GPS at Work: Only When You Clock In, Nowhere Else

You tap Clock In. Your phone checks: am I inside the right site? Then it stops. No tracking while you work, no “where are you now?” in the background — just that one check.

We wanted to prove that tight check works on both a small door and a big yard, not just in a demo.

The fictional sites

We created two fake sites:

• Casa Verde — Matosinhos (kitchen door) — tight door, fence 50m
• Quinta da Pedra — Yard (construction) — open yard, fence 300m

Same worker, same phone, same day: one punch inside each fence, one punch 80m outside the kitchen door.

The real shape of GPS work

GPS isn’t one number. It’s:

• A tight door where 10m matters (kitchen entrance)
• A big yard where 300m is reasonable (construction)
• A phone that says “accuracy ±12m” on a cloudy day
• A manager who needs a clear “inside / outside” answer, not raw coordinates

The test wasn’t “does GPS work?” It was “does the fence give the right answer in both places, without tracking all day?”

What had to get right

• Is location checked only at the tap — not before, not after?
• Does the kitchen door (50m) correctly say “outside” at 80m, while the yard (300m) says “inside” at the same distance?
• Is each punch tied to one site, so a scan at Matosinhos can’t log to the Porto Centro site?
• Does a punch outside the fence get flagged for review, not silently accepted?

These are normal multi-site days, not lab tests.

What we proved

1. Only at the tap — no background tracking. Location is captured at Clock In/Out and then stops. No continuous tracking, which is how you stay proportional under GDPR.

2. Right fence, right answer. The 50m kitchen fence correctly flagged the 80m punch as outside. The 300m yard correctly accepted the same distance as inside. Fence size does what you set it to.

3. One site, one fence. Each punch is bound to the site it was made at — cross-site logging is blocked. A manager sees Inside — Clock in OK or Outside — Flagged for review in plain language.

All 3 scenarios passed, and no existing shifts were disturbed.

What “GPS” really means in practice

For a staffing agency placing people across client sites, GPS isn’t about watching dots on a map — it’s about audit proof that survives an inspection: when + where + how for each punch, kept 5 years (PT) / 4 years (ES), without extra paperwork.

If you run a kitchen door and a construction yard, the right question to ask any vendor is: “show me the same punch at 80m — inside my yard, outside my door.” This is ours.

Where Chegatta is today

GPS check at tap is live today — tight door to big yard, site-bound, flagged if outside. No background tracking, no battery drain from watching. The fence sizes we quote (office 100–200m, construction 300–500m) are the same ranges we tested.