Navigating the Fields: Best GPS Tracking Apps for Employees in Agriculture
Andjelka Prvulovic
Last update on:
April 18, 2024 1:50 AM
Published on:
If you’re running an agricultural business, you know that managing your employees is no small feat. Unlike conventional workplaces, working on farms has unique challenges, such as vast agricultural landscapes, remote locations, and the seasonal workforce.
With these factors at play, traditional employee management methods are ineffective and nearly impossible. That’s where agriculture GPS tracking comes into play. GPS technology has transformed the agriculture industry from using GPS tracking devices for livestock, tractors, and other agricultural equipment to crop yield monitoring.
But in this article, we’ll focus on a different but equally vital application: GPS tracking for employees in agriculture. We’ll explore how GPS-tracking mobile apps can help agricultural businesses improve efficiency, time management, safety, and compliance with federal and state-specific labor laws.
Searching for the ultimate employee GPS tracking app for your agricultural business?
Learn how to improve your workforce management with Timeero.
4 Best GPS Tracking Apps for Employees in Agriculture
To save you time and effort, we've thoroughly researched GPS tracking technology designed to fit the needs of field businesses, including agribusinesses.
The result? A curated list of top-notch employee tracking software, each excelling in tracking the time and location of employees during their work hours, ensuring you’re always in the know and compliant.
Timeero: The All-in-One Agriculture GPS Tracking Solution for Your Business
Timeero is your top choice for bringing efficiency and precision to GPS tracking for employees in agriculture.
This employee GPS tracker app is available for Android and iOS devices. It is tailored to meet the unique demands of the agricultural sector, ensuring that every minute of workers’ activities is accounted for efficiently.
Here is what makes it an excellent choice for your business.
Accurate GPS Time Tracking
Timeero lets you capture all details of your employee’s regular and overtime working hours. Your workers can clock in and out from work using their mobile devices and the app to track their breaks.
Timeero GPS Time Clock lets you track your employees' hours and locations
If the GPS feature is enabled, the app will automatically capture their location when an employee clocks in and keep tracking it until they clock out. This way, you can ensure your employees are where they need to be during their working hours, such as monitoring the time spent in orchards, vineyards, or various crop fields.
Timeero offers various safeguards to prevent employee time theft. For example, you can use geofencing and restrict employees from clocking in and out offsite.
Restrict your employees from clocking in outside their worksite using geofencing
This is especially useful in large farming operations where workers may be spread across different locations. A kiosk app with a facial recognition feature is also available to prevent buddy punching and time theft.
Employee timesheets are automatically created using the time-tracking feature to ensure accurate wages and compliance with relevant legislation.
Timeero offers numerous ways to customize overtime and break rules, which is especially important in states with stringent legislation, where non-compliance can have devastating consequences.
The California Daily Sign-off form ensures your compliance with California Labor Laws.
That’s why employers from the state of California can use predefined overtime rules or the California Break Tracker tool to ensure they’re on the right side of the law.
Segmented Tracking
In agriculture, tracking the time spent on various tasks and worksites can be challenging. Especially if you’re still using traditional methods, there is just too much room for error and inefficiency.
Timeero addresses these issues by offering segmented tracking. Workers clock in once at the start of the day and clock out when they’re done, with Timeero managing the intricacies of tracking throughout the day.
See the detailed timeline of your employee’s shift.
This feature is invaluable if your employees change their workplaces during the day or spend significant time traveling from one location to another. At the end of the day, you will get a timeline of each site they’ve visited, how long they stayed, and how much time and business miles they covered.
GPS Location Tracking
For agricultural managers, having real-time information on their workforce location is crucial. Timeero excels in this, offering precise GPS tracking that updates every few minutes.
Whether checking who’s working where or managing tasks on the go, Timeero’s “Who’s working” tab gives a real-time view of each employee’s location, streamlining task distribution and improving your response times.
See the real-time location of your workers in a single dashboard.
Using geofencing and GPS tracking allows you to create job sites at certain locations and have your employees receive notifications to clock in and out when they reach their job sites.
Besides having real-time insight into your workers’ whereabouts, you can use the route replay feature for insight into your employees’ routes.
Get a detailed overview of your employees’ routes.
Optimized Routes with Suggested Mileage
Time is of the essence in agriculture, and Timeero’s suggested mileage feature helps save those crucial minutes.
View actual vs. suggested routes.
Analyzing travel routes suggests shorter alternatives for following trips, helping you reduce fuel consumption and enabling workers to spend less time on the road and more on essential tasks.
Accurate Mileage Tracking
Accuracy in tracking mileage is paramount, not just for reimbursements but also for keeping IRS-compliant records.
See routes and mileage from employees’ timesheets.
