Justworks Hours Geofence
Marc Rosenberg avatar
Written by Marc Rosenberg
Updated over a week ago

Topics covered in this article:

  • How does the geofence work?

  • Activating the geofence

  • Geofence preferences

  • Geofence and locations without address and location assignments

How does the geofence work

Justworks Hours’s geofence feature allows account owners to restrict employees’ ability to check in and out from the mobile app based on their location.

When the geofence is active, employees will not be able to check in (or check out) for work unless they are within the geofence radius. Locations that are within the geofence will appear in green on the mobile app. Locations that are outside the geofence will appear in black and are not eligible for check in.

Screenshot showing how Locations appear, both those that are within and outside the geofence

If an employee tries to check in from outside the geofence, they’ll receive a warning that they are outside the geofence.

Screenshot showing the warning that is displayed when an employee tries to check in outside the geofence

Justworks Hours has the ability to add time manually (think of it like filling out a digital time sheet). Time added manually will not be subject to geofence restrictions. This means you may wish to disable manual entry. You can do so here. Just set Manual Shifts to “off”.

Justworks Hours’s geofence also does not apply to web-based check ins. This means you may wish to turn off web check in. You can do so here. Just set Web Dashboard to “off”.

Activating the Geofence

By default the geofence will be turned “off” in your Justworks Hours account. To turn it on, head to your mobile app preferences here.

Geofence Preferences

You can choose to apply the geofence on check in only or on both check in and check out. Many of our customers have employees who begin their day at a defined location but may end their day elsewhere. Turning on the geofence for check in, but not for check out, will address this need. If your employees start and end their day in the same place, you’ll want to enable the geofence for both check in and check out.

You can also set the radius of your geofence. You can set the radius as large as 10 miles or as narrow as .05 miles (approx 250 ft).

***Please note that it may take as many as two days for geofence preference changes to apply to user’s mobile apps. Logging out and logging back in on the mobile app will update changes immediately.

Geofence and locations without address and location assignments

Turning on or off the geofence will apply those preferences to all users and all locations in your account. However, it is possible to customize your setup so that the geofence may only apply to certain users at certain locations. You can also learn more about how locations work in Justworks Hours here.

When adding a location to Justworks Hours, you can choose whether or not that location has a physical address. We know this can be a bit confusing, but the idea is that locations without an address can be added to manage time for activities that may not start and end in the same place. ‘Drive Time’ is a great example. If you add a location without an address, that location will be excluded from the geofence.

You can also assign locations to employees. You can assign a location to one employee, several employees, or all employees. You can combine this feature with the address free feature to exclude some locations from geofencing for certain employees.

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