Time Tracking with Geofence
By Phazahn Odom | Founder of Phixmo | Former bookkeeper for residential GCs | Former NFL tight end, Pittsburgh Steelers
Time theft costs general contractors thousands of dollars a year, and most of it hides in plain sight: hours that start early, end late, or never happened on the jobsite at all. Phixmo uses GPS geofencing to verify a worker is actually on site before the clock starts, so the hours you pay for are the hours that were worked.
And the best part: it is free. Your field workers do not cost anything on Phixmo.
A geofence is a virtual boundary around the jobsite. Every clock in and clock out is checked against it, and the verified hours flow straight into job costing. Three steps, all from the worker's phone.
A worker arrives at the jobsite, opens Phixmo on their phone, and taps clock in. Before the clock starts, Phixmo checks their GPS location against the project geofence. If they are inside the radius, they are clocked in and the timestamp is recorded. If they are outside it, the clock in is blocked and they are told they need to be on site.
At the end of the shift the worker taps clock out and Phixmo runs the same location check. You get a verified start and end, both tied to the jobsite, so the recorded hours reflect time actually spent on the project rather than whatever someone wrote on a paper timesheet later.
The verified hours multiply by the worker rate and post directly into the labor cost for that project. No timesheet to collect, no spreadsheet to update, no end of week reconciliation. The labor number on your job costing dashboard is current by the end of every shift.
Four problems show up on almost every crew, and all four come back to one thing: hours you cannot trust. Verified time fixes each of them.
Buddy punching, padded hours, and clocking in from the parking lot or the truck add up fast. A crew that starts the clock 20 minutes early and ends it 20 minutes late is 40 paid minutes a day per worker that nobody worked. Across a season that is thousands of dollars per crew. Geofencing ties every clock in to a real location on the jobsite, so the hours you pay for are hours that happened where the work is.
Labor is usually the biggest and most slippery cost on a residential job. When hours come from memory or a paper sheet filled out on Friday, your labor cost is a guess. Verified clock in and clock out times give you an exact labor number per project, which is the difference between knowing your margin and hoping for it.
When a worker says they worked 45 hours and your records say 40, a paper timesheet does not settle it. A GPS verified log of clock in and clock out times, tied to the jobsite, does. The record is clear, both sides can see it, and the argument is over before it starts.
On a normal day you have crews spread across multiple jobsites and no easy way to know who actually showed up where. Phixmo shows you who is clocked in, on which project, in real time. You stop driving across town to check on a crew that is or is not there.
As little friction as possible. If clocking in is hard, workers stop doing it, so Phixmo keeps it to a phone and five seconds.
Any iPhone or Android works. Workers open Phixmo in the phone browser and clock in. There is no app to download, no app store account, and no install to talk a 55 year old framer through. If the phone can load a web page and share its location, the worker is ready.
Clocking in or out takes about five seconds: open the page, tap the button, done. Fast enough that workers actually do it every time instead of guessing at hours later.
While they are in Phixmo, field workers can also snap a photo of a material receipt and let the AI log it to the project, upload jobsite photos to the daily log, and check the schedule to see where they are working next.
It is one simple page on a phone they already carry, which is exactly why field workers are free on Phixmo. You only pay for office and management seats.
Time tracking is only worth something if it connects to the budget. In Phixmo the two are the same system, so verified hours become a live labor number you can act on.
Every verified clock out multiplies the hours by the worker rate and posts the result to the labor category for that project. There is a direct line from a worker tapping clock out to the labor number on your job costing dashboard, with no manual entry in between. The labor cost you see is real, not an estimate.
You bid the framing at 80 hours. Phixmo shows you actual hours against that estimate as the crew logs them, so when framing crosses 60 hours with half the work left, you see it on day three, not at reconciliation. Catching an overrun while it is happening means you can still adjust scope, move a crew, or write a change order while there is room to react.
Most construction software charges per user, and field workers count as users. Track 10 or 15 workers and the bill climbs every month. On Phixmo, field workers are free, so tracking your whole crew costs nothing.
Buildertrend
$39/user/mo
10 workers/mo
$390
15 workers/mo
$585
JobTread
$50/user/mo
10 workers/mo
$500
15 workers/mo
$750
Phixmo
$0
10 workers/mo
$0
15 workers/mo
$0
Competitor pricing reflects publicly listed per-user rates and is for comparison only.
Time tracking with geofence is included on every Phixmo plan. The tier you pick depends on the number of office seats (owners, PMs, supervisors, admins) you need. Field workers are always free.
Free
$0/mo
Free forever. Unlimited projects, field workers free.
2 office seats
+ unlimited free field workers
Pro
$169/mo
Growing GCs with active teams.
5 office seats
+ unlimited free field workers
Growth
$299/mo
Larger operations.
10 office seats + $25/extra
+ unlimited free field workers
Yes. Any smartphone with GPS works, iPhone or Android. Workers clock in through the browser, so there is nothing to install from an app store. As long as the phone can load a web page and share its location, it works.
No. When a worker taps clock in, Phixmo checks their GPS location against the project geofence. If they are outside the radius, the clock in is blocked and they see a message telling them they need to be on site. There is no way to clock in from the couch.
Yes. Every project has its own radius and the default is 300 feet, which covers most residential lots plus a margin for GPS drift. Larger sites or scattered work areas can be set wider. You change it per project in the project settings.
Phone GPS is typically accurate to 15 to 30 feet outdoors, which is why the default radius is set at 300 feet rather than something tight. The radius is deliberately sized to account for normal GPS drift so an honest worker standing on the jobsite is never blocked by a few feet of error.
Yes. Each worker can see their own clock in and clock out history and their own hours. They cannot see other workers hours, rates, or any project financials. The full time log and labor cost view stays with the office and project managers.
No. Phixmo tracks and verifies hours and feeds them into job costing, but it does not run payroll itself. You export the approved hours and process them through your existing payroll provider. Think of Phixmo as the accurate source of truth that payroll runs from.