Agricultural work often happens in remote areas with spotty internet. Timeero’s offline mode ensures continuous mileage, time, and location tracking, syncing the data once connectivity is restored. This feature ensures uninterrupted operation, regardless of the location, like when workers are in fields far from reliable internet access.
Employee Scheduling and PTO Tracking
Besides tracking your employees’ hours, locations, and mileage, Timeero helps you manage your agricultural workforce better.
Timeero lets you create and share schedules efficiently.
Using the Scheduling feature, you can easily create shifts with all the relevant details your workers might need while on the field. When the shift is created, you can easily share it with your employees and even let them choose whether they’ll accept it, preventing potential scheduling problems.
Timeero also streamlines PTO tracking by centralizing the request and approval process. Your workers can also request days off using the app and receive notifications when their time off is approved. When approved, days off will appear in the schedule, ensuring smooth operation during peak agricultural seasons.
Integrations
Timeero connects to the most common payroll and accounting solutions, such as QuickBooks, ADP, Gusto, Rippling, Xero, Paylocity, Paychex, etc. For any other integration needs, it also offers the Public API option.
Timeero Pricing
You can sign up for a 14-day free trial to experience Timeero’s capabilities. Paid subscriptions start at a budget-friendly $4 per user per month, making it an accessible solution for agricultural businesses of all sizes.
Connecteam: A Practical GPS and Time Tracking Tool for Agriculture
Connecteam offers a range of features suitable for small to medium-sized agricultural businesses, focusing on simple and intuitive time and location tracking.
Time Tracking
The app’s straightforward interface allows agricultural workers to clock in and out easily. This is particularly useful for tracking time spent on harvesting, irrigation, or equipment maintenance tasks. Features like preventing early clock-ins and automatic clock-outs at the end of shifts help manage labor costs and enforce overtime rules.
In agriculture, where operations may span multiple fields or sites, Connecteam allows for creating standalone time clocks for each location. This helps accurately attribute time and labor costs to specific tasks or areas.
Set geofencing restrictions
Using geofencing, you restrict clock-ins to specified locations, fields, or farm facilities. This ensures that employees are only clocking in when they are on-site, which is crucial for time theft prevention on large farms with scattered work areas.
While not directly comparing to an employee’s profile picture, the Face ID feature in Connecteam’s Kiosk App takes a photo as employees clock in or out, which can help verify who is on-site.
GPS Location Tracking
Connecteam’s GPS tracking feature allows managers to view the locations of clocked-in employees, assisting in coordinating tasks and managing field teams effectively.
This feature creates a trail of each employee’s location. However, it doesn’t record GPS information frequently enough to let you determine how long an employee was at a location.
This can be useful for tracking movements across different farm areas for agricultural purposes but may lack detail for more precise location tracking. To learn more about it, read our comprehensive Connecteam review.
Job Scheduling and Employee Management
Connecteam simplifies scheduling and employee management with easy-to-use templates and color codes. This is particularly useful in agriculture for assigning and managing shifts during busy seasons like planting or harvesting.
Connecteam includes employee scheduling, task management, and PTO tracking features.
The app’s capabilities in managing breaks, overtime, and paid time off are essential for agricultural businesses to comply with labor laws and ensure sufficient staffing during critical farming periods.
Auto-Reporting & Integrations
Automated reporting features can save time for busy farm managers, providing insights into various aspects of the workforce. While integration options are limited, they cover essential payroll processing needs, allowing for quick transfer to ADP, Paychex, Xero, Paycor, Paycom, QuickBooks, Gusto, and others.
Connecteam Pricing
Connecteam’s pricing plans are capped based on the number of users, making it cost-effective for smaller agricultural operations.
Basic Plan
$35 per month for the first 30 users + $0.6 per user for additional users
Includes basic time clock features. However, it’s limited to a single time clock and doesn’t support the creation of geofenced job locations.
Advanced Plan
$59 per month for the first 30 users. + $1.8 per month per additional user
Offers all Basic plan features, unlimited geofences, breadcrumb tracking, GPS location tracking, and three automated reports. This Plan allows for setting up three-time clocks and 10 geofenced locations.
Expert Plan
$119 per month for the first 30 users + $3.6 per month per additional user
Includes all features from the Advanced Plan, with the addition of unlimited geofences, time clocks, and automated reports.
The Small Business Plan is also freely available for teams with up to 10 users.
ZoomShift: Simple and Affordable GPS Tracking for Agriculture
If you’re running an agriculture business and need just the fundamental benefits of GPS tracking, ZoomShift may be a good fit. The app may not offer the bells and whistles of real-time tracking or mileage tracking. However, it still deserves a spot on our list for its simplicity and affordability.
ZoomShifts’s Features
It lets your workers track their time, view their schedules, request time off, and manage shift swaps while ensuring they’re clocking in and out from their worksite locations.
Here’s what makes ZoomShift a sound agriculture GPS tracking system.
