Why facial or GPS validation failed

What the validation badges mean, common reasons a clock-in fails GPS or facial check, and what to do about it.

Every clock-in and clock-out can carry up to two validation results: GPS (was the employee at an authorised location?) and Facial (does the selfie match the employee's reference photo?). On the Attendance Report you'll see one of three badges per side:

Badge	What it means
Pass	The check ran and succeeded.
Fail	The check ran and the result didn't match. The clock record is still saved — but a manager should review it.
N/A	The check wasn't run (your company has it turned off, or the device couldn't capture the data).

A failed validation does not block the clock-in by default. The record is created, the employee gets a confirmation, and the row is then surfaced on the dashboard's "Failed Validations" widget so a manager can investigate.

Common reasons GPS fails

Employee was outside the geofence. Each branch has a centre point (latitude/longitude) and a radius. If the captured location is further than the radius from the centre, GPS fails. Check the location's radius — for some sites 100 m isn't enough; 250-500 m is more realistic.
Coarse location only. If the user denied "precise location" in their phone settings, the OS gives an approximate fix that can be 100s of metres off.
Indoors, near concrete walls. GPS struggles indoors. Sometimes the only fix the phone can get is wildly inaccurate.
Mock location apps. Less common but does happen — some employees install fake-GPS apps. Timed can't reliably detect this, so consider it a possibility if a known-on-site employee keeps "failing" GPS while everyone around them passes.

Common reasons Facial fails

Reference photo is poor or out of date. If the employee was registered with a low-quality photo, or has since changed appearance significantly (long beard, very different glasses, weight change), the facial recognition similarity score may not clear the threshold.
Bad lighting at clock-in. Direct backlight, very dark rooms, or wearing a peaked cap with shadow over the face all hurt the score.
Multiple faces in the frame. If a colleague is behind the employee, facial recognition may pick the wrong face.
There's no reference photo. If the employee's reference photo is missing, the check returns N/A rather than Fail. An admin should add a new reference photo for the employee.

What to do as a manager

Open the Attendance Report and filter to Validation: Failed Validation.
Click into the failed record. The detail modal shows the GPS coordinates, a small map, the clock-in selfie, and the reference photo side by side.
Decide: was the employee actually on site / actually them? If yes, approve the variance. If no, follow up.
If the same employee fails repeatedly, update their reference photo (open the employee's page and use the Facial Recognition section, or use a good clock-in selfie as the new reference from the record's detail view) or check the location's geofence radius.

Realtime vs delayed validation

Each company can choose (under Settings) realtime or delayed validation:

Realtime — the check runs while the clock-in is being submitted. Slows the request by 0.5-2 seconds. Used when you want immediate feedback to the employee.
Delayed (default) — the clock-in saves immediately and the validation runs in the background. Faster for the employee; the result lands on the record a few seconds later.

Both produce the same Pass / Fail / N/A badge — the only difference is timing. If you're seeing badges that take a while to appear after a clock-in, that's delayed validation working as intended.