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Tracking time

Clock-in selfies

Clock-in selfies in Clox: turn on the front-camera photo at clock-in to deter buddy-punching, what your crew sees, and where managers review the photo.


A clock-in selfie is a quick front-camera photo your crew snaps the moment they clock in. It's a deterrent against buddy-punching, where one worker punches in for another who isn't on site yet. It is not face recognition. Clox saves the photo next to that shift so you can look at it and confirm the right person clocked in.

It's a deterrent, not a scanner
Clox stores the photo with the time entry. It doesn't run facial recognition or pull any face data off the photo. A manager just looks at it.

Turn it on for your workspace

This is a manager setting in the web app at app.getclox.com. It's off by default, and once you switch it on it applies to everyone in your workspace.

  1. Go to Settings, then the Shift behavior tab.
  2. Find the Selfie at clock-in row.
  3. Flip the toggle on. It saves on its own, so there's no separate Save button.
Get consent first
In some states (for example Illinois, Texas, and Washington) a clock-in photo counts as biometric data and you need written consent before the first photo. Give your crew the consent notice at getclox.com/selfie-consent before you turn this on.

What the worker sees

The selfie is the last step at clock-in, on purpose. Clox checks everything else first so nobody takes a photo only to get blocked on something they can fix.

  1. The worker taps Clock in on their phone.
  2. Clox runs the other checks first: a project if you require one, their schedule, and their worksite geofence.
  3. If those pass, the front camera opens in a Selfie for clock-in window.
  4. They take the photo and tap Use photo, and the shift starts.
No signal, no photo
If a worker clocks in with no connection, Clox skips the selfie and queues the punch. The photo step only runs when they're online.

You don't get pinged for every selfie. The photo lives with the shift, so you review it when you're already looking at someone's time. On the timesheet approval screen and on a worker's shift history, any shift with a selfie shows a View selfie button. Tap it and the photo opens, labeled with who clocked in. If the face isn't theirs, that's your sign someone punched in for them.

Selfies feed the proof record
When you export Proof of presence from Reports, the fact that a selfie was captured at a punch is part of the tamper-evident record, so it can be shown later that a photo was tied to that clock-in and the record was not edited after the fact. A manager still looks at the photo to judge who it is. Clox does not match faces.
Clocking in and out
The basics of how your crew starts and ends a shift.
Worksites and geofencing
Lock clock-in to the job site so punches happen on location.

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