GPS Time Clock
ZoomShift’s GPS Time Clock feature is crucial for verifying that employees are at their designated agricultural work sites, such as different crop fields, orchards, or greenhouses. While it doesn’t provide real-time tracking, it accurately indicates if workers are present at scheduled locations, an essential aspect for managing dispersed teams across vast farmlands.
ZoomShift GPS Time Clock
You can also use ZoomShift to block or flag clock-ins without a scheduled shift or punches outside the workplace, preventing unexpected labor costs and reducing chances for time theft. The app lets you track and manage late or early punches and extra shifts and receive alerts for potential overtime, enabling proactive workforce management.
ZoomShift Timesheet Preview
ZoomShift lets you tailor break and overtime rules to comply with agricultural labor laws. This function is vital in agriculture, where work hours vary significantly during planting or harvesting seasons, ensuring accurate payroll processing and legal compliance.
Effective Communication with Discussions Feature
ZoomShift’s Discussions feature offers a central hub for communication, ideal for discussing schedule changes, shift swaps, or collaborative projects. This centralized communication is crucial in keeping farm workers and managers aligned, especially when coordinating tasks across extensive agricultural operations.
Attendance Tracking
ZoomShift simplifies attendance monitoring, allowing a quick view of who’s on-site, late, and on leave, which is crucial for day-to-day farm operations.
Employee Scheduler
ZoomShift has a solid employee scheduling feature, helping you manage who works when and where, which is a must-have for farms with varied shifting tasks.
Its robust scheduling feature helps manage diverse farm activities. Whether it’s coordinating irrigation teams, assigning workers to different crop sections, or managing seasonal labor, the app’s scheduling flexibility is a major asset.
ZoomShift Scheduling
The app adapts to the unpredictable nature of agricultural work, simplifying shift changes and allowing employees to swap shifts quickly in the app. Your employees can stay ahead of schedule changes with real-time alerts, ensuring everyone is up-to-date with their shift obligations. This way, the app can help you combat no-shows and tardiness effectively.
ZoomShift also simplifies handling PTO requests and attendance tracking, providing a quick overview of staff availability, which is crucial for day-to-day farm operations.
With ZoomShift, your workers can easily request time off. Managers can swiftly approve or deny PTO, with all decisions reflected in the main schedule, ensuring seamless workforce planning.
Reports for Payroll Processing
The software lets you create detailed timesheets and analyze work hours for payroll processing. This feature is especially beneficial in agriculture for tracking hours spent on specific tasks like harvesting, irrigation, or equipment maintenance.
ZoomShif Pricing
Starter Plan: $2.5 per month per active team member. It’s ideal for smaller farms or startups.
Premium Plan: $5 monthly per active team member, offering additional features for growing agricultural businesses.
Enterprise Plan: Custom solutions for larger operations, providing scalability and flexibility.
Hubstaff: Efficient Tool for Agricultural Workforce Management
While the lack of mileage tracking might be a drawback for some, Hubstaff’s comprehensive features make it a strong candidate for agricultural businesses requiring detailed tracking and management of field and office-based work.
For more info on the software, you can read our Hubstaff review. If you’re short on time, here is a brief overview of the key features.
Time Tracking and Online Timesheets
Hubstaff’s time tracking is user-friendly and suitable for all team members, including those less familiar with the technology.
Hubstaff timesheets preview
This is particularly helpful for tracking time spent on various farm tasks in agriculture. The app automatically compiles time entries into timesheets, which can be used for payroll and invoicing, streamlining administrative tasks in agricultural operations.
Geofencing and GPS Location Tracking
Hubstaff’s geofencing feature is beneficial for agricultural businesses with field teams. Employers can set up geofenced areas around farms or specific fields, and the app will automatically start or stop tracking employees’ time when they enter or leave these areas.
Hubstaff lets you create geofenced locations.
This helps ensure that employees work in the correct locations, which is crucial in large-scale farming operations.
Field Workforce Management
Hubstaff allows agricultural managers to view their team’s current locations on a live map, which is crucial for coordinating fieldwork and estimating arrival times in remote settings.
Hubstaff shows where the employee has been during their work hours
The app’s geofencing feature further enhances this by automating time tracking based on the team’s location, ensuring accurate timesheets, and preventing discrepancies in work reporting.
Hubstaff’s features extend to scheduling and attendance, which are essential in managing agricultural workers. The ability to assign shifts and manage workflows can help ensure that farm operations run smoothly and efficiently.
Employee Activity and Productivity Monitoring
With activity tracking, agricultural managers can gauge the productivity levels of their teams. This feature calculates employee activity levels based on mouse and keyboard strokes, which can be useful for office-based tasks in agriculture, such as inventory management or administrative work.
Hubstaff can also capture screenshots of employees’ screens at random intervals. For agricultural businesses that also handle administrative or planning work digitally, this feature helps ensure that employees are focused on their tasks.
