A recent release introduces the ability to record whether each clocking was made from home or the office, and to report on home versus office attendance across your workforce. 

Overview

Every clocking now carries a work location, set automatically based on where it was made. In the Daily Browser, an icon next to each clocking shows the location: a house icon for Home and an office icon for Office.

How the system decides Home or Office

The work location attached to a clocking depends on its source:

A punch on a physical terminal is always treated as Office, because the terminal is on site. The web clocking widget is the only place a person clocks in remotely, so that is where Home or Office is determined for home-based working.

Setting up office IP ranges (account level)

Auto-detection works by checking the IP address a web clocking comes from against the office IP ranges you configure. If a clocking's IP falls inside a configured office range, it is recorded as Office. If it does not, it is recorded as Home.

To configure your office IP ranges:

1. Go to System Setup > Options.
2. Open the Work from Home tab.
3. In Set IP Address Ranges, enter one or more ranges. Separate multiple ranges with commas, following the on-screen example: 192.168.0.0-192.168.1.0,8.8.8.8-9.9.9.9
4. Set Work Location Range in meters to the permitted distance used when matching a clocking to a work location.
5. Click Save.
   

If no IP ranges are configured, auto-detection is unavailable and users select their location manually instead.

Clocking from the web widget

The web clocking widget (the on-screen In / Out / Break / Activities panel) determines work location in one of two ways, depending on whether Auto-detect is switched on.

Auto-detect

When office IP ranges have been configured, the Auto-detect toggle becomes available. With it switched on, the widget reads the IP address the clocking is coming from and sets the work location automatically. The widget displays the detected location and the matched IP, and confirms the basis of the match with the note "Matched against IPs set in Account › Locations."

If no office IP ranges have been configured, Auto-detect is greyed out and cannot be enabled.

Manual selection

If no IP ranges are set, or if the user switches Auto-detect off, they choose their location from the Clocking from dropdown, for example Office — Head Office. The widget then shows Set manually, and the chosen location is applied to the clocking.

Users can switch between the two modes at any time using the Auto-detect toggle.

Viewing work location in the Daily Browser

Open Time & Attendance > Daily Browser and run your search as usual. Each clocking row displays a work-location icon alongside the In and Out markers:

• House icon = Home
• Office icon = Office

To review only home or only office attendance, use the location filter in the Display section and select Office or Home, then run the search.

Figure 4: Time & Attendance > Daily Browser. The location filter sits in the Display section, and each clocking carries a Home or Office icon.

Editing work location

The work location attached to a clocking can be amended from within a record's daily details in the Daily Browser. This is useful when a clocking needs correcting, for example a manual Daily Browser entry that defaulted to Office but should be recorded as Home.