What’s A Geofence and What Are Geofencing Alerts?

The term geofence is used to describe a virtual perimeter, or “bounding box,” surrounding a specific geographic location. For example, if you set up a geofence around your warehouse, then every time a trucker leaves that building or returns, your fleet management system will automatically log that event.

Geofences can be created in two ways: By entering geographical coordinates, or by identifying points directly on a map.

What Are Geofencing Alerts?

Using geofence alerts can help improve visibility into your employees and assets, by notifying fleet managers when trucks or other assets enter or exit a geofence boundary.

A key feature of any good fleet management system is the ability to monitor driver activity within a certain geographical area. If you know where your drivers spend most of their time at work, you can ensure that they stay there while they’re supposed to be working and don’t stray outside the boundaries.

These alerts can also show mileage within entries and exits, and vehicle speed while within the geofence. Monitoring geofence activity also helps protect against fraud by ensuring that drivers aren’t using company resources for personal use (such as driving home after hours).

You might also want to geofence certain areas, like the local bar district or a particular neighborhood, to ensure that your drivers don’t drink and drive. After all, it’s not good for the company if your drivers get into accidents while under the influence of alcohol, nor is it good for the community if your employees are driving while intoxicated.

With GPSTrackit, it’s even possible to monitor “congregation,” or two or more vehicles being located within a geofence when they shouldn’t be, whether it’s the local bar or a sports center.

Using Geofences to Reduce Risk

Geofences can also be used to reduce risk factors in your fleet management system. 

For example, you might want to geofence a particular area around your office building so that you know where all of your vehicles are at all times. This way, you can ensure that drivers don’t leave the premises without first notifying their supervisor and getting authorization to do so. You can also use geofences to prevent drivers from entering certain areas after hours.

Geofences can also be used to create alerts based on driver behavior inside the boundaries of the geofence. For example, if you set up a geofence around an airport and one of your drivers leaves the premises without authorization, an alert will let you know about it immediately so that you can take appropriate action. 

Another use for geofences is to protect construction sites. If you manage a fleet of heavy equipment operators, you know how important it is to keep these valuable assets safe and secure.

Geofences can be created around construction sites so that managers can receive alerts when a vehicle enters or leaves the site. This helps ensure that your equipment stays where it’s supposed to be and prevents theft when it’s not there. Geofence alerts also help prevent accidents by letting managers know when a driver is approaching or leaving the site. 

Managers can also keep expensive tool boxes, generators, and other equipment secure with geofences around these valuable assets.

Using Geofences for Fraud Prevention

Using geofences is another way that fleet managers can fight against fraud in their organization. 

Theft of assets is one of the biggest risks faced by businesses today, especially those with expensive equipment like heavy equipment and trucks. If a thief knows where valuable assets are located, he may choose to target them instead of taking a chance on being caught with them if they get stolen from somewhere else.  

By setting up geofences around these assets, fleet managers have another tool at their disposal when it comes to protecting their property from theft and other crimes such as vandalism and graffiti artistry.

Protecting your fleet assets with geofences is a great way to prevent theft, vandalism, and other undesirable events from happening. Geofence alerts are clearly a powerful tool that fleet managers can use to protect their assets.

Monitoring Geofence Activity with Reports & Alerts

Another important aspect of monitoring geofence activity is being able to view reports on driver behavior over time so you can identify any trends or patterns. This can help you determine whether your drivers are consistently arriving late, taking unauthorized trips, or speeding in and out of geofence boundaries.   

By understanding the locations and behaviors of your drivers, you can make informed decisions about how to improve efficiency and reduce costs. You can also set up alerts based on landmarks or specific locations, such as a customer site or an employee parking lot. 

These alerts are useful for monitoring activity at specific locations so you don’t have to constantly monitor all vehicles in the field. For example, if you know that most of your sales reps visit a certain client site each day, then you can create an alert for when they arrive at that location so you don’t have to keep checking on them every time they leave the office.

More generally, you can identify when a vehicle has reached any destination or customer location, and how long they were at that location. 

Reducing Wear and Tear with Geofences

Geofences can be used to protect your vehicles from wear and tear by eliminating unnecessary driving. Geofences can be created based on geographical locations such as cities, states, or countries. They can also be defined using landmarks such as addresses, waypoints, or geocoding points.

For example, let’s say you have a sales team that needs to cover lots of territory during the day and you want to ensure that every vehicle makes it home safely at the end of the day. You can create geofences around each sales office to get notified when assets leave and enter the office location.

If you see that one of your vehicles is operating outside of its designated geofence it immediately sends an alert to your dispatch system letting you know about potential problems in real-time. This lets you take corrective action before there’s an issue that results in costly repairs or downtime for your business.

Reducing Insurance Costs with Geofences

Insurers know that theft and other undesirable events can happen to any business, no matter how large or small. 

If you own a fleet of vehicles, you know that these types of incidents can be costly. Insurance companies will often offer lower premiums to businesses with good safety records. The more geofences you set up around your fleet, the better your chances are of getting lower insurance rates from your provider.

Geofence alerts can also help protect your assets from vandalism and graffiti artistry by sending an alert when a certain area is entered or left without authorization. This helps reduce unnecessary maintenance costs and allows managers to quickly respond to any issues in a timely manner.

Setting up geofences for your fleet is easy with GPS Trackit’s Fleet Manager software platform. 

Geofence alerts can be created for individual vehicles or groups of vehicles such as entire lots or groups of trucks in a particular location at one time. You can also create geofences around landmarks such as construction sites and gas stations so you don’t have to worry about entering them manually every time you need to track one of these locations on the road.

GPSTrackIt offers several tools that help reduce insurance costs for businesses like theft and vandalism protection through geofencing and alerts, driver behavior monitoring, real-time mapping, and much more! Speak with a Fleet Advisor today to get a Custom Quote.