FEATURE · Employee Attendance

No more checking in for a colleague. The camera has to see them, live.

Face Lock adds a live face check to mobile check-in. The Inkwelly app asks each teacher to look at the front camera and turn their head the way the arrow says, and the punch counts only when the face matches the one your school approved. A practice period, an ask-admin fallback that keeps the original time, and face data kept private under the DPDP Act — for CBSE, ICSE and State Board schools.

Why phone attendance needs face recognition

It is 7:56 on a Tuesday in a 900-student CBSE school in Gorakhpur. The school moved staff attendance to mobile check-in last month, and the register has gone back into the cupboard. A TGT is stuck at the railway crossing, so she sends a WhatsApp to the colleague who shares her staff-room table: "Mera bhi laga dena." He has her Inkwelly login on his own phone — she shared the OTP once, just in case. Two taps from inside the campus circle, two punches, both on time. In the school down the road, which asks for a selfie with every punch, the same favour works too: the selfie lands in the Activity tab among eighty others, and nobody opens it.

The cost is not one late mark. It is a record the honest staff stop believing in. The teacher who reached at 7:40 in the rain watches a colleague who walked in at 8:25 get the same on-time day, and the next time she is late, she asks for the same favour. The accountant pays full salary against days nobody can prove. And when the management committee asks for the late-coming report in the March meeting, the principal knows the numbers are too clean to trust.

A geo-fence proves the phone was on campus. A selfie proves somebody was holding it. Neither proves who. Face Lock closes that gap: a phone check-in counts only when the front camera sees the right person, live.

How Face Lock works

Face Lock sits on top of mobile check-in in the employee attendance module. The campus circle, the fake-GPS refusal and the server clock stay exactly as they are. Face Lock adds one more question before a punch is accepted: is this the right person?

Setting it up takes a few minutes on the web. Open Employee Attendance, then Settings, then Mobile Check-in, and under Proof at check-in pick Face verified. Choose how strict to be — Free, Smart or Bank-grade — and set a Face required from date. Until that date it is a practice period; from that date, an approved face is needed to check in from the phone. Nothing changes until you press Save.

Next, staff register their face once, in the Inkwelly app. They read a short consent note in English or Hindi, see three tips — no mask, sunglasses or cap; regular glasses are fine; only you in the frame — and look at the front camera while the app guides them: look straight, turn left, turn right, look straight again. It takes a few seconds. The registration goes to the school's admins, who get a notification in the app, compare the photos and approve. Only an approved face is used for check-in.

From then on, a check-in works like this. The teacher reaches the gate and taps Check in. The server first confirms the phone is inside the campus circle, then hands the phone a one-time face check with a direction picked at random — this morning, turn left. The teacher looks at the camera, turns when the arrow asks and comes back to the centre. The server checks that it is one real person, that the head turned the way it was asked, that the photos are not a printed photo or a screen, and that the face matches the one you approved. If all of that holds, the punch is recorded at the moment the teacher tapped Check in — so the few seconds of the face check can never make anyone late.

What every face check-in checks

The phone is inside your campus circle, with a fresh GPS fix and no fake-location app — before the camera even opens
One face in the frame, close enough, centred, sharp, and in enough light to see clearly
A head turn in the direction the server picked for this check — left or right, chosen at random each time — so a photo cannot pass
The same person in every photo of the check, from looking straight to the turn and back to the centre
No printed photo, phone screen or laptop held up to the camera — a doubtful capture is flagged, or sent for a stronger check on Smart
A match with the face your school approved for that staff member, not just any face that happens to be in front of the phone
A one-time check that expires in 90 seconds, so photos saved yesterday cannot be sent again this morning
The same photos sent twice are caught, the way a photo or a screen is
A new phone, or one phone used by two staff members, is marked on the punch so the admin can see it
The punch time is the moment of the tap, fixed by the server, whatever happens in the seconds after it

Registration, and your approval

Staff register from the Face check-in screen in the app, or straight from the check-in sheet when the app asks them to. The consent note is short and plain: what is collected, why, who can see it, where it is kept, for how long, and how to withdraw. They can read it in English or Hindi, and the version they accepted is kept on record with the date and the language. The capture takes four photos — looking straight, turned left, turned right and straight again — so the face on file has been seen from more than one side. If the light is poor or the face is too far away, the app says so in plain words and they try again, up to three registrations a day. The registration then waits for an admin. Until someone at school approves it, it is not used for check-in.

