Optimize Farm Operations With Timeero’s Polygon Geofences
Jessica Helms
Last update on:
October 25, 2024 10:03 AM
Published on:
If you own or operate a large agricultural farm, you understand the value of honest, hard work.
That’s why when it comes to supervising your team of farmhands, you want to use a GPS tracking app that takes away the stress of managing your farm’s day to day operations. Keeping accurate track of your employees’ work hours as well as overseeing project completion not only determines the success of your farm, but the profitability of your business as a whole.
Since you won’t always be able to view your workers’ whereabouts, geofencing technology can help you verify employee attendance and issue fair and accurate compensation.
If you aren’t familiar with geofencing technology, here are the basics:
Geofencing technology allows you to create a virtual boundary around your farm or job site, that serves to restrict employees’ ability to clock in or out, unless they are located within the geofence.
Geofencing technology reduces time theft tactics such as buddy punching and prevents overcompensation when employees clock in/out from unauthorized locations.
Ready to Optimize Your Farm Operations?
Start using polygon geofences to enhance your tracking and reduce time theft today!
If your farm covers several acres, your geofenced area may span the length of several miles. But, not all farms have rectangular property lines. Depending on your geographic location, your farm boundaries may consist of curved lines outlining bodies of water or steep angles that follow major roadways.
When it’s time to draw your geofence, typical rectangular and circular geofences just won’t cut it.
Farms that cover irregularly shaped areas need polygon geofences because traditional circular or rectangular geofences are often too simplistic for the complex layouts of many agricultural fields.
Let’s look at the property boundaries of Relentless Whitetails, a white-tail breeding farm in Tallassee, Alabama as an example.
Courtesy of Landsearch.com, Relentless Whitetails located in Tallassee, AL.
Relentless Whitetails is 72 acres of farmland. Notice the sharp lines and irregularly shaped boundaries that follow the contour of the roads around the property. In this case, traditional circular and rectangular geofences would not be sufficient.
If you were to use a circular geofence for this farmland, you would either create a geofence that was too wide and included land that you did not own, or was too small and left out the outskirts of your property.
To capture the most accurate time and location records, every corner of your property boundaries will need to be included in your geofence.
Polygon geofences reflect actual boundaries of farmland
If your farm’s boundaries are irregular and similar to the image above, using a polygon geofencing feature will transform how you track employee time and location. Timeero is a GPS tracking app that utilizes polygon geofences to reflect the actual boundaries of farmland and agricultural property.
Imagine you work on a farm comparable to our previous example. With 72 acres of land to manage, it will be difficult to know where your employees are during the day, not to mention knowing if they even showed up to work! With Timeero’s polygon geofences, you not only curb time theft, but have access to your employees’ GPS locations in real-time.
And because you have drawn your geofence along your farm’s actual boundaries, you can hold your employees accountable for their personal attendance and hours reported.
Once an employee enters your defined geofence, they are given the ability to clock in and begin working. If an employee were to try to clock in outside of the geofenced area, a notification would pop up restricting them from clocking in.
Employees that attempt to clock in outside of the geofenced area receive this notification.
When you pull up Timeero’s “Who’s Working” dashboard, you will be able to view the real-time locations of your employees that are currently on the clock. As long as you have an active internet connection, you have access to real-time location data from any device.
If your employee was to depart the geofenced area, they are immediately notified.
Taking it a step further, if your employee was to depart the geofence and also clock out, you would receive a notification informing you that this action took place from an unauthorized location.
Timeero’s geofencing feature allows you to enable smartphone notifications to alert employees to clock in or out as soon as they cross geofence boundaries. With these backend checks in place, you don’t have to worry about reminding your employees to record their time entries, Timeero does it for you.
How to create polygon geofences: Navigate Timeero step-by-step
Setting up a geofence is relatively simple, but seeing a quick guide is always helpful.
First, make sure all of your employees have location tracking turned on.
1. In the Timeero web portal, navigate