Paylocity Geofencing: How Its Mobile Punch Works and What Field Crews Should Ask (2026)

01

What Paylocity's geofencing does, according to its own pages

Two Paylocity pages describe the feature. The Time Collection page, read September 8, 2026, places Mobile Punch inside the Time and Labor product. Its wording is restriction wording: "Ensure employees can only punch in when and where you want them to with geofencing, IP restrictions, or clock restrictions." The same page describes the mobile app as "equipped with geofencing restrictions and photo capture" and "equipped with geolocation for verification."

The second source is Paylocity's April 2025 What's New post, read September 8, 2026. It describes a "mobile punch location forecaster" that gives workers "real-time visibility into their location status during the punch process." The specific line for a crew owner is this one: "If an employee is outside the approved geofence area, a clear warning message appears before they submit their punch." The post also mentions "a geofence status indicator and interactive map" in the app.

Put together, the public pages say three things. Paylocity presents geofencing as a restriction on when and where a punch can happen. The app shows the worker their location status during the punch and a warning before submission if they are outside the fence. And the app is equipped with photo capture and with geolocation for verification.

02

What the public pages do not say

Two things a field crew needs are on neither page, and we will not fill them in by guessing.

• What happens after the warning. The release note says a warning appears before the worker submits the punch. It does not say whether the worker can submit anyway, whether the punch is then refused, or whether it goes through and is shown to a manager as an exception. The page's word is "restrictions"; what the restriction does after the warning is not stated.
• Radius. Neither page gives a default radius, a minimum, a maximum, or whether each location can have its own.

Four more points matter to a crew and are not answered in the lines we quoted. They are in the question list below.

• Whether geofencing can be turned on for the field crew and left off for office staff.
• Whether the location forecaster runs only during the punch or the app reads location at other times too.
• How a punch with no signal is handled, and whether the geofence status indicator still works.
• Whether Mobile Punch with geofencing is priced separately from Time and Labor.

03

A warning before the punch compared with a block at the punch

Paylocity's release note describes a warning shown before the worker submits. That is a real design choice, and it helps to know what it settles and what it leaves open.

A warning tells the worker something is wrong before they commit. If the worker can still submit, the punch is recorded and the exception lands on a manager's screen later. If the worker cannot submit, the result is a block, and the warning is the explanation. Both designs are legitimate, and they produce different work on payroll day. A warning-then-submit design gives you an exception to review; a block gives you no punch at all, and the worker has to get on site and try again.

Paylocity's pages support the first half of that (there is a warning) and are silent on the second half (what happens next). We wrote about the two designs and why the difference matters for a crew in GPS time tracking that blocks off-site clock-ins, and the general mechanics in How does geofencing time tracking work. For the wider distinction between recording a location and acting on it, read Geofencing vs GPS time tracking.

04

Questions to ask Paylocity before you rely on it

Ask for each answer on a phone in the demo, not in a follow-up email.

1. After the warning appears, can the worker still submit the punch? If yes, where does the manager see it, and is it marked in any way?
2. What radius can we set around a location, what is the default, and can each job site have its own?
3. Can geofencing be turned on for field workers only and left off for office staff and supervisors?
4. Does the app read location only during the punch, or at other times while a worker is clocked in?
5. What does the worker see when the phone has no signal, and does the location check still run?
6. Is Mobile Punch with geofencing included in the Time and Labor quote, or is it a separate line?
7. Can we export approved hours from another time clock into Paylocity, and what import template does that need?

05

How Clox handles the same problem

Clox is a time clock for field crews, so the same questions have short answers. Here they are as facts.

There is no warning step in Clox, because there is no submit-anyway step. A worker with geofencing turned on who taps clock in outside every worksite assigned to them gets a message on the phone to get on site, and the punch is blocked. A worksite is a named location with a GPS coordinate and a radius; the radius defaults to 200 meters and is set per site, and the docs say to start generous and tighten later. Geofencing is a per-person setting made on the Team page, so supervisors who move between sites can be left off. The worksites and geofence docs cover the setup.

Clox reads location at the moment of the punch and never in between: no breadcrumbs and no live map of people. At weekly approval the manager sees a Map link and a readout such as "On site, 40 m from Main St job" beside each pending shift. For indoor and multi-floor sites where GPS drifts, a second, independent check requires the phone to be on the site's WiFi network at clock-in, and you can use the radius, the WiFi check, or both.

Every feature is on the one plan, with no add-on for geofencing and nothing tier-gated. $29 a month covers the first 3 users and each additional user is $6 a month. Punches work offline: they queue on the phone and go through when signal returns.

Location comes from the worker's phone, and a phone's location can be faked, so a geofence in any app is a deterrent and does not prove presence. Clox punch records are signed and hash-chained, which proves the record has not been altered since capture. It does not prove the GPS reading was true.

06

Getting hours from Clox into Paylocity

Clox has no dedicated Paylocity export format. What Clox has is a universal payroll summary CSV for any provider without its own format, plus the standard Reports exports for any date range. Those come as CSV, Excel, or PDF with the columns you choose, such as Start, End, Breaks, Regular, Overtime, and pay amounts. A bookkeeper can key that into Paylocity or reshape it to match a Paylocity import template.

Whether Paylocity accepts a bulk hours import for your setup, and what columns its template wants, is a question for Paylocity support. Ask it early, because it decides whether payroll day is an upload or a re-key. The general procedure for moving approved hours from a time clock into any payroll system is in How to export your crew's hours to payroll. The Clox export menu is described in the export payroll docs.

07

Which one fits your crew

If you are already on Paylocity for payroll and HR, watch the demo for two things: a worker outside the fence who cannot submit, and a radius you can set per site. If you see both, Mobile Punch keeps everything in one system, and that is a reasonable place to be.

If the answer to "can they submit anyway" is yes, or the rep cannot show you, a field time clock blocks the off-site punch today and reads location only at the punch. The cost of that choice is the payroll handoff: a universal CSV or a keyed entry instead of a native Paylocity file. Weigh that against what you gain at the punch.

08

FAQ

Every Clox feature is in the 14-day free trial, which needs no credit card, and the first paid subscription carries a 30-day money-back guarantee. Start a free trial, create one worksite, and watch a blocked punch happen on a phone before you decide.