Geofenced clock-in for UK construction crews
Pay for the hours that happened.
Your crew tap in on their own phones. Hours only count inside the site boundary you draw. Anything odd is flagged for you to look at, not buried in a timesheet.
Free until 1 January 2027, no card needed. Companies that join before then keep the founder rate of £2.50 a person a month for as long as they stay. Nothing to install from an app store. Works on any phone. Built by a groundworks contractor, not a software firm. Already using it? Open ClockFence.
What trust is costing you
An hour a week per worker adds up fast.
Late starts, long dinners, early finishes and the odd day that never happened. Move the sliders to your own numbers.
Assumes 4.33 weeks a month, the founder rate of £2.50 per active worker a month (nothing is billed before 1 January 2027), and that verified clock-ins recover half the unaccounted time. Your figures will differ; this is a sanity check, not a promise.
How it works
Three things. That's the whole system.
Draw the fence
Drop a pin on the site, set a radius and the start and finish times. Add the crew with a name, trade and a PIN. Two minutes per site.
Tap in, tap out
Operatives open the app on their own phone, enter their PIN and press one button. Location is checked against the fence at that moment, then let go.
Review the flags
The board shows who has clocked in at each site, when, and whether that tap was inside the fence. Anything outside the fence, late, early or missing lands in one queue. Add a note, mark it reviewed, export the week.
What you get
Built for gangs that move between sites.
Geofenced clock-in
Hours count when the phone is inside the boundary you set. Outside still records, but flagged, so nobody gets locked out on a bad GPS day. For sites where it matters, require a quick selfie on clock-in; stored 90 days by default, then gone.
Live board
Who has clocked in at each site, how long since they tapped in, whether that tap was inside the fence, and who hasn't turned up. It is built from clock events, not from following phones around.
Exceptions queue
Outside boundary, late start, early finish, no clock-out, low GPS accuracy, late sync. Review with a note so the trail is there when a subbie disputes a week.
Timesheets and CSV
Weekly summary or full detail by person or site. One click to a CSV your accountant or payroll can use. Direct exports to accounts packages are on the roadmap.
Offline and no app store
Open it in the browser, add to the home screen. Poor signal on site? Events queue on the phone and send later, marked as a late sync.
Subbie invoicing
Self-employed operatives turn their approved hours, mileage, away days and expenses into a proper PDF invoice in one tap. It lands in your accounts inbox and your Invoices received page, with the expected CIS deduction shown. The subbie pays for this, not you: £4.99 a month from their side, one free invoice a month, and free for everyone during the pilot. Nothing is added to your bill.
CIS monthly pack
Your CIS300 figures and a payment and deduction statement for every subcontractor, built from the invoices you have marked paid, tax month 6th to 5th. PDF for the file, CSV for Xero, QuickBooks or your accountant. Nothing is filed for you; it is the numbers, ready to check against the bank before the 19th.
Expenses and mileage for everyone
PAYE or self-employed, every worker can claim. Set the policy once: pence per mile, away-day rate, receipt threshold, which categories you pay. The app works out each day's round trip from the worker's home postcode, adds allowance days automatically and puts anything outside policy in front of you to approve. Approved claims for PAYE staff export in one file for payroll.
Forgotten clock-outs and corrections
Forgot to clock out? The shift is closed automatically at the expected finish plus a buffer you set, and flagged for you to accept or fix, so nobody is paid to midnight. Managers correct a time or add a missing clock-out; workers can ask for a change from their phone. The recorded time is never overwritten and the timesheet shows Time amended, so nobody has to take anyone's word for it.
I built this because I was paying for hours I couldn't see.
Why it exists
Made on site, not in a software office.
Most workforce apps were designed for warehouses and shops, then sold to builders. ClockFence started as an in-house tool at a Yorkshire groundworks firm running gangs across several sites, relying on trust alone for the wage bill.
It is deliberately narrow. It does not try to be your HR system, your scheduler or your project manager. It answers one question well: who was on which site, for how long, and can I prove it.
Ask about the pilotThe pilot
Free while we prove it on real sites.
A handful of UK contractors are running ClockFence on live jobs through autumn 2026. There is no charge during the pilot and nothing is billed before 1 January 2027. Pricing afterwards is per active worker per month, so a subbie who leaves stops costing you. Companies that join before 1 January 2027 lock in a founder rate of £2.50 per active worker a month, no minimum, for as long as they stay. After that date the founder rate closes. Subcontractor invoicing is separate and paid for by the subcontractor, never the company.
