What is Geofencing?

Definition

Geofencing draws a virtual boundary around a work location and allows attendance to be marked only from inside it, using the location reported by the employee phone.

How it works

A geofence answers a different question from a biometric device: was this person where they were supposed to be. Its accuracy depends on the phone location signal, which degrades indoors, in basements and in dense urban areas, so a usable implementation needs a sensible radius and a way for a supervisor to correct a genuine failure.

What it means in India

Geofenced attendance became common in Indian small business because it needs no hardware at the site, which suits employers with several small locations or staff who move between them. Pairing the location with a selfie at check-in is the usual way to raise the cost of cheating, since a location alone cannot tell you whose hand held the phone.

What people get wrong

• Setting the radius so tight that genuine check-ins fail, which trains staff and supervisors to treat overrides as routine.
• Relying on location alone with no identity signal.
• Having no offline path, so a basement or a dead zone becomes an absence.

Terms this one depends on

More on attendance and shifts

Where this shows up in practice

Almost everything on this page ends up as a line on a payslip or a figure in a register. Shiftelio keeps attendance, leave, salary structure and the statutory deductions in one place, so the number in the letter and the number in the payslip come from the same record.