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Geofence time tracking

Geofence time tracking, drawn in software.

Geofence time tracking sorts a worker's time by where it was spent. In ZeroBadge you type an address, adjust the boundary that appears and save it. That drawn location can be a jobsite, the shop, an office or a supply house. A badge reading inside the boundary counts as time at that location. Nothing is installed on site, and the answer is which jobsite, never which room.

Get startedWhat a geofence can and cannot tell you
  • Draw from an address
  • Nothing installed on site
  • Which jobsite, not which room

Same crew · same week · 3 jobsites

A time clock at each site

records the punch

Riverside

Time clock

Harbor Yard

Time clock

Northgate

Time clock

Hours exist where a clock was placed and someone used it. The drive between sites is not part of the record.

A record that follows the worker

records the day

Riverside

Recorded

Harbor Yard

Priya

Northgate

Recorded

Time at each site and the transit between them land in one shift record.

Drawing a location

From a street address to a boundary in a few minutes.

Type the address of the job. A boundary appears around it, drawn with the same editor you then use to drag its corners. Pull it out to cover the lay-down yard, push it in so it stops at the property line and save.

The same steps draw the shop, the office and the supply house. A location is only a polygon with a name and a type, so adding the next one takes less time than the first.

  • Job site

    Time inside it is on-site labor for that job.

  • Office and shop

    On site as well, kept apart from any job.

  • Vendor

    A supply house stop, shown as its own line and not charged to a job.

Oct 5–9

Multi-site

10 of 24

workers this week

Site transfers

3

Transit

19.0 h

  • Riverside
  • Harbor Yard
  • Northgate
  • Shop
  • Cascade Supply
  • Transit

  • Lena O. · Foreman

    4 locations · 46.7 h

    Riverside 0.8 · Harbor Yard 38.1 · Shop 3.4 · Cascade Supply 0.4 · Transit 4.0

  • Ben C. · Journeyman pipefitter

    2 locations · 44.3 h

    Riverside 36.3 · Harbor Yard 8.0

  • Mateo G. · Sheet metal journeyman

    2 locations · 44.3 h

    Riverside 36.3 · Harbor Yard 8.1

  • Rosa D. · Journeyman pipefitter

    2 locations · 44.3 h

    Riverside 36.3 · Harbor Yard 8.0

  • Kenji H. · Apprentice

    3 locations · 47.8 h

    Riverside 44.0 · Shop 0.8 · Cascade Supply 1.2 · Transit 1.8

+ 5 more workers with time at more than one location

Every minute is allocated to the location where it was recorded.

Three shapes from a real week

Sites are not rectangles, and a geofence does not have to be.

Boundaries are polygons with as many corners as the property needs. Three that come up often:

  • An L-shaped lot with a building set back from the road

    How it is drawn

    A six-corner polygon that follows the lot line instead of a box around it.

    What it avoids

    Counting the neighbor's parking as time on your job.

  • A school campus with two work areas on opposite sides of a street

    How it is drawn

    Two locations, one for each side, under the same project name.

    What it avoids

    Showing a crew crossing the street as leaving the job.

  • A TI on the fourth floor of a larger building

    How it is drawn

    One boundary around the building footprint, not around the suite.

    What it avoids

    Pretending a badge can say which floor a worker is on. It cannot.

A supply run, in minutes

Why supply houses belong on the map.

A journeyman leaves the job for fittings. Without a drawn supplier, the forty minutes simply disappear into whichever job came next.

  1. 01

    9:12 AM

    The badge leaves Site A's boundary. Movement between two locations starts counting as transit.

    Transit

  2. 02

    9:26 AM

    It enters the supply house you drew. The shift continues, with the stop as its own line.

    Vendor stop

  3. 03

    9:58 AM

    It leaves the supply house. Another stretch of transit begins.

    Transit

  4. 04

    10:11 AM

    Back inside Site A. Totals: transit 14 + 13 = 27 minutes, supply house 32 minutes, none of it charged to the job.

    On site

Where the boundary lives

A geofence in software against a geofence in hardware.

Compare ZeroBadge with

What it takes to know which location a worker is at: ZeroBadge compared with Phone app
ZeroBadgePhone app
Setup at the site
None. Draw it from the office.None, but every worker needs the app and permissions.
A new site on Monday
Type the address and save. Ready the same day.Draw it, and hope the crew has the app.
Supply houses and the shop
Draw them like any other location.Possible, but more drawn places to drain a phone battery.
Indoors
Wi-Fi positioning, learned over the first visits.Depends on the phone.

