if you move a shift while someone is mid-way through it, their clock-out is still judged against where they clocked in — nobody gets stranded by an admin change.
Once the location check has passed, nothing downstream changes. The clock-in and clock-out become hours, the hours become a weekly timesheet, and the timesheet goes to a manager for approval and then to payroll. The geofence is a gate at the front, not a different product behind it.
Managers get a clocking history that opens on the exceptions — refused attempts and off-site clock-ins — rather than on a wall of normal days. On a quiet week there is nothing in it, which is the point.
Free for the whole of your trial, so you can test the radius on a real phone at a real site before you decide.
The £3 base price plus £1 for GPS clocking. Billed monthly, incl. VAT. Cancel anytime.
Not sure you need the location check? The standard clock in app is included in the £3 — see the full pricing page.
Geofencing earns its keep when work happens somewhere specific and nobody senior is standing there to see it start.
Cleaners move between client sites with nobody supervising the start of a shift. A geofence on each client address turns arrival into a record, which is also the evidence you invoice against.
Safe staffing evidence depends on knowing who was in the building, not just who said they were. Location-checked clock-ins give an inspection-ready record without anyone filling in a form.
Guarding is paid by presence at a named site, often overnight and often alone. Tying the clock-in to the site removes the argument about whether a shift was covered before it starts.
Engineers cover a portfolio of buildings and rarely two in the same order. Put the geofence on the shift rather than the person and each visit is checked against the building it was actually booked for.
Depot start times drive everything downstream, and a driver clocking in from the road costs you the whole schedule. A lenient depot geofence flags it without stopping the run.
Temporary staff are placed somewhere new most weeks and have no habit to fall back on. A geofence on the placement removes the guesswork about whether they turned up at the right address.
In short
A GPS clock in app checks where an employee is at the moment they clock in or out, and compares it with the work locations you have set up. In TimeTally you pin each site on a map and choose a radius from 25 metres to 5 kilometres; a clock-in from outside it is either blocked or allowed and flagged, per site. The decision is made on our servers, not the phone, a location is read only at clock-in and clock-out, and people can be exempted individually. It is a £1 per employee a month add-on to the £3 plan, free for the whole trial.
A GPS clock in app checks where an employee is when they clock in and out, and compares it against the sites you have set up. In TimeTally you pin each work location on a map and choose how far around it counts — anywhere from 25 metres to 5 kilometres. If someone tries to clock in outside that radius, the app either blocks them or lets them through and flags it for their manager, depending on how you set that site up.
No. TimeTally reads a location at two moments only: when someone clocks in and when they clock out. There is no background tracking, no route history, and no location taken while a shift is running. Breaks and shift start/end events are not location-checked at all. If nobody in your organisation is assigned to a work location, the app never asks the browser for a position in the first place, so no location permission prompt appears.
Phone GPS is typically accurate to somewhere between 10 and 50 metres, which is why the default radius is 100 metres. Anything under 50 metres risks blocking people who genuinely are on site. Each work location also has its own accuracy threshold, so if a phone can only place someone to within, say, 300 metres, TimeTally refuses to guess — it says the fix was too vague rather than pretending it knows.
The check that matters does not run on the phone. TimeTally's app shows a distance before you press the button so nobody is left guessing, but that reading is advisory and is discarded the moment the server answers. The decision itself is made by the database, using the position submitted with the clock event, and it is the database that refuses the record. A client-side check is worth exactly as much as the honesty of whoever opened developer tools, so we do not rely on one.
They are told which of three things went wrong, because the remedy is different for each. Too far from site means travel to site. No usable location means share it, or step outside. A location that is too imprecise to trust means try again in the open rather than travel anywhere. Managers can also exempt an individual from location checks entirely — that setting exists for field staff and for anyone whose phone cannot get a reliable fix.
No, and plenty of businesses do not. Each work location is set to one of two behaviours. Block them means they cannot clock in or out until they are on site. Allow, but flag it means they clock in normally and you see it happened away from site. The manager's clocking history opens on a Problems filter that shows exactly those two categories — refused attempts and off-site clock-ins — so a lenient site still gives you the evidence without stopping anyone working.
If you put a shift at a Location that has a geofence, that geofence is the one the employee has to be inside for that shift — even if they are normally assigned somewhere else, and even if they are assigned nowhere at all. There is also a per-shift escape hatch for a site visit, a delivery, or a day where the signal is known to be bad: the shift keeps its location but stops demanding anyone be inside it. And if a manager moves a shift while someone is already clocked in, their clock-out is still judged against where they actually clocked in.
Not on its own, and we would rather say so. A geofence answers where the phone was, not who was holding it — a colleague standing on site can still clock someone in. What it does stop is clocking in from home, from the car on the way, or from the pub down the road, which is the far more common problem. If your concern is the number itself rather than the place, strict clocking is the setting that stops hours being typed in after the fact, and the two work together.
GPS clocking is £1 per employee per month on top of the £3 base price, so £4 per employee per month in total. It is included free for the whole of your trial, so you can set up your sites, test the radius on a real phone, and decide before paying for it. Everything else on this page — the clock in app itself, timesheets, approvals and leave — is in the £3.
Still have a question? See all FAQs
GPS clocking is free for the whole of your trial. Set up a site, walk to the edge of it, and see for yourself.
The other half of the same problem. GPS says where they clocked in; strict clocking stops the hours being typed in afterwards. Free, and off by default.
Learn moreThe clocking system underneath all of this — one tap to start a shift, no fobs, no terminal on the wall, included in the base price.
Learn moreHow clocking in works on a phone specifically, including what happens when the signal drops mid-shift.
Learn moreThe full picture: hours, breaks, overtime and TOIL, and every setting that governs how strict any of it is.
Learn moreShifts that cross midnight, and how a geofence is resolved when the date on the shift is not the date on the clock.
Learn moreWhat the Working Time Regulations actually require you to keep, and how clock records satisfy it.
Learn moreA real person replies within 24 hours. No ticket queues, no bots.
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