GPS Attendance for Field Sales Staff: Replace the Paper Register in Nepal

A paper register works for a shop counter or a factory gate. It does not work for a salesperson who leaves home at 7 a.m., visits twenty shops in Banepa or Butwal and ends the day at a bus stop. If you still ask field staff to sign a register on the day they come to the office, you do not know who worked on the other days. This guide explains GPS attendance for field sales staff in Nepal: what to record, how to define late and absent fairly, and how to produce a monthly report without anyone filling in a register.

Why office attendance fails for field teams

• The office is not the workplace. A salesperson may spend a whole week without seeing the office.
• Registers get filled in later. Signatures at the end of the week are memory, not records.
• Sign-in at the door says nothing about the work. A person can sign in and go home.
• Disputes are hard to settle. "I was in the field" is easy to say and hard to prove.

The fix is to base attendance on events that happen in the field anyway: starting the day, visiting shops and ending the day.

What to record

1. Day start: the time and location when the person starts work.
2. Visits: shop check-ins during the day. See field sales tracking in Nepal.
3. Day end: the time the person finishes, with an optional note.

From these three you can answer most attendance questions without a register.

Define the rules before you use them

Work week and holidays

Set the weekly off days for the company. Nepal's standard weekly off is not the same for every business, so choose the days that match yours. Add public holidays for the year, including Nepali festival days. Holidays should never count as absent.

If someone has a different weekly off, such as a shop-based staff member working a different rota, give that person an individual setting.

Late

Choose a work start time and a grace period. For example, "work starts at 9:00, and a day that starts after 9:15 counts as late". Write the grace period down.

Absent

A reasonable rule: no day start and no recorded visits on a working day means absent. Agree what happens with approved leave and make sure leave is recorded, so it does not show as absent.

Left early

Decide what counts as leaving early, for example ending the day well before the usual time. This is a signal for a conversation, not a penalty by itself.

A monthly grid beats a stack of registers

A good attendance view shows one row per person and one cell per day, with a letter for each status, such as present, late, absent, off, holiday. The manager can read a month in a minute. Example, with invented numbers:

Person	Present	Late	Absent	Off/Holiday
Officer A	20	2	0	8
Officer B	17	4	1	8

For Officer B, the manager asks about the four late days and the absent day before drawing any conclusion. Perhaps there was a strike, a landslide on the route or a family emergency.

An illustrative example

Imagine a company with 15 field staff. Before the change, the accountant collected weekly registers and found that attendance matched pay only for the days people came to the office. After the change, staff start their day in the app. The accountant prints the grid on the last day of the Nepali month and checks only the exceptions: late days above a limit, absent days and days with no visits. The check takes minutes rather than hours. These numbers are only an illustration, but the shift from "collect registers" to "check exceptions" is the real benefit.

Fairness matters more than precision

• Tell staff what counts as late and absent before you apply it.
• Account for genuine causes: bad weather, road closures and strikes. Add a note instead of a penalty.
• Use the grid to start conversations. Read stopping fake visits for the ethical approach.
• Write down your policy for tracking and who sees the data. See GPS tracking and privacy for sales teams.
• Link attendance to pay carefully. Check payroll rules with your accountant.

Connect attendance to month-end

The attendance grid feeds the month-end routine for commissions and salaries. See month-end closing checklist and Bikram Sambat, fiscal year and month-end closing for working in the Nepali calendar.

A second example: a small company with a sudden shift in staff

Illustrative numbers. A company with 8 field staff has no register. In one Nepali month, three people are on approved leave, one is sick for two days, and a road blockade stops the whole east route for a day. The owner wants to pay fairly and settle one complaint from a staff member who says he was marked absent on a day he worked.

With attendance worked out from day starts and visits, the owner checks the staff member's day. He started his day at 8:50 and had four visits, so the system shows present, and the complaint is settled in five minutes. For the blockade day, the owner adds a note and treats the day as a working day for the east team. Without records, each of these would have been an argument based on memory.

Situation	What the grid shows	What the owner does
Approved leave	Absent unless leave is recorded	Record the leave so it is not counted as absent
Sick for two days	Absent	Ask for the usual note, then record
Road blockade	Absent or no visits	Add a note and agree the day's treatment
Complaint about a wrong mark	Check day start and visits	Correct the setting or the record

Common mistakes

• Starting the day late in the app. A person who leaves home at 7 and starts the app at 10 will look late. Teach staff to start when they begin travelling.
• Forgetting to add holidays. Staff then appear absent on a public holiday.
• One weekly off for everyone. Some staff work on a different rota.
• Treating "late" as a penalty on day one. Start with a conversation, not a deduction.
• Ignoring staff who start early and finish early. Look at the whole day, not just the start time.
• Using attendance as the only performance measure. A present person with no orders is a different problem from an absent person.

Questions owners ask

Can I use biometric devices and GPS together?

You can, for different groups. Biometric at the office suits warehouse and office staff, while field staff are better served by day start and visit records.

What if the phone dies in the middle of the day?

The day start is already recorded, and visits are saved when made. Explain to staff that a dead phone should be reported to the supervisor, and consider a power bank for long routes.

What about staff who work half days?

Decide the rule in advance. Some companies treat a person who ends early as "left early", with a conversation, rather than a separate half-day category.

Is attendance the same as pay?

No. Attendance is a record. Pay rules come from your employment terms and your accountant. Use the grid as an input and agree who approves any exception.

How do I handle visits on a public holiday?

If your company works on a given holiday, make the exception clear and record it. Otherwise, holidays should not count as absent, and staff who choose to work should be handled by your policy.

A monthly attendance check in four steps

1. Open the monthly grid on the last day of the Nepali month.
2. Filter to late, absent and early-leave marks.
3. Talk to each person with several marks and note the reason.
4. Fix the work week or the holiday list if the grid looks wrong for many people at once.

How GamiTrack does it

In GamiTrack, nobody marks attendance by hand. Attendance is worked out from when each person taps Start my day and from their visits, in Nepal time. An owner sets the weekend, the time work starts, the check-in radius and the holidays under Settings. Starting more than 15 minutes after the set time counts as late, and ending early shows as Left early. A person can have their own weekend. Ready-made holiday lists can be added for the year. The Attendance page shows a monthly grid with P for present, L for late, A for absent, W for day off and H for holiday, plus a count of early leaves. The help article work week, holidays, attendance and routes lists the steps, and start and end your day shows what staff do. You can try it with a free trial.

Key takeaways

• Base field attendance on day start, visits and day end.
• Publish the rules for late, absent, holidays and weekly off.
• Check exceptions, not every day.
• Treat the grid as a conversation starter, and keep tracking fair and limited to work hours.