GPS Clock-In and Geofencing: How It Works in Kwilio Scheduling

Time theft — employees clocking in from home, a car, or anywhere that isn't your business — is one of the most common sources of payroll error for small teams. Kwilio Scheduling addresses this with location-verified clock-in: employees can only start a shift when their device is within the geofence you set for that location.

What Is a Geofence?

A geofence is a virtual boundary drawn around a real-world location. When an employee opens Kwilio on their iPhone and taps Clock In, the app checks whether their GPS coordinates fall inside the fence. If they're outside it, the clock-in is blocked.

You set the fence center (your address) and radius (how tight the boundary is) once in Kwilio's Locations settings on Mac. From that point on, every clock-in at that location is automatically verified.

How Clock-In Works for Employees

When an employee has a shift assigned, Kwilio shows it prominently in the Today tab on iPhone. At shift time, they tap Clock In. The app:

1. Requests location access (required once, stored as "While Using App").
2. Checks current coordinates against the assigned location's geofence.
3. If inside the fence, starts the time entry and records the GPS coordinates.
4. If outside the fence, shows an alert explaining they need to be on-site.

The whole flow takes under five seconds. Employees don't need to think about it — the check happens automatically in the background of the tap.

Photo Verification

For an additional layer of accountability, Kwilio supports photo verification at clock-in. When enabled for a location or shift, the employee is prompted to take a selfie before the clock-in is recorded. The photo is stored in iCloud alongside the time entry — visible to managers in the time entry detail view.

Photo verification is particularly useful for:

• Remote or unmanned locations without a supervisor on-site
• High-trust roles where you want an audit trail
• Situations where GPS alone isn't precise enough (dense urban areas, indoor locations)

What Managers See

On Mac, the Time Entries view shows every clock-in with:

• Employee name and shift
• Clock-in time (to the second)
• Location and whether the geofence check passed
• Photo (if verification was enabled)
• Break durations for multi-break shifts

If an employee's clock-in falls outside the fence — perhaps because of GPS drift in a building — managers can review and approve the entry manually.

Configuring Geofence Radius

The default radius works well for most businesses, but you can tighten or widen it:

• Small radius (25–50m): Good for a single storefront or office where you want tight control.
• Medium radius (100–200m): Useful for larger properties like a warehouse, campus, or outdoor venue.
• Large radius (500m+): Appropriate for mobile teams working a defined territory.

Open Settings → Locations on Mac, select a location, and drag the radius slider to adjust. The change syncs to all employee devices immediately.

Privacy Considerations

Kwilio only checks location at the moment of clock-in and clock-out. It does not track continuous GPS position or run background location services. Employees are not tracked between taps.

All location data is stored in your private iCloud account — not on Kwilio's servers or any third-party analytics platform. Employees can review Kwilio's location usage in iPhone Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services.

Geofenced clock-in is one of the simplest changes a small business can make to improve payroll accuracy. Once configured, it runs silently in the background — no manager intervention needed unless something genuinely unusual happens.