Invoicing and Payroll Management
Hubstaff facilitates invoicing clients based on hours worked and managing payroll, which can be particularly useful for agricultural businesses that hire seasonal workers or freelancers for specific projects.
Integrations
Hubstaff’s integration with various project management, payment, and CRM tools can help streamline various aspects of farm management, from project tracking to financial processes.
Hubstaff Pricing
Hubstaff offers multiple pricing plans and various add-ons. This tiered pricing structure allows agricultural businesses to choose a plan that best fits their size and needs.
Free Plan: free for a single user
Starter Plan: $7 per user per month
This Plan includes basic features such as time tracking, timesheets, activity levels, and limited functionalities for screenshots, app & URL monitoring, reports and payments, and client & invoice management.
Grow Plan: $9 per user per month
It encompasses all the features in the Starter plan, plus tasks, enhanced reporting, one integration, idle timeout, project budgets, work breaks, and expense tracking.
Team Plan: $12 per user per month
It includes everything in the Grow plan plus additional features like insights, unlimited screenshots, unlimited app & URL tracking, auto discard of idle time, team management, payments & payroll, unlimited integrations, overtime tracking, time off & holidays, scheduling & attendance, client budgets, timesheet approvals, and daily & weekly limits.
Enterprise Plan: $25 per user per month, billed annually
This is the most comprehensive Plan and includes all features in the Team plan, plus additional capabilities such as location tracking, a corporate app, higher limits on the public API, etc.
Free Trial: Hubstaff offers a 14-day free trial, so you can test the app’s capabilities
What To Look For in an Agricultural Employee GPS Tracking App?
To help you consider GPS tracking for employees in agriculture, let’s briefly summarize the key features you should look for in such an app.
Real-Time Location Data. Essential for efficient coordination across large farms, this feature can help you pinpoint employees’ locations anytime, optimizing task allocation and response times.
Streamlined Time Tracking and Break Management. With varying labor laws, such as mandatory rest and meal periods in California and some other states, an app that accurately tracks work hours and breaks is vital. This can help your business ensure compliance with state-specific regulations, streamline payroll, and prevent employee time theft.
Geofencing and Area-Specific Alerts. Geofencing allows you to set virtual boundaries and receive alerts when employees enter or leave specific areas. This feature is vital for managing large farms or multi-sited businesses, ensuring workers are in the right place, and enhancing overall operational efficiency.
Mileage Tracking. This feature is handy for agribusinesses that need basic GPS fleet tracking, as their employees travel between multiple sites or use vehicles on large farms. It helps you monitor fuel costs and optimize routes and can be crucial for reimbursement and budgeting.
User-Friendly Interface. Given the rugged nature of agricultural work, the app should be robust and intuitive, accommodating workers’ varying levels of tech proficiency.
Comprehensive Reporting and Analytics. Detailed reports on employee movements, time allocation, and productivity are invaluable for enhancing profitability, making better decisions, and identifying efficiency improvements.
Integration with Payroll and Compliance Systems. To reduce administrative burdens, the app should seamlessly integrate with your existing payroll and compliance systems, ensuring accurate compensation and adherence to labor laws.
Privacy and Consent Features. Choosing an app that respects employee privacy with transparent policies and consent options is critical in compliance with legal GPS standards.
So, How Do I Choose the Best GPS Tracking App for Agriculture?
Whether overseeing vast farmlands or coordinating a fleet of farm equipment, using GPS tracking for employees in agriculture is crucial. Our evaluation can guide you in choosing the ideal solution for your specific needs.
If you’re looking for a robust tool that enhances the efficiency and accountability of your agricultural team while being budget-friendly, Timeero checks all the boxes.
Here’s how Timeero stands out as the superior choice for agricultural GPS tracking:
✅ GPS Location Tracking. Timeero offers your workforce real-time visibility, essential for coordinating tasks across large agricultural areas.
✅ Segmented Tracking. The app simplifies tracking time spent on various tasks and locations, such as different crop fields or maintenance sites, without needing constant manual input.
✅ Optimized Routes with Suggested Mileage. Timeero helps plan the most efficient routes for farm supervisors or equipment, saving crucial time and resources.
✅ Accurate Mileage Tracking. Timeero automatically records mileage for precise compliance and cost management, a vital feature for agriculture fleet management.
✅ Comprehensive Management Tools. Timeero includes advanced features like time, breaks, PTO tracking, employee scheduling, and integrations with various systems, making it a comprehensive tool for agricultural operations.
Explore the leading employee GPS tracking app designed for the agricultural sector.
Andjelka is a sociologist turned digital marketer. She specializes in creating content for SaaS and software companies. When she’s not researching the most effective employee management techniques, Andjelka loves cooking, reading, and fighting for human rights.
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