GPS clock-in for Australian construction sites
Geofenced clock-in tells you a worker was where they said they were, at the time they said they were there — without following anyone around for the rest of the day.
What geofenced clock-in actually does
You draw a boundary around each job site once. When a worker taps clock on, their phone's location is checked against that boundary and the result is stored with the record. If they were inside it, the shift starts clean. If they weren't, the shift is flagged for you to look at rather than silently accepted or silently rejected.
That's the whole mechanism, and the important part is the last sentence. A system that blocks clock-ins outside the fence punishes the worker standing forty metres up the street because the site office has no signal. A system that ignores location entirely gives you a number you can't defend. Flagging sits between the two — the shift is recorded, the worker gets paid on time, and you decide.
Site attendance, not worker tracking
Structivo records location at the moment of clock on and clock off. It does not follow a worker's phone through the day, it does not record where they go at lunch, and it does not track anyone who is off the clock.
This distinction matters more than most software vendors admit. Before you can create a job site with a geofence, Structivo makes you acknowledge a surveillance notice — because collecting location data about employees carries obligations, and the tool shouldn't let you stumble into them without noticing. Workers can see the same thing. Being straight about the boundary is what makes crews stop resenting the app.
The exceptions are the whole job
Anyone can build a happy path. The value is in what happens the other twenty percent of the time:
- Someone drives home still clocked on — the shift auto-closes rather than running to a 30-hour day, and you review it.
- GPS drifts, or the phone was in a basement — the shift is flagged for review instead of being thrown out.
- Someone clocks off late — small overruns pass through, real ones get flagged and you decide whether to pay the actual time or the scheduled finish.
- Someone forgets entirely — they raise a correction request with the times they actually worked, and you approve or reject it with a record of who changed what.
- A week can't be approved and paid until every flagged shift in it has been dealt with. Nothing quietly falls off the bottom.
Crews in more than one state
If you've ever run a crew in Brisbane from an office in Melbourne, you know what daylight saving does to a timesheet. Structivo stores a timezone against each job site, so a shift's start and finish are recorded in the time that job site was actually in — while the pay week boundary stays anchored to your company's timezone, so one worker's week doesn't end on a different day to everyone else's.
It sounds like a detail. It is the difference between an October payroll that reconciles and one that doesn't.
What it runs on
There's no hardware, no kiosk and no fingerprint reader to buy. Workers install Structivo to their phone's home screen — it behaves like an app but installs from a link, so there's nothing to find in an app store and no company device policy to negotiate. Admins use the same thing on a laptop.
Common questions
Can a worker fake their GPS location?
Location spoofing apps exist, so no location system is tamper-proof. What Structivo gives you is a stored location on every clock-in, an exception flag when something doesn't match, and a record of every admin change — so a pattern is visible rather than invisible. Treat it as evidence, not as a lock.
What happens if there's no phone reception on site?
Clock-ins need a connection to reach the server. On sites with poor coverage the practical pattern is clocking on at the gate where there's signal, and using a correction request for anything that failed. Corrections keep an audit trail of who requested what and who approved it.
Do I have to set a roster to use clock-in?
No. Structivo runs fine with no roster at all — workers turn up, clock on, clock off, and get paid for the hours they actually worked. Rostering is there if you want scheduled start and finish times, which also switches on shift reminders and pay clamping, but it isn't a prerequisite.
Do I need to tell my workers they're being location-tracked?
Collecting employee location data comes with notification and consent obligations in Australia. Structivo prompts you to acknowledge this before you create a geofenced site, and surfaces the same notice to workers, but it can't give you legal advice — check your obligations for your state and your workforce.
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