How do I know my team was on site when they did the work?
Liam Jones
Founder, Pilla App
Date Modified
8 June 2026
A question from a real user
“I run thirty client sites across the city and I can't be at any of them. The morning check always comes back signed off at 6am, every day. But I have no way to tell whether the cleaner was actually on site or filled it in from their kitchen table. Most days it's fine. Some days it really isn't.”
Daniel
The workflows at a glance
- The problem. Workflows submitted from the wrong place look fine in the data but prove nothing about whether the work actually happened.
- The fix. Add a location input at the top of your workflow and gate the rest behind it. The worker has to be in the right place before anything else opens.
- A worked example. We use a kitchen opening checklist to show the setup. The same steps work for any workflow.
- The same pattern, anywhere on site. Hotel safety walks, contractor sign-ins, store openings, vehicle checks, medication rounds.
Article Content
The problem
A workflow gets submitted at 6:47am. All ticks green, sign-off complete, timestamp plausible. Looks like a good morning. Then you check the GPS metadata and see it was filled in from a car park half a mile from the place the work was meant to happen.
The work probably did happen. The person filling it in is probably honest. But you've no way to prove the checks were actually done, because the person doing the checking wasn't standing in front of them when they ticked the box.
This shows up everywhere once you start looking for it. The kitchen opening submitted from the car park. The hotel safety walk completed from reception. The contractor sign-in filled in by the contractor after they'd left. The store opening sign-off submitted on the bus to work. Different workflows, same pattern: the canvas says it's done, but the work didn't happen where it was meant to. The record is worthless.
Why this matters
A workflow is meant to be evidence. The whole point of asking your team to fill one in is so you can trust the record afterwards.
If you can't trust where it was filled in from, you can't trust the rest of it either. An inspector won't accept "well the timestamp is right" if you can't show the person was on site. Insurance won't help with an incident report that was written from home. And the recognition you wanted to give the team for doing the work properly stops feeling earned if you suspect half of them weren't there.
The fix is small and it takes about a minute to set up.
The fix: gate the workflow behind a location check
Pilla has geolocation built into the location input. Here's how to use it.
Add a location input as the first element of your workflow. Set the required location: the address of your site, or the exact spot you want the work to happen from. Then wire a gated connector after the location input. The rest of the workflow only opens once the user's current location has been grabbed and matched against the required one.
The worker opens the canvas, taps one button, and either gets a green tick (you're in the right place, the rest of the workflow unfolds) or a "you're not where you should be" prompt (nothing else opens). They don't have to type anything, remember anything, or know the address. They just have to be standing in the place the work is supposed to happen.
That's the whole setup. Once it's in, the rest of the workflow can't even be seen from the wrong place, let alone filled in.
A worked example: a kitchen opening, gated
The setup is the same no matter what workflow you apply it to. We'll walk through a kitchen opening checklist as the example, but every step is identical for any of the other situations. To turn it into a location-gated version: add a location input at the top, set the required location to the kitchen's address, and gate the rest of the canvas behind it.
What the worker sees on their phone in the morning: they open the workflow and see one prompt, "tap to confirm you're at the kitchen". They tap. If they're at the kitchen, the opening checklist appears as normal and they work through it the way they always have. If they're somewhere else, they get a message that they're not in the right place yet, and the rest stays hidden.
What you see in the dashboard afterwards: the same opening record you'd have had anyway, plus a confirmed location that the workflow was started from. The trust you wanted is there from the first tick.
The same pattern works anywhere a workflow has to happen on site
A kitchen is the example. The pattern is general. Any workflow that's only valid if the work happened in a specific place can be gated the same way.
- A hotel safety walk only counts if the person doing it actually walked the building. Gate it to the building address so it can't be filled in from reception.
- A contractor sign-in only protects you if the contractor was actually at the site when they signed in. Gate it to the site entrance.
- A retail store opening only proves the store opened safely if the person was inside it at the time. Gate it to the store address.
- A vehicle pre-use check only protects you if the driver looked at the vehicle. Gate it to the depot.
- A care home medication round only counts if the staff member was inside the home. Gate it to the home address.
The pattern is the same in each case. Pick the workflow where the place matters. Add the location input. Gate the rest. Done.
Closing
The gate costs the worker five seconds at the start of the workflow and gives you the trust the rest of the data is supposed to provide.
If you don't gate everything, start with the workflow where you most need to know the work happened on site. Usually that's the one that protects you with an inspector or insurer, or the one where a missed check costs money. Lock that one to its location, see how it feels, and roll it out to the others from there.