A GPS time clock that knows where the punch happened.

A GPS time clock stamps every clock-in and clock-out with the employee’s location, answering the one question a plain time clock cannot: was the person actually at work when they punched? ClockOut records GPS coordinates and a street address on every punch and, on paid plans, refuses punches taken outside a work area you define. It runs from a web page, so nobody installs anything.

The problem with a plain time clock

A time that says 7:58 tells you nothing about where the person was at 7:58. They could have been on site, in the parking lot, or still at home. For a business with staff spread across job sites, client homes, or route stops, that gap is where padded hours and buddy punching live. You find out at payroll, or you never find out.

A GPS time clock closes the gap by attaching a location to the punch. ClockOut goes one step further: with geofencing on, a punch taken away from the work area is stopped at the moment it happens, not flagged three weeks later.

How does a GPS time clock work?

The employee opens the time clock in their phone browser, the punch is stamped with GPS coordinates and a resolved address, and geofencing checks they are on site before the punch counts. In detail:

1. 01

   Employee opens ClockOut in their phone browser

   No download required. They open the page, grant the browser location permission once, and tap clock in. Staff who prefer a store app can install ClockOut Time Clock by Ophy Labs from the App Store or Google Play instead. You can also run a shared tablet in kiosk mode for teams without personal phones.

2. 02

   The punch is stamped with location and address

   At clock-in and again at clock-out, ClockOut captures the GPS coordinates and resolves them to a street address, then stores them on the timesheet entry. This happens on every plan, including Free.

3. 03

   Geofencing checks the punch is on site

   On Starter and up, you draw a work area. If the employee is outside it (plus a 50 m buffer and the phone’s reported accuracy, up to 200 m more), clock-in is refused with a message telling them to get to the work site. Admins and anyone marked exempt skip the check entirely.

What the GPS time clock actually does

GPS-stamped punches on every plan

Clock-in and clock-out each record latitude, longitude, and a resolved address on the timesheet entry. Managers see where each punch happened and whether it was inside the work area. There is no live map and no movement trail, only the two punch locations. This is included on Free, so even a two-person team gets location on every timesheet.

Geofencing that blocks off-site punches

On Starter ($19 a month for up to 5 people, then $3 per extra person) and Pro, you define a work area and ClockOut enforces it at clock-in. A 50 m buffer, plus the GPS accuracy the phone reports (capped at 200 m), is added to the radius at clock-in, so an employee standing just past the property line still clocks in cleanly, while someone at home does not. Multi-location businesses on Pro can set a separate geofence per site, each with a radius between 10 m and 10,000 m, and a punch is accepted if the employee is inside any active location.

Optional auto clock-out when someone leaves

If you turn it on, ClockOut can clock a forgetful employee out after they leave the work area. The default leave distance is about 1 mile from the site, and leaving starts a grace period (5 minutes by default) with an in-app warning that asks if they are still working. If they return inside the area, the warning cancels and nothing happens. If the grace period runs out, they are clocked out automatically and any open break is closed.

Built to ignore bad GPS

Phone GPS is noisy, so ClockOut is deliberately cautious about clocking people out. Any reading with accuracy worse than 300 m is thrown away rather than acted on, and a flat 50 m buffer applies to the leave-distance check. The boundary check runs only about once a minute, and only while the employee is clocked in. Those readings are used to decide whether to warn or clock out, then discarded, not saved as a location history.

Employee GPS tracking without following people around

Searches for employee GPS tracking almost always come from one worry: was the person at the job site when the timesheet says they were? ClockOut answers that and stops there. It is a GPS clock in app, not a tracker. Location is read at the punch, saved on the timesheet entry as coordinates plus a resolved street address, and that is the whole record. There is no live map, no route between stops, and no location kept once someone clocks out.

