A time clock needs to know one thing about location: were you at work? It does not need to know where you had lunch, which route you drove home, or where you are on a Sunday. Some time tracking tools record a continuous trail of your location all shift long. ClockOut was built the opposite way, on purpose.
What we check, and when
- When you clock in. We capture your coordinates and a short address so your timesheet shows where the shift started. You see the same thing your manager does. If the work area blocks a clock-in, the attempt is logged with where you tried it, and your manager is told.
- When you clock out. Same thing: one position, recorded once, attached to the end of your shift.
- While you’re on the clock (only if your employer enables auto clock-out). The app checks your current position against the work-area boundary about once a minute while it’s open. It asks a single yes-or-no question: are you still inside the work area? Then it throws the reading away. The only things it can store are boundary events, a warning if you leave and the position where an automatic clock-out happened.
- When you add a job-site photo (Pro). Each photo you take carries the position where you took it, so your manager can see it was taken at the work site.
- When you’re off the clock. ClockOut saves nothing on its own. There is one check: if your employer uses geofencing and you have the ClockOut web app open while clocked out, it reads your position every 2 minutes, from about 15 minutes before until about an hour after a shift you’re scheduled for starts. Your browser sends it to our server, which compares it with the work area, answers yes or no, and forgets it. If you’re at work, you see a prompt with a Clock in button. Tap it and that reading becomes your clock-in location, like any punch. Nobody else is told. To stop the check, close the web app or use the iPhone or Android app, which don’t run it. Your employer can also turn it off for you by marking you geofence-exempt, or by turning geofencing off.
What we never do
- No breadcrumb trails or route history. We do not stitch your positions into a map of your movements.
- No record of where you go after work. Once your shift ends, ClockOut saves nothing about where you are unless you clock in again or add a job-site photo. The only check off the clock is the web app’s arrival check around the start of a scheduled shift, and it saves nothing.
- No background or “always on” location. We request location only while ClockOut is open, never the always-on permission.
- No biometrics. No face scans, no fingerprints, no faceprints. A 4 to 6 digit PIN or a tap is all it takes.
- No selling location data. We do not sell it, rent it, or hand it to advertisers. Ever.
What your employer sees
Your manager can see the location of your clock-in and clock-out, and whether those punches were inside the work area. If auto clock-out is on and you leave the area mid-shift, they can see that boundary event and the position where the automatic clock-out happened. They are told when the work area blocks a clock-in and how far away it was (admins can see its coordinates in the activity log), and they can see where each job-site photo was taken. That is the full list.
They do not get a live map of where you are. They do not get a trail of your movements during the shift. They get nothing from the arrival check, and nothing about where you go once you’re off the clock. The point is to confirm presence at work, not to follow a person through their day.
Why we built it this way
A time clock works when the people using it trust it. The fastest way to lose that trust is to collect more than the job needs. Continuous tracking turns a simple question, were you at work, into surveillance, and it puts managers in the position of holding data they never wanted and employees in the position of feeling watched.
So we collect the minimum that makes the feature honest: a clock-in position, a clock-out position, and, only when an employer turns them on, work-area checks that forget themselves a second later. Managers get a time clock they can rely on. Teams get a tool that respects them. Nobody has to trade privacy for accurate hours.