What an admin sees before approving

The Faces tab lists every staff member who can check in from the phone, with their face status: approved, waiting, not registered, rejected or exempt. Open a waiting registration and you see the new photos, the staff member's HR profile photo with how alike the two are, and a few automatic checks. If the new face looks a lot like a colleague's already on file, the screen says so — a sign that someone may have registered their own face on a friend's account. If the photos look like a printed photo or a screen, it says that too. Approve, and they can check in with their face straight away. Reject with a reason — "Photo is blurry or too dark", "This isn't the right person" — and they see it in the app and register again. A new face for someone already registered replaces the old one only when you approve it.

Free, Smart or Bank-grade

You choose how strict to be, and you can change it any time. Free runs Inkwelly's own face check on every punch — the random head turn, the photo-and-screen check and the match with the approved face — on Inkwelly's servers in India, at no extra cost. Smart runs the same check first and calls in a second opinion only when it is needed: a face match from Amazon Web Services when our check is unsure, and a certified live-face check when something looks unusual — a new phone, one phone used by two people, a failed face match earlier that day, a photo-like capture, or a surprise check picked at random. Bank-grade runs the certified live check and the face match on every single punch. The certified check was independently lab-tested (iBeta Level 1 and 2, under the ISO 30107-3 standard) against printed photos, screens and masks.

Monthly limits that never lock anyone out

Smart and Bank-grade are switched on for your school by Inkwelly, each with a monthly allowance of certified checks and face matches. The settings screen shows how many you have used this month and why they were used — our check was unsure, a surprise check, an unusual phone, a registration. If the allowance runs out before the month does, nobody is stopped at the gate: Face Lock falls back to the Free check for the rest of the month, marks those punches so you can see it, and tells your admins when the count reaches 80 and 100 per cent. Counts start again on the 1st. If the level you chose is not enabled for your school yet, the screen says so, runs the highest level that is, and brings your choice back on its own the day it is enabled.

When the check blocks an honest teacher

Every face system will sometimes say no to the right person: a dark staff room at 7:30 in December, a scratched front camera, a teacher holding a cup of tea in one hand. Face Lock gives three tries on a capture problem and tells the teacher exactly what went wrong — come a little closer, find more light, turn your head a little more, slowly. If it still cannot confirm them, the app offers Check in & ask admin. The request reaches the admins with the check-in photos beside the approved face and a line that reads "Will be recorded as 7:32 AM". Approve it, and the punch is recorded at that original time — the moment they were confirmed on campus — so nobody is marked late because of a bad-light morning. Requests can be sent up to 48 hours later, and a rejected one tells the teacher why.

Exemptions for faith, health and phones

Some staff cannot, or should not, use a face check, and the answer should not be a quiet workaround. From the Faces tab an admin can exempt a staff member with a reason: a face covering worn for reasons of faith, a medical reason, a phone with no front camera, or anything else with a short note. An exemption can end on a date you set, or stay until you remove it. Exempt staff keep checking in from the phone inside the campus circle, with a selfie as proof instead of the face check, and their punches are marked Exempt so nobody mistakes them for face-verified ones. When the reason goes away — a new phone, a healed injury — remove the exemption, and the app asks them to register their face.

A practice period before it counts

Switching a whole staff room to face check-in on a Monday morning is how rollouts fail. The Face required from date gives everyone time. Until that date, staff who have registered are checked on every punch, but a failed check only flags the punch for the admin — it never blocks. Staff who have not registered yet check in with a selfie, and so do staff still on an older version of the app. The settings screen shows how many staff are ready — approved, waiting, not registered, exempt or on an old app — and one button reminds everyone who has not registered, never more than once a day. From the date you picked, an approved face is needed. A face still waiting for approval on that day is used, and flagged, for up to seven more days, so a slow approval does not stop anyone at the gate.

