> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://beathantechnologies.com/blog/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # What happens to a clock-in when there is no signal - URL: https://beathantechnologies.com/blog/clock-in-no-signal/ - Published: 2026-09-22T08:00:51.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-28T10:19:08.000Z - Description: A clock-in on a site with no coverage should still be recorded at the time it happened, not the time it finally uploaded. The difference is four hours on a timesheet you are about to invoice. - Author: Liam van Huyssteen - Tags: Sentry, Security operations, #kw: clocking system for security guards, #link: private-apn-offline | "works offline" means at least three different things | "works offline" In Sentry's clocking system for security guards, a clock-in on a site with no internet coverage is still recorded, at the time it actually happened. It sits on the mobile device until there is signal, then uploads carrying the original timestamp rather than the time it finally got through thus allowing for correct hours worked. That distinction is the whole post, and it is worth being precise about, because "works offline" means at least three different things in this market and only one of them is useful to you. ## The three things vendors mean by offline **The app opens.** You can launch it, look at a roster, and do nothing that matters. Plenty of products qualify. **The clock-in is accepted and uploaded later, stamped with the upload time.** This is the common one, and it is worse than it sounds. A guard clocks in at 18:00 at a site in a dead spot, walks to the gate at 22:00 where there is a bar of signal, and your system records a shift starting at 22:00\. Four hours have quietly gone missing from a timesheet you are going to invoice against. **The clock-in is accepted and uploaded later, stamped with the time it happened.** This is the one you want, and it is the only version that survives a client asking about a specific shift six weeks later. [Sentry](https://beathantechnologies.com/sentry/roll-call) does the third. The timestamp is captured on the handset at the moment the guard acts, stored with the queued record, and sent unchanged whenever the connection returns. The upload time is recorded separately, because both are useful and they are not the same fact. ## Why this is not a small engineering detail It changes what your records are worth. Most disputes about attendance are not about whether someone was there at all. They are about when. A guard who arrived at 18:00 and a guard who arrived at 22:00 are the same row in a badly designed system, and the difference is four hours of billable cover and a client relationship. Once the recorded time is the time of the event, a disputed shift has an answer. Not an argument about whether the network was bad that night. ## What sits behind it The guard app is native Android Application rather than a web page. That is a deliberate choice and it costs us something: two codebases where a web app would be one. The reason is that a browser cannot reliably hold a queue of pending actions through a shift, a phone restart and a flat battery, and cannot be counted on to hold a location fix and a photograph in the background. Everything a guard does offline goes into a queue on the device. Clock-ins, [occurrence entries](https://beathantechnologies.com/sentry/occurrence-book), photographs. A sync worker will sync that queue when connectivity returns and the guard's screen tells them plainly what is still waiting rather than pretending it has synced and causing issues for the next shift. Items that fail to send are parked rather than dropped and the app will try again. ## What to ask about a clocking system for security guards One question separates the second option from the third: **"If a guard clocks in at 18:00 with no signal and the phone only reconnects at 22:00, what time appears on the timesheet?"** If the answer is 22:00, or if it takes more than a sentence, you have the version that loses four hours and this will cause friction between your employees and you. ## Why we built it this way Because a site with reliable coverage is not the normal case in South African guarding. It is the exception. Sites are on farms, in industrial areas, in basements, in guard houses inside residential complexes. A system that works properly only where there is signal works properly on the shifts you were never worried about. --- *Next in this series:* [*what a defensible attendance record actually contains*](https://beathantechnologies.com/blog/proving-guard-attendance/)*, and what to send a client who says your guard was not there.*