Geofence Management

Purpose

A geofence is a boundary around a work site. When a geofence is enabled and enforced, employees can clock in and out from the UZIO Mobile App only while their phone's GPS places them inside the boundary. This stops off-site punches and improves the accuracy of time capture for field, retail, and multi-site teams.

Geofencing applies to mobile-app punches only. Web, kiosk, manual, imported, and API entries are never geofence-checked. Punches made in the app while offline are not checked when they sync. See Enabling Offline Time Tracking on Mobile.

When to use this: when employees punch from their own phones and you need evidence they were on site. If your employees punch on a kiosk at the site, you do not need a geofence.

Who can do this: users with permission to manage Time Tracking settings (typically the Employer Admin). Users without that permission can open the geofence dialog but cannot change the address, radius, or save.

Prerequisites

• Work locations exist with correct addresses.
• Mobile is enabled as a time clock (Controlling How Employees Clock In and Out).
• Employees have the UZIO Mobile App installed with Location permission granted to it.

Steps: Configure a geofence

1. Open Time Tracking Settings and go to the Geofence tab.
2. Find the work location, open its Actions menu, and choose Edit. A dialog opens with the address pre-filled and a map pin on it.

[Screenshot: Geofence edit dialog with map, radius slider, and address fields; use demo data]

Work Location, Zip, County, and State are read-only; they come from the work location record. The Address lines and City are editable by users with the Time Tracking manage permission.

1. Check Enable Geofence. It is off by default for every work location.
2. If the map pin is not exactly on your site, reposition it before setting the radius. The boundary is anchored to the pin.
3. Set the radius with the slider: 30 to 1,000 meters.
4. Save. Existing time entries are unaffected.

Steps: Enforce the boundary

Defining the fence does not block anything by itself. Enforcement is set on the Time Clocks tab:

1. Open Time Tracking Settings > Time Clocks.
2. Under Mobile, check Restrict employees from clocking in outside the geofence and/or Restrict employees from clocking out outside the geofence.
3. Save.

Without the restrictions, out-of-boundary mobile punches are allowed. They are recorded with their GPS coordinates and flagged for review. With the restrictions, they are blocked.

The screen notes: "Only mobile clock-ins and clock-outs are subject to geofencing." Punches made on the web or at a kiosk are not checked against the fence.

Expected outcome

• Employees inside the boundary punch normally. Outside it, punches are blocked or flagged according to your settings.
• Each mobile entry records its clock-in and clock-out coordinates and whether they were inside the fence. You can see this on the time entry, and the Time Entries report carries a Geofence column and a Source column. See Time Tracking Reports.

Common problems

Does the geofence clock people out when they leave the site?

No. The geofence gates (or flags) punches only at the moment they happen. There is no exit-triggered clock-out. An employee who drives off still clocked in stays clocked in until they punch out or the entry is flagged as a missing clock-out. Fix open entries on the Employees Timesheet, and use the missing clock-out flag and long-running reminders in Time Clocks settings to catch them automatically.

An employee standing at the site says they're blocked from clocking in

Two different messages, two different fixes:

• "You cannot clock in outside the approved location boundary for your workplace." (a clock-out variant exists). The phone's GPS position landed outside the fence. The usual causes are a radius too tight for the site (GPS drifts indoors and in parking structures) or a pin that is not on the right building. Widen the radius or reposition the pin, and have the employee retry.
• "You cannot clock in because your device's location permission is disabled." (clock-out and break variants exist). UZIO cannot check the fence because the device's Location permission for the UZIO app is off. The employee enables Location for the UZIO app in their phone's settings and retries. No admin setting is involved. If the phone still won't share its location, the employee can clock in another way your company allows, on the web or at a kiosk, until the phone is fixed.

Employees are blocked by the geofence and need to clock in today. Is there a workaround?

There is no automatic fix, and geofence can't be switched off for individual employees. The fence is set per work location, and the restriction is one company-wide setting. Try these in order:

1. Fix the cause first. Check that the map pin sits on the right building, then widen the radius on the Geofence tab. If the message says location permission is disabled, the employee turns on Location for the UZIO app.
2. Let affected employees clock in another way. Web and kiosk punches are not geofence-checked, so they can clock in on the web or at a kiosk (with their kiosk PIN) if your company allows those time clocks.
3. As a temporary stop-gap, turn off the restriction. On Time Clocks, untick Restrict employees from clocking in outside the geofence (and the clock-out option if needed), then save.
• This applies to everyone in your company, not just the affected employees.
• Punches outside the fence are then allowed, but still recorded with their location and flagged for review.
4. Turn the restriction back on once the cause is fixed.

Correct any missed punches on the employee's timesheet. See Reviewing and Correcting Your Team's Timesheets.

What happens to punches if I edit or disable a fence mid-shift?

Saving a fence change does not alter existing time entries. How an in-progress punch cycle behaves against a changed fence has not been confirmed. If this matters for a live rollout, change fences outside working hours, or test with one employee first.

Still stuck?

If punches are still blocked for an employee who is on site with Location enabled and a generous radius, please reach out to us at support@uzio.com or call +1-571-601-1752. Give UZIO Support the work location name, the radius you set, the employee's name or ID, the approximate time of the failed punch, and the exact message shown on the phone.

Related articles

• Controlling How Employees Clock In and Out — the enforcement checkboxes
• Time Tracking Reports — the Geofence and Source columns
• Employee Setup and Rule Assignment
• Clocking In and Out (Web and Mobile)