When face checking is down

Face Lock never treats a server problem as the teacher's fault. If Inkwelly's face check cannot be reached at 8:00, your own setting decides what happens. Allow and flag, the default, lets check-ins through, marks them, and checks the saved photos automatically once the face check is back — anything that does not match then shows up for the admin. Block stops phone check-ins until it returns, and staff can ask an admin to approve instead. A check the teacher walks away from, or a camera screen they close, is never counted as the server being down. On Smart and Bank-grade, if the certified check cannot be reached, Face Lock falls back to Inkwelly's own check and marks the punch. Either way, the admin sees exactly which punches were checked, how, and which were not.

“A selfie tells you a phone was at the gate. A live face check tells you who was holding it.”

Real-world use cases

The school where the register lied politely. A 700-student CBSE school in Lucknow suspects two teachers are checking in for each other on a shared login. The principal switches on Face Lock at Free with a two-week practice period. In the first week, the Activity tab shows two punches marked "Phone used by more than one person" and one failed match that the practice period let through. The principal has a quiet word, and from the required date the favours stop, because the phone will not accept the wrong face.
The boarding school with a 6:30 start. Hostel wardens at a residential school near Dehradun check in before sunrise in a dim corridor. The first mornings bring a few "find more light" retries and two ask-admin requests, both approved at the original time. By the second week the wardens step under the verandah light before they tap, and the requests stop.
The teacher who covers her face. A teacher in a Hyderabad school keeps her face covered for reasons of faith. The admin exempts her with that reason and no end date. She checks in inside the campus circle with a selfie, her punches are marked Exempt, and nobody asks her to explain herself at the gate.
The trust that wants one campus on the strictest check. A trust in Jaipur runs three schools, and one of them has had a proxy complaint from its management committee. The trust asks Inkwelly to enable Bank-grade for that campus; the other two stay on Free. Each school's settings screen shows its own level and its own monthly count.
The morning the face check goes quiet. A server hiccup at 7:58 means the face check cannot answer for ten minutes. The school's setting is Allow and flag, so check-ins go through, marked. Later that morning the saved photos are checked again; all but one match, and that one lands in the admin's review list.

Everyday scenarios it handles

A teacher taps Check in at 7:52, turns left when the arrow asks, and sees her receipt a few seconds later — with 7:52 on it
A colleague tries to check in on a friend's login from his own phone; the face does not match, the punch is refused, and the admins get a warning
Someone holds up a printed photo or another phone's screen; the photo-and-screen check flags it, and on Smart a certified live check is asked for
A teacher's first check-in from a new phone is marked New phone, and on Smart it also gets a certified live check
The staff room is dark at 7:30; the app asks for more light, and after three tries offers Check in & ask admin
An admin approves a blocked 7:41 check-in at 11:00; the register shows 7:41, and late marking uses 7:41, not 11:00
A new joiner registers on day one, the principal approves from the Inkwelly app on her phone, and the teacher checks in with her face next morning
The school picks Check-in only, so check-outs need just the campus circle and the 3:30 rush at the gate stays quick
A leaver's face data is deleted within 30 days of their leaving date, without anyone having to remember it
A staff member withdraws consent in the app; their face data is deleted at once, and they mark attendance at the biometric machine or the office instead

See Face Lock work on your own phone

A 20-minute walkthrough: you register your face in the Inkwelly app, check in, and watch a wrong face get refused — then see exactly what your admin would see.

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Limits, safety and the small print

Face Lock works in the Inkwelly app on Android phones with a front camera. There is no iPhone app yet, so staff without an Android phone keep using the biometric machine or the office, as before. Staff need the latest version of the app; older versions keep checking in with a selfie until the Face required from date, and are then asked to update. Like mobile check-in itself, it needs an internet connection at the moment of the check-in. There is no offline face check and no face check-in from the web portal.

