# Restrict Where Staff Can Clock In (/how-to/team/restrict-clock-in-location)



By default an employee can clock in from anywhere. If you need shifts to start on site, draw the areas where clocking in is allowed and Resytech will check the employee's device location against them when they clock in.

Before you begin [#before-you-begin]

* You need **administrator access**. This setting is not available to standard users.
* Decide which location you are configuring. Allowed areas belong to a single location, so in a multi-location operation you set them up once per site.
* Staff need to allow location access on their phone or browser. Warn them before you switch to Block, or their first attempt will fail.

Step 1: Open the settings [#step-1-open-the-settings]

1. Go to **Location Settings**.
2. Select **Clock-in Location** in the left-hand list.

If you are configuring several sites, switch locations using the location picker in the header first — you are always editing whichever location you are currently viewing.

Step 2: Draw an allowed area [#step-2-draw-an-allowed-area]

1. Click **Draw area**.
2. Click each corner of the area on the map, then click the first point again to close the shape.
3. The area saves as soon as you close it, and appears in the list below the map with an editable name.

The map opens on your location's address in satellite view. If it opens somewhere unexpected, use **Use my location** (handy when you are actually on site) or pan and zoom to find it.

**Tips for drawing a good area:**

* Include the car park, not just the building. Staff often clock in as they arrive.
* Be generous at the edges. Phone location is approximate, and a tight outline around a doorway will turn away people who are genuinely there.
* Add **separate areas** rather than one enormous one if your site has detached parts — a dock, an overflow lot, a second unit. A clock-in counts as on site if it falls inside any of them.

To reshape an area, drag any corner. Changes save automatically. To rename one, click its name in the list. To remove one, click the bin icon.

Step 3: Choose how strictly to enforce it [#step-3-choose-how-strictly-to-enforce-it]

Pick one of three modes:

| Mode      | What happens                                                                                             |
| --------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Off**   | Nothing is checked and no location is recorded. This is the default.                                     |
| **Warn**  | The clock-in succeeds, but the entry is flagged with how far out the employee was.                       |
| **Block** | The clock-in is refused, and the employee is told which area to go to and roughly how far away they are. |

Click **Save settings** when you change this.

<Callout type="warn">
  **Start on Warn.** Run it for about a week, then look at the recorded distances on the admin timesheet. That tells you whether your areas are drawn generously enough for your buildings and signal conditions *before* anyone is turned away from starting a shift.
</Callout>

Step 4: Tune the accuracy allowance [#step-4-tune-the-accuracy-allowance]

Phone locations come with a margin of error — usually 5–20 m outdoors, more indoors, and much more when a device falls back to network-based positioning. The **accuracy allowance** (default 100 m) controls how that is handled:

* A reading is accepted if it lands within **its own margin of error** of an area, so each area is effectively up to the allowance larger.
* A reading vaguer than the allowance is rejected outright. This is what stops a rough network-derived position from passing simply because it happened to land inside a large area.

Lower the number to tighten both behaviours. Raise it if staff working inside a large or steel-framed building are being rejected as imprecise.

Avoid drawing an area smaller than the allowance — the allowance swallows it and people nearby will pass. Resytech warns you when you do.

Step 5: Review flagged clock-ins [#step-5-review-flagged-clock-ins]

Go to **Timesheet > Admin Reports**. Entries that failed the check carry a red **out-of-bounds badge** in the Status column. Hover it to see what happened:

* A distance ("Clocked in 340 m from the nearest allowed area") — they were off site.
* "No location" — the device did not report one, usually because permission was denied or the app is an older version.
* "Imprecise" — a location came through but was too vague to check.

Use this in Warn mode to calibrate before switching to Block.

Good to know [#good-to-know]

* **Clocking out is never checked.** Someone who has legitimately left the site can always close their shift, so nobody gets stuck in an open entry.
* **Turning enforcement on without drawing any areas does nothing.** Resytech deliberately skips the check rather than blocking every clock-in, and warns you whenever a location is in that state — including when you delete the last remaining area.
* **Past entries keep their result.** Redrawing an area does not change what was recorded against clock-ins that already happened.
* **The check is per location.** If one of your sites is fenced and another is not, an employee viewing the unfenced location is not checked — though their entry is then recorded against that location, which shows up on the timesheet.
* **It is not tamper-proof.** Device location can be faked with browser developer tools or mock-location apps. This raises the effort involved and gives you a record to review; treat it as a control alongside ordinary supervision, not a replacement for it.

Related [#related]

* [Clock In and Out](/how-to/team/clock-in-and-out) — what employees see.
* [Manage Employee Timesheets](/how-to/team/manage-employee-timesheets)
* [Edit Time Entries](/how-to/team/edit-time-entries)
* [Timesheets](/docs/team/timesheets) — full feature reference.