If your crews clock in at buildings you never visit, you are running on trust. Most owners find out how expensive that trust is by accident: a client calls asking why they were billed for a night nobody showed, or a timesheet shows a punch from a worker who was — provably — somewhere else.
Buddy punching (one worker punching for another) and location fraud (punching from home, from the car, from the wrong site) are the two classic leaks. Industry studies consistently put time theft at several percent of gross payroll. On a $1M payroll, even 2% is $20,000 a year — quietly, invisibly, every year.
Why field crews are the hardest case
An office has one door and a receptionist. A field-service company has thirty doors across two boroughs, staffed at night, with no supervisor present. Paper timesheets are unverifiable by design. Phone-call check-ins prove nothing. Even basic punch-clock apps only prove that someone tapped a button somewhere.
The fix isn't surveillance — it's evidence. Each punch should carry enough proof that nobody has to argue about it later: not the worker, not the supervisor, not the client.
The three checks that close the gap
GPS with geofencing answers where. The punch records coordinates and the distance to the assigned building, and a punch from 129 miles away gets flagged instead of silently accepted. Accuracy matters here: a coarse GPS fix should be treated as a warning, not as proof.
Selfie capture with a face check answers who. A camera at the kiosk or on the phone takes a photo at punch-in and punch-out. Buddy punching dies immediately — nobody lends their face.
A personal PIN or passkey answers who again, differently. It's a credential only the worker holds, it doubles as their signature for documents like wage notices, and it takes about four seconds on a tablet kiosk.
What changes when punches are verified
Payroll disputes shrink to nothing, because the worker's own portal shows the same punches payroll used. Client billing disputes shrink too: when an invoice is built from hours that carry GPS distance and photos, "your crew never came" stops being a conversation.
That's the approach StockPoint takes: a QR-launched tablet kiosk with a PIN pad and selfie check, GPS phone punching with geofence distance on every entry, and every verified punch flowing straight into timesheets, pay stubs, client invoices, and job costing. One punch, no arguments.