Choosing a Product
The questions that separate a clock-in app from a tracking product with a clock-in feature.
Putting it in · Procedure
Products in this category range from a narrow punch-verification tool to continuous monitoring with attendance attached. The difference is not in the marketing.
The collection questions
Does the app request background location, or only while in use?
What arrives when the app is closed? Verify rather than ask.
Is the accuracy figure stored with each punch?
Are refused punches logged, or only successful ones?
Can coordinates be deleted while keeping the attendance record?
A product answering badly on these is a monitoring product, whatever the page says.
The operational questions
Per-site radii, or one global setting?
Polygons as well as circles?
Does it support wifi, beacon or NFC verification as an alternative or a supplement?
Accept-with-flag, or hard refusal only?
Can a worker submit a correction themselves?
Offline behaviour: does a punch queue and sync, or fail?
The worker-facing questions
Can a person see their own punches, with the flags?
Can they see what the app collected?
Is there a visible indicator when location is being checked?
Can they submit a correction without finding a manager?
These exist in better products and their absence tells you what the product is designed around.
The trial
At your worst site, not your best.
The basement, the metal-roofed warehouse, the shop between two tall buildings.
Measure the refusal rate over a fortnight with real staff.
Leave the app closed for a day and check whether anything arrived.
Test a refusal deliberately — airplane mode at the door — and see what the worker experience is.
Two weeks, one site, and you will know more than any demonstration shows.
Red flags
Background location requested when the function does not need it.
"Continuous tracking" as a feature adjacent to attendance.
No accept-with-flag.
Refusals not logged.
Retention defaulting to indefinite.
Marketing about catching people rather than about recording attendance.
The contract
Where data is processed and stored.
Retention matching yours, with deletion confirmed on termination.
Notification before feature changes that alter what is collected.
Export of attendance records in a readable format, specified now rather than requested later.
Trial at the worst site
Not the easiest one.
The basement, the metal-roofed warehouse, the shop between two tall buildings.
Two weeks with real staff.
Measure the refusal rate.
A product that works at your best site tells you nothing; one that works at your worst tells you everything, and it is where the deployment will be judged.
A concrete product reference
When translating this principle into a buying test, employee monitoring software pricing provides a concrete workflow reference. Verify current behaviour in a trial and judge it against the purpose and limits above.