What GPS employee tracking records here

• Two points per shift. The clock-in and clock-out coordinates with a resolved address, on every plan including Free.
• A pass or fail against the work area. With geofencing on (Starter and up), the clock-in is checked against the fence, and a clock-out that lands outside it stores how far off site it was, so a manager can see that on the timesheet.
• An optional boundary check while on the clock. Only if you turn on auto clock-out. It runs about once a minute, decides whether to warn or clock out, and the reading is then discarded rather than stored.
• An arrival check before a shift, web app only. With geofencing on, the web app checks a clocked-out employee’s position every 2 minutes, from about 15 minutes before to about an hour after a scheduled shift starts, and offers a Clock in prompt if they are at work. The reading is discarded, and the phone apps do not run this check.
• An audit-log entry. Punches, edits, and auto clock-outs are written to the company audit log, so the history behind a timesheet stays reviewable.

What it never records

• No breadcrumb trail or route history between punches.
• No location history after clock-out, on any plan. The web app’s arrival check, which looks for a clocked-out employee at work around a scheduled shift start, is compared and discarded.
• No background or always-on location. ClockOut asks for location only while the page or app is open.
• No face scans and no fingerprints, anywhere in the product.

Clock in by phone, with no employee location tracking app to install

Clock in by phone here means the phone already in the employee’s pocket, opened to a web page. There is no call-in number and nothing to download: they open ClockOut in the phone browser, allow location once, and tap clock in. Staff who prefer a store app can install ClockOut Time Clock by Ophy Labs from the App Store or Google Play instead, and the GPS time tracking behaves the same either way. Teams whose staff leave phones in a locker can run a shared tablet kiosk with PIN or QR badge clock-in instead.

Businesses running several sites can set a separate work area per site on Pro, so one GPS time clock for employees covers every address: see multi-location support. The exact numbers behind all of this are on product facts and location privacy, and the reasoning is in the case against continuous employee tracking.

What are the limits of GPS time tracking?

GPS is useful, not magic. Here is exactly what to expect so you can set the right policy for your team.

• Browser GPS accuracy varies. Downtown between tall buildings, deep inside a warehouse, or in a basement, a phone fix can be off by a wide margin. That is why ClockOut ignores readings worse than 300 m accuracy for auto clock-out, and at clock-in adds a 50 m buffer plus the reported accuracy (up to 200 m) rather than trusting a single tight reading.
• Offline punches queue and sync. If a phone has no signal at the moment of a punch, the clock-in or clock-out is saved on the device and syncs automatically with its original tap time once it reconnects. The app has to have been opened on that phone first, synced punches are flagged for admins, a punch that could not be checked against a geofence is recorded and flagged for review rather than blocked, punches older than 48 hours are rejected, and breaks are online only. For a kiosk or any shared device where signal is thin all day, a tablet on the site’s wifi is still the reliable path.
• Geofencing needs permission. The employee has to grant the browser location permission. With geofencing enforced, clock-in without location is refused until they enable it. Without geofencing (for example on Free), a punch with permission declined records the time but no location.
• It is enforcement, not surveillance. ClockOut checks location at the punch, plus an optional once-a-minute boundary check while on the clock and, in the web app, an arrival check around a scheduled shift start. It never requests background or always-on location, and it keeps no location trail on or off the clock. We treat that as a privacy feature, not a shortcoming.

Why teams pick ClockOut for GPS time tracking

The wedge is simple: a GPS time clock your staff can use in thirty seconds, on the phone already in their pocket, with nothing to install. Geofencing starts at $19 a month on Starter (up to 5 people, then $3 per extra person), and GPS-stamped punches are free for up to 2 people, including you, so you can prove it works before you pay for anything.

We publish exactly how the GPS and privacy behavior works rather than hiding it. Read the full location privacy policy and the verified product facts, or start on the free time clock and add geofencing when you need it. See the full breakdown on pricing.

Built for teams that work off site

A GPS time clock earns its keep when work happens away from a front desk. See how it fits specific trades:

• Construction crews across multiple job sites, with a geofence per active site.
• Landscaping crews moving between properties on a route all day.
• Home care agencies that need to confirm a caregiver reached the client’s address.

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