What you get
The full product, on your own sites
- Geofenced clock-in and out, unlimited sites
- Live board and exceptions queue
- Weekly timesheets and CSV export
- Optional selfie on clock-in, per site
- Optional spot site checks and unpaid lunch, per site
- Worker privacy notice and data processing agreement
- Direct line to the people building it
What we ask
In return for free use
- Use it as the timesheet on at least one live site
- Tell your crew how it works (we give you the notice)
- Tell us what is wrong with it, bluntly
- A twenty-minute call at the end
On the roadmap
Shaped by what pilot firms ask for
- Subcontractors download their own CIS statements
- Xero, QuickBooks, Sage and FreeAgent exports
- Payment applications to your clients and evidence packs
- iPhone and Android store apps with reminders
Questions builders ask
Straight answers.
Can the lads fake their location?
Spoofing GPS on a phone is possible with effort, and we don't pretend otherwise. What ClockFence does is make it visible: low accuracy, impossible distances between events, simulated locations and photo mismatches all raise a flag, and the record of who reviewed what is kept. In practice, the honest majority are protected and the rest stop bothering.
What stops someone clocking in and then leaving site?
Spot site checks, if you want them. Switch them on for a site and, once or twice a day at random times, the app asks whoever is clocked in there to confirm they are still on site. One tap reads their location once. An off-site answer, or no answer within 15 minutes, goes to your exceptions queue to review. Checks are off unless you turn them on, never happen while someone is clocked out or on lunch, and are not tracking: nothing is read between taps.
Can it take lunch off automatically?
Yes, per site, and it is your choice. Leave lunch paid, take a set unpaid break off any day over a set length (30 minutes over 6 hours to start with), or have the crew tap Start lunch and Back from lunch, with long lunches flagged for you. Timesheets and the CSV export show the minutes taken off.
What exactly does the app record?
At each Clock In and Clock Out: the time, the site (nearest by default, or one the operative picks), one GPS position with its accuracy, whether that position was inside the fence, and a selfie if you have turned that on for the site. If you use spot site checks, it records each answer the same way: the time, one GPS position and whether it was inside the fence. Between taps it records nothing. Managers and operatives can add notes and correction requests, and those are kept with the event.
Is it tracking people all day?
No. Location is read once, at the moment someone presses Clock In or Clock Out, or answers a spot site check if you use them, and the app tells them so on screen. There is no background tracking, and the app cannot see where anyone is between taps.
What about GDPR?
You are the controller of your workers' data and we process it for you under a data processing agreement. Location is only read when someone clocks in, clocks out or answers a site check, photos only at clock-in, retention is set and documented, and we give you a one-page notice to hand to your crew. Because monitoring workers is high-impact, you should record a short data protection impact assessment; we provide the template.
Do subcontractors have to use it?
That's between you and them, but a verified week is in their interest too: it ends arguments about hours and speeds up payment. Self-employed operatives are marked as subcontractors so their hours sit separately for CIS, and once you approve a week they can invoice you straight from the app.
How does the invoicing work?
It is the subcontractor's tool, not yours, and they pay for it, not you. It costs the subcontractor £4.99 a month, or nothing if they send one invoice a month, and it is free during the pilot. They keep their own trading details, UTR, CIS status and bank details in the app, and those follow them from firm to firm. You set the expense policy and approve the week and any claims. They then build an invoice from what you approved, check the PDF and send it; it is emailed to your accounts address and appears on your Invoices received page, where you mark it queried or paid. Hours can never be invoiced twice, invoice numbers run in sequence and every sent invoice is frozen as issued. The CIS figure is for information; you still verify and deduct as normal, and no money moves through ClockFence. At month end the CIS pack pulls the paid invoices into your CIS300 figures and a deduction statement per subcontractor.
Do we need signal on site?
No. The phone records the event and its GPS fix and sends it when it next has signal. Late-synced events are marked so you know they arrived after the fact.
Is there an app to install?
It runs in the phone's browser and can be added to the home screen like an app. No app store, no updates to chase, works on iPhone and Android.
What does the pilot involve?
You set up your company and sites in the app (about ten minutes), add your crew, and run it as the timesheet on at least one live site. We check in with you, fix what you find, and at the end ask for twenty minutes of honest feedback. It costs nothing and you can stop at any time. No card is needed during the pilot, however big your crew. Before 1 January 2027 we ask firms with more than five people to add a card to keep the founder rate, and nothing is charged before then.
What happens to our data after the pilot?
It stays yours. Export your timesheets as CSV whenever you like. If you carry on, nothing changes. If you stop, we delete your company's data within 30 days of you telling us, and confirm when it is done.
Want a place on the pilot?
We are taking a small number of additional UK contractors. Tell us a little about your crew and we will reply within one working day with the link, a one-page worker notice and a five-minute setup guide.
Rather crack on? Set up your company now. It takes ten minutes, and the founder rate applies the same.