The tradeoff

Hardware on site can resolve a room, which a badge cannot. If your question is which room, beacons answer it. If your question is which job, drawing a location in software answers it without a truck roll.

How location is read

GPS outdoors, Wi-Fi indoors, cellular in between, each labelled.

Every reading stores its method and confidence, so you can see how a minute was placed.

  • GPS, outdoors

    A clear view of the sky gives the best reading. Open ground, roofs and slab pours are the easy case.

  • Wi-Fi, indoors

    Inside a building GPS is weak, so the badge uses the Wi-Fi networks around it. ZeroBadge learns each site's networks over the first visits, so the first day inside a new building is the weakest.

  • Cellular continuity

    If neither of those is available, the cell tower the badge is attached to can show that nothing has changed since the last confirmed reading. It is marked low confidence and never confirms a new site on its own.

  • Near the edge

    One stray reading at the boundary does not end a site visit on its own. Time near an edge is where the confidence label matters most.

  • Which jobsite, not which room

    Accuracy answers whether a worker is at the job. It does not say which room, which floor or whether they are in the basement or on the roof.

  • Dead zones

    If cellular drops, the badge stores its reports and uploads them on reconnect with their original timestamps.

What geofences do not do

A geofence sorts time by location. It does not start or stop the shift.

The shift starts at power-on and ends at power-off. Crossing a boundary changes which location the minutes belong to and nothing else. That keeps a worker walking out of a fence for a phone call from ending their day. See automatic clock in and out.

ZeroBadge AI

Ask ZeroBadge AI about your jobsite boundaries

Once the boundaries are drawn, ZeroBadge AI can tell you how the crew used them. It answers from your records, links each figure to the entries and exits behind it and cannot move a boundary. Admins choose who can ask.

  • You ask

    How long was the crew inside the Elm Street boundary yesterday?

    14 workers spent 112 hours inside the boundary, 8 hours each on average. Two others arrived after 9:00 AM.

  • You ask

    Who was outside every approved location during a shift this week?

    Three workers had stretches outside every approved location, from 40 to 75 minutes. A stop at a known supplier is drawn as its own location, so it does not count here.

  • You ask

    Which location sees the most arrivals before the scheduled start?

    The shop. About 9 workers a day arrive between 5:40 and 6:00 AM and then drive to their jobs. The first arrivals at Elm Street come around 6:15 AM.

Answers come only from your company's own records. Every number links to the records behind it. Read-only; admins control access.

How ZeroBadge AI works

Questions

Questions about geofence time tracking.

What is geofence time tracking?
Recording worked time against boundaries drawn on a map. Time inside a drawn location is counted at that location, so one worker's shift can be split by jobsite, shop and supplier without anyone writing it down.
How do I set up a geofence for a jobsite?
Type the address, adjust the boundary that appears and save it. Choose a type: job site, office, vendor or restricted area. You can change the shape later, and a change applies to future readings only.
Can a geofence have an irregular shape?
Yes. A location is a polygon with as many corners as you need, so an L-shaped lot, a campus or a yard across the street can be drawn to match.
Does geofencing work indoors?
Indoors the badge uses Wi-Fi positioning, which ZeroBadge learns for each site over the first visits. Cellular continuity fills in when nothing else is available and is labelled low confidence. Neither identifies a room. See indoor location without beacons.
Do I have to install anything at the jobsite?
No. There are no beacons, gateways, kiosks or clocks. The badge carries its own cellular connection and the boundaries live in software.
How accurate is geofence tracking?
Accurate enough to say which jobsite a worker is at, and not which room. GPS is best outdoors, Wi-Fi is weaker on the first visits to a building, and cellular readings are labelled low confidence. Every reading keeps its method and confidence.
Can I draw a supply house as a location?
Yes. Draw it as a vendor location. A stop there shows as its own line, apart from jobsite labor. A location can apply to all employees or a selected group. See multi-jobsite time tracking.

Keep exploring

Next: crew moves, attendance and the badge itself.

Last updated

Get started

Draw your first jobsite.

Bring an address, the shop and your two busiest supply houses. We will draw them with you and show how a day sorts across them.

Get startedExplore the platform

What we will walk through

  • 01Boundaries drawn from your own addresses
  • 02A day split across sites, transit and supplier stops
  • 03How location confidence is labelled on each reading