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Attendance · Glossary

Geofencing Attendance

Also called: geo-fenced attendance, geofence attendance, location-restricted attendance

Definition

Geofencing attendance is a rule applied at punch time that accepts an employee's check-in or check-out only if the phone's GPS location falls inside a virtual boundary drawn around the workplace. The boundary, or geofence, is usually a circle of 50–200 metres around a site's coordinates. Punches from outside are rejected or flagged for supervisor review.

How the rule works at punch time

Each site in the system has a geofence: a centre point and a radius, or a polygon for irregular plots. When an employee punches, the app takes a GPS fix and computes the distance from the site centre. Inside the radius, the punch is accepted normally. Outside, the system either blocks the punch, accepts it with an 'outside geofence' flag, or asks for a reason – which of the three depends on your policy.

A useful refinement is to compare the GPS accuracy radius as well: a fix 60 m from the centre with 50 m accuracy is genuinely ambiguous, while a fix 2 km away with 10 m accuracy is not. Flagging rather than blocking the ambiguous case avoids punishing honest guards for bad signal. The GPS attendance entry covers accuracy ranges.

Choosing the radius and handling multiple sites

A 50 m radius suits a small shop or office entrance with clear sky. A 100–150 m radius is the practical default for housing societies, warehouses and hospital compounds where the guard may punch from a rear gate or under a canopy. Large factories, campuses and construction sites may need 200–300 m or a polygon that follows the boundary wall. Start slightly generous, look at where honest punches actually land in the first two weeks, then tighten.

Multi-site companies need a geofence per site and an assignment that says which employees may punch at which sites. A guard rostered at Site A should not be accepted at Site B without the roster changing – that is how proxy attendance hides in multi-site agencies. The multi-site attendance guide walks through the setup.

  • Shop or office: 50–75 m
  • Society, warehouse, hospital: 100–150 m
  • Factory, campus, large construction plot: 200–300 m or polygon
  • Review actual punch scatter after two weeks and adjust per site

Exceptions and common mistakes

Legitimate exceptions exist: a supervisor visiting several sites, a guard escorting a cash van, an engineer called to a client not yet in the system. Handle them with an 'outdoor duty' or regularization request with approval, not by widening every fence to a kilometre. Keep the exception count visible in a report; a site with 40% out-of-fence punches has a fence problem or a fraud problem.

Two mistakes recur. First, geofencing alone without identity: it proves a phone was on site, not that the rostered person was. Pair it with selfie or face verification. Second, ignoring GPS spoofing: a mock-location app can put a phone inside any fence, so the system must read the mock flag.

Example: a warehouse with two gates

A logistics warehouse in Bhiwandi is 220 m long. The original geofence was a 75 m circle at the main gate; guards at the rear dock gate 190 m away failed 30% of punches. The admin changed it to a 150 m circle centred mid-plot, and out-of-fence punches fell to 2%, all of which turned out to be a guard punching from the tea stall across the road.

How Attend Mitra handles this

Attend Mitra supports multiple geofences per company with a configurable radius per site, applies the geofence check at punch time alongside face or selfie verification, flags mock-location on Android, and lets admins see punch locations on the live monitor and in per-site reports.

Frequently asked questions

What is geofencing attendance?
It is an attendance rule that accepts a mobile punch only when the phone's GPS location is inside a virtual boundary drawn around the workplace. The boundary is set per site as a circle or polygon. Punches from outside are rejected or flagged, so employees cannot mark attendance from home or a nearby location.
What radius should a geofence have?
Between 50 and 300 metres depending on the site. Small offices work at 50–75 m, societies and warehouses at 100–150 m, factories and campuses at 200–300 m or a polygon. GPS accuracy of 10–50 m means very tight fences reject honest punches, so review actual punch locations before tightening.
What happens if an employee has a genuine reason to punch outside the geofence?
Use an outdoor-duty or regularization request that a manager approves, with the reason recorded. This keeps the fence tight for everyone else while giving supervisors, escorts and field visits a clean path. Monitor the exception rate per site to spot fences that are set wrong.
Does geofencing stop proxy attendance on its own?
No. It confirms a phone was on site, not who held it. Combine it with face or selfie verification for identity and with mock-location detection for GPS fraud. The three together give a punch that is at the right place, by the right person, on a real location fix.

Related terms

Geofence
A geofence is a virtual boundary defined on a map – most often a circle described by a centre coordinate and a radius in metres, sometimes a polygon drawn along a plot boundary – that software uses to decide whether a GPS position is inside or outside a place. In attendance systems, each work site has a geofence and punches are tested against it.
GPS Attendance
GPS attendance is a mobile attendance method that records the phone's satellite location coordinates at the moment an employee punches in or out, so the employer knows not only when but where the punch was made. It is usually paired with a geofence rule that accepts the punch only inside a defined area, and with selfie or face verification to prove who punched.
GPS Spoofing / Mock Location
GPS spoofing, or mock location, is the practice of making a phone report a false position so that a GPS or geofenced attendance punch appears to come from the work site when the employee is somewhere else. It is usually done with a free 'fake GPS' app and Android's developer-options mock-location setting, and it is the main fraud risk in mobile attendance for field and security staff.
Selfie Attendance
Selfie attendance is a mobile attendance method in which the employee takes a photo of themselves in the app at punch time. The app verifies the face against the enrolled profile, stamps the punch with GPS coordinates and time, and stores the image or its descriptor as evidence. It is the standard method for security guards, field sales and other staff who work away from a fixed device.
Proxy Attendance
Proxy attendance is the Indian workplace term for attendance recorded for a person who was not actually present – a colleague punching for them, a supervisor marking absent workers present in the register, or a contractor listing 'ghost' workers who exist only on the muster roll. It covers buddy punching and goes further, into supervisor and contractor-level fraud that affects wages, PF, ESI and client billing.
Attendance Regularization
Attendance regularization is the formal process by which an employee requests a correction to their attendance record – a missed punch, a wrong status, outdoor duty not captured by the system – and a manager approves or rejects it before the record is locked for payroll. Every change is logged with who requested it, who approved it and why, so the final attendance is auditable.

Go deeper

Geofencing attendance featureMulti-location attendance softwareHow multi-site businesses centralize attendanceGPS attendance best practices

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