The three mobile check-in modes
Each attendance policy has a Mobile Check-in setting with three modes. It only ever affects check-ins from the mobile app, including face check-in on the phone; punches from biometric devices are not affected.
| Mode | Who can check in from a phone | What is recorded |
|---|---|---|
| Open | Anyone the policy covers, from anywhere | The punch, with no fence applied |
| Audit | Anyone the policy covers — nobody is refused | Whether each punch would have been refused under Restricted, and the reason |
| Restricted | Only employees mapped to a work site, from inside a fence they hold | Refused punches, kept for review |
Before you start: work sites and mappings
Geofencing in Verdeshell rests on one rule: a mapping is the permission. Attaching an employee to a work site is what allows them to check in there from a phone. There is no separate switch to turn on per person.
- Create work sites in Settings → Mobile Check-in. Place each one by searching an address, pasting a Google Maps link, or entering latitude and longitude, then set the fence radius in metres. Sites can be an office, a client site, a project site or a field location.
- Map employees to sites. An employee can hold more than one site; a punch inside any of them is accepted.
- Give genuine work-from-anywhere roles an anywhere grant, rather than drawing a very large fence.
- Use regularisation for one-off misses. If a client visit or travel day means a punch is missed, the employee raises a regularisation request for that day, so you never need to widen a fence for it.
Rolling out with audit mode, step by step
- Set up work sites and map employees to them, as above.
- Edit the attendance policy and set Mobile Check-in to Audit.
- Let it run long enough to cover every shift pattern and the people who travel. A full payroll month is a natural window.
- Open the rollout summary in Settings → Mobile Check-in. It shows punches evaluated, how many were accepted, and how many would have been refused, with the reason for each.
- Fix each reason (see the table below) and keep watching until the would-be refusals are ones you actually intend.
- Switch the policy to Restricted at the start of a payroll period.
Reading the would-be refusals
| Reason shown | What it usually means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Not mapped to any site | The employee checks in from a phone but holds no work site | Map them to their site, or give an anywhere grant if their role needs one |
| Outside every site they hold | The punch was beyond the radius of every site the employee holds | Check the site's position and radius, or whether they work from another site |
| Their site is switched off | The site they are mapped to has been deactivated | Reactivate the site or move the employee to the right one |
| GPS too imprecise | The phone reported a location less precise than the policy requires | Review the accuracy the policy requires; appears only if your policy checks it |
| Mock location | The phone reported a mock location setting (Android only) | Talk to the employee; appears only if your policy checks it |
Why switch at the start of a payroll period
Under Restricted, a refused check-in leaves no attendance record for that punch. A day with no record becomes an absence, and an absence can become a loss-of-pay deduction. Switching mid-month produces a register where some days were judged by one rule and some by another, which is hard to explain to an employee whose pay changed.
Switching on the first day of a payroll period means the whole month is judged one way, and anyone still caught by a refusal can be fixed before the month closes.
What the fence can and cannot prove
The location comes from the employee's phone. Verdeshell checks it against the fence, keeps out-of-fence punches in a review queue, and flags implausible travel between two punches — a check-in too far from the previous one for the time between them. A determined person can still fake a phone's location, so treat the fence as a deterrent and a clear record rather than proof.
Changes to a fence are kept in each site's history, so you can see who moved a site or changed its radius and when. Punch-location details in the attendance register are cleared after 365 days.