Remote attendance

Use Remote Attendance (Time & Attendance → Remote Attendance) to control how employees use the mobile app to check in and check out, both at attendance sites and away from them. You can also review remote check-in requests that require approval.

Remote attendance works alongside your attendance site settings and employee’s self-service permissions.

A banner appears when a setting prevents remote attendance from being used. It explains when mobile check-in is blocked by default, including whether any employees have individual permission to use it, or when remote check-in is disabled for the organization.

Terminology

Employees can check in from the mobile app in two ways:

On-site check-in: the employee’s GPS is inside an attendance site’s geofence.
Remote check-in: the employee is not inside any usable site, so they check in from wherever they are.

Three independent settings decide what an employee can do:

Scope	Where it is set	What it controls
Per site	Attendance Sites → site form	Allow on-site check-in (mobile app): whether anyone can check in at that site from the app
Org-wide	Remote Attendance → Configuration	Check-in away from a site: what happens when no usable site is nearby
Per employee	Remote Attendance → Permissions	Mobile app check-in (follow org, allowed, or blocked), Away from a site (follow org or blocked), and Which sites (all or specific)

Requests

The Requests tab lists the mobile check-in requests submitted by employees, raised when the organization’s remote mode is Needs approval. Each row shows Employee, Session Date, Schedule, Note, Status, Approver, and Created.

Status uses the shared approval vocabulary: Pending, Recommended, Approved, Rejected, with the approver or recommender shown once decided.
View details opens a read-only drawer with the employee and work schedule; Punches pending review, the check-in and check-out punches the request covers; the request details (Session, Work Schedule, Submitted, the employee’s Note, Recommended By / Approved By, and the Rejection reason when rejected); and the Check-in Location on a map, with Open in Maps.

Configurations

The Configurations tab contains the organization-wide settings that govern mobile check-in. You need the Configure Remote Attendance permission to edit them.

Mobile app check-in

Set the default mobile check-in permission for all employees to Allowed by default or Blocked by default. You can override this setting for individual employees under Permissions. This setting does not affect clocking in at attendance devices.

The setting also indicates how many sites permit mobile check-in (“X of Y sites allow mobile check-in”). If no sites allow it, a red warning explains that employees cannot check in through the app while at a site, regardless of their individual permissions. Check-in away from a site remains unaffected.

Away from a site

This applies only when an employee opens the app with no attendance site nearby. Standing at a site they may use always wins, whatever these say.

Check-in away from a site: Not allowed, must be at a site, Needs approval (a request goes through the workflow), or Allowed without approval (check in remotely straight away).
Level of Approval: Request → Recommend → Approve (two steps) or Request → Approve (one step). The Recommender column on the Approval Matrix only appears for the two-step flow.
Check-out Location: Near where they checked in or Anywhere. Employees can always check out at an attendance site they are assigned to, whatever this is set to.
Check-out Radius (meters), when check-out is set to “Near where they checked in”: the maximum distance from the check-in point where check-out is allowed. Defaults to 500 m.
Early Check-in Offset (minutes): minutes before the session start that employees may check in. Defaults to 0.
Lateness Grace (minutes): minutes after session start that a punch away from a site counts as late. 0 means late the moment the shift starts. Set it to match your site’s grace so both groups follow the same rule.

Approval matrix

Assigns the recommender and approver for each employee, like the leave and overtime matrices:

Rows come from your employee list joined to any existing assignment. Each value shows who it is and where it came from, set directly or derived from the department HOD or “reports to”. A missing value shows action required.
Edit a row to set an employee’s Recommender (only when two-step approval is active) and Approver.
Select multiple rows and use Set Recommender (two-step only) or Set Approver to bulk-assign.

Permissions

Opens the self-service permission matrix to override the organization defaults per employee:

Mobile app check-in: Follow org setting, Allowed, or Blocked. Blocking stops app check-in anywhere; Allowed lets this person use the app even where the organization blocks it by default. Clocking at a device is never affected.
Away from a site (remote check-in): Follow org setting or Blocked. Restrict-only: it can turn remote check-in off for one person, never on.
Which sites: All sites or Specific sites. When restricted, an Allowed sites list applies, and an empty list means all sites.

This is the same per-employee matrix as Settings → Self-Service → Permissions; here it sits beside the rest of remote attendance.

How a check-in resolves (on the employee’s phone)

The app fetches nearby sites that allow on-site check-in and that the employee is allowed to use.
One or more usable sites nearby: the employee picks one and checks in on-site.
No usable site nearby: the organization’s remote mode decides what happens.
- Not allowed: the check-in is blocked, with “No Nearby Sites Found” or “You’re not assigned to this site”.
- Needs approval: the employee requests remote check-in.
- Allowed without approval: the employee checks in remotely immediately.
A per-employee Blocked override forces step 3 to behave like Not allowed.

The attendance sites and the per-site “allow on-site check-in” switch: Attendance sites.
What employees can see and do in their own app is shaped by Self-service settings.