The Free level is honest protection, not a certificate. It stops the everyday favour — a colleague's face, a printed photo, a phone screen, photos sent twice — but a determined, well-prepared cheat, for example a live video call played on a good screen, can occasionally get past a check that is not certified. If that is your worry, Smart's surprise checks and Bank-grade's certified check on every punch are built for it. For the first 30 days after you switch Face Lock on, the photo-and-screen check only flags punches for review while it gets used to your school's phones and light; after that it can refuse them.

Some older phones cannot run the certified live check. On Smart and Bank-grade, those staff get Inkwelly's own check plus a face match, and the punch is marked so you can see it. Certified checks are limited by the monthly allowance Inkwelly sets for your school; when it runs out, the Free check takes over until the month ends.

Face Lock is for staff attendance only. It does not mark students, and it is not a gate camera. Ask-admin approvals cover face problems only: a check-in from outside the campus circle still goes through the off-campus request, as before. Everything on this page is what the product does today, not a roadmap.

Belongs to

1 module

Employee Attendance Software for Indian Schools

What’s new

1 update

24 Sept 2026Face Lock
Face Lock for Staff Check-in — Now Live in Inkwelly

Frequently asked

9 questions

Is Face Lock face recognition, and how accurate is it?

Yes. Every phone check-in is matched against the face your school approved for that staff member, after a live head-turn challenge. We do not quote a single accuracy percentage, because it depends on the phone's camera and the light in your staff room. That is why Face Lock has a practice period, three tries with plain instructions, and an ask-admin approval that keeps the original time for the honest misses.

Can a teacher fool it with a photo or a video?

A printed photo cannot turn its head, so it fails the random head-turn challenge, and the photo-and-screen check flags photos and screens held up to the camera. Photos sent a second time are caught too. The Free level is not certified, though, and a well-prepared cheat with a live video call on a good screen can occasionally get past it. Smart adds surprise certified live checks, and Bank-grade runs one on every punch.

Do staff have to register their face? Who approves it?

Yes, once, in the Inkwelly app, after reading a short consent note in English or Hindi. The registration goes to the school's admins, who compare it with the staff member's HR photo and a look-alike check against other staff, then approve or reject it with a reason. Only approved faces are used for check-in.

What happens if an honest teacher fails the face check?

The app explains what went wrong and gives three tries. If it still cannot confirm them, they tap Check in & ask admin. An admin sees the check-in photos next to the approved face and approves or rejects it. An approved punch is recorded at the original time — when the teacher was confirmed on campus — so they are not marked late for it.

What about staff who cover their face, or whose phone has no front camera?

An admin can exempt them, with a reason: a face covering worn for reasons of faith, a medical reason, no front camera, or another reason with a note. Exempt staff check in from the phone with a selfie instead of the face check, and their punches are marked Exempt.

Where is the face data kept, and is it safe under the DPDP Act?

Face photos are kept in a private, locked store, not the school's media library, and only admins with face-review permission can see them. The check itself uses an encrypted mathematical summary of the face. Checking happens on Inkwelly's servers in India, and on Smart or Bank-grade also on Amazon Web Services in Mumbai. Check-in photos are deleted within 6 months, a leaver's face data within 30 days, and withdrawing consent in the app deletes it straight away.

Does Face Lock replace our biometric machine?

No. It checks phone check-ins only. Your fingerprint machine keeps working as before, and its punches and phone punches merge into the same day. Many schools keep the machine at the main gate and let everyone else check in from the phone.

How much does Face Lock cost?

The Free level runs on Inkwelly's own servers at no extra cost. Smart and Bank-grade use certified checks that are paid per check, so Inkwelly enables them for a school with a monthly allowance — ask us on a demo. If the allowance runs out, the Free check takes over until the month ends, and nobody is locked out.

Which phones does it work on?

Android phones with a front camera, running the latest Inkwelly app from the Play Store. There is no iPhone app yet. The phone needs mobile data or Wi-Fi at the moment of check-in, and location switched on, as with mobile check-in.

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