Geofenced Digital Attendance Guide

A geofence is a virtual boundary drawn around a real location — in FundiPay's case, a 50-metre radius around the site gate. A worker checks in from their own phone by OTP, and the system compares the phone's location to that boundary. Inside it, the check-in is accepted and timestamped. Outside it, the check-in is rejected. No app install is needed, and a worker in another town cannot be recorded as present on your site.

A tight radius sounds stricter but creates false rejections; a wide one lets a worker check in from the matatu stage. In practice, 50 metres works because it comfortably covers the gate, the site office and the immediate compound, while still excluding the road and the neighbouring plot. It is wide enough for a genuine early arrival in the queue and narrow enough that attendance means something.

• Too small: workers at the gate are wrongly rejected, and you spend the morning overriding the system.
• About right: 50 metres covers the gate, office and compound without reaching the street.
• Too large: check-ins from the road or a nearby shop begin to pass as on-site.

Not every trade works at the gate. A gang could be at a far corner of a large site, or on an errand for materials. The practical answer is to keep the core check-in at the gate and let the foreman record exceptions before the roll is locked, with the reason noted. For sprawling projects, sites can use more than one geofenced check-in point so a gang working the far boundary is validated there rather than dismissed as absent.

A geofence records a location, so it must be handled honestly. Tell workers up front what is captured — that a check-in confirms they are on site, not where they go after work — and store only what payroll needs. FundiPay records the check-in location, time and worker, and nothing beyond it. Being straight about this is not just good practice; it is what makes workers use the system willingly instead of finding ways around it.