Geofence, GPS accuracy and fake GPS

Updated 2026-11-07

What it is

A geofence is the area around an office where staff are allowed to check in. You draw it as a circle (a pin plus a distance) or as a custom shape. At check-in on an office day, PunchMe checks that the phone's location is inside one of the employee's offices.

Two more location checks run on every app punch:

GPS accuracy: is the location precise enough to trust?
Fake GPS: is the phone reporting a made-up location?

What happens when a check fails is up to your punch rules.

Who uses it

Owner: full access.
Offices and the GPS accuracy limit (m) need settings.edit. Out of the box, only the HR role has it. Anyone with settings.view can see offices.
Users with attendance.view see each record's mode (office or WFH) and flags in Attendance.
Employees see "Today: Office" or "Today: Wfh" on the app's Home tab.

Where to find it

Setup → Offices → Add office or Edit: the geofence map.
Settings → Punch verification → GPS accuracy limit (m).
Settings → Punch verification → Fake / mock GPS, Outside office geofence, Poor GPS accuracy: what to do when each check fails.
Manager app → Attendance → tap a record: distance from the office and GPS accuracy of the check-in.

Drawing the geofence

Pick one of two shapes:

Shape	How	Good for
Radius	Click the map or drag the pin to the office entrance. Set Allowed distance with the slider, 20 to 1,000 m	Most offices. 100 to 200 m suits most buildings
Custom area	Click around the office on the map to add boundary points. At least 3	Campuses, factories, long or odd-shaped plots

A new office starts with a 100 m radius. Click Save office when done.

How the check works

At check-in, PunchMe takes the phone's location and its reported accuracy.

It builds the list of offices for this employee: their home office plus any other offices assigned to them. If they have neither, every office in the company counts.
It keeps only offices that have a geofence drawn.
The check-in passes if the location is inside any one of them.

PunchMe gives a little slack for GPS error. It widens the boundary by the phone's reported accuracy, up to 75 m. So with a 100 m radius and a fix accurate to ±30 m, a point up to 130 m from the pin passes.

If the phone sends no location at all, the check fails.

If none of the employee's offices has a geofence drawn, the geofence check is skipped.

When the geofence is checked

Punch	Office day	Work-from-home day
Check-in	Geofence checked	Not checked
Check-out	Not checked	Not checked

Fake GPS and GPS accuracy are checked on every app punch: check-in and check-out, office and WFH days.

Kiosk punches skip all three location checks. The kiosk is fixed at its office, so its punches count as at that office. See Kiosk.

Office and work-from-home days

Every working day is either an office day or a work-from-home (WFH) day for each employee. This decides whether the geofence is checked.

The work style is picked in this order, first match wins:

The employee's own work mode, if set.
Their home office's work mode, if set.
The company work mode.

Work mode	Office days
Office only	Every working day
Remote only	None. Every working day is WFH
Hybrid	Only the days marked as office days. Other working days are WFH

You choose the company work mode and the hybrid office days in the setup guide when you first sign up. You can set an employee's work mode with the work_mode column when you import employees.

Changing the company work mode or hybrid office days after setup is not available in Settings. Contact support if you need it changed.

GPS accuracy limit

Phones report how sure they are of a location, as a distance in metres. Lower is better. Indoors, near tall buildings or with location set to battery saving, accuracy can be 100 m or worse.

Setting: Settings → Punch verification → GPS accuracy limit (m)
Default: 75 m
Range: 5 to 500 m

If a punch's accuracy is worse than the limit, it raises Poor GPS accuracy. By default that rule is Allow, flag for review.

The app helps: it waits up to 15 seconds for a fix within 50 m before it gives up and uses the best one it got.

Fake GPS

Fake GPS apps make a phone report any location the user picks. The app reads the phone's own "mock location" signal.

Android: the location's mock flag.
iPhone: iOS 15 and later report locations simulated by developer tools.

If the signal is set, the punch raises Fake / mock GPS. By default that rule is Block the punch, and the employee sees "Fake GPS detected — turn off mock location apps and try again".

Changing it midway

Moving or resizing a geofence applies from the next check-in. Past check-ins keep their result.
Changing the accuracy limit applies from the next punch.
Deleting an office isn't allowed while employees are assigned to it. Move them first.
Changing an employee's home office changes which geofence they're checked against from their next check-in.

Limits and edge cases

The location is captured only at the moment of punching. PunchMe does not track location during the day unless field tracking is on for that employee.
A geofence can't fix a bad GPS fix. If staff often fail indoors, raise the radius a little before you raise the accuracy limit.
Very small radii (under 50 m) fail often because of normal GPS drift.
Fake GPS detection relies on the phone. Rooted phones can sometimes hide it. The phone integrity check helps catch rooted or modified phones.
Assigning extra offices to one employee, and an office's own timezone or work mode, can't be set from the dashboard today.

Common questions

Staff inside the office keep getting "outside the office geofence". Why?

Usually the pin is in the wrong place or the radius is too tight. Open the office in Setup → Offices, move the pin to the middle of the building, and try 150 to 200 m. In the manager app, the record shows how far the check-in was from the office.

Can my remote staff punch from home?

Yes. On WFH days the geofence is not checked. They still need a working GPS, and fake GPS is still caught. Turn on face check so you know it's really them.

We have two offices. Can someone punch at either?

They can punch at their home office and any other office assigned to them. Someone with no home office and no assigned offices can punch at any office.

What does "GPS signal is too weak" mean?

The punch's accuracy was worse than your limit and your Poor GPS accuracy rule is set to block. Ask the employee to step outside or near a window and try again, or set that rule to flag.

Is the geofence checked at check-out?

No. Only at check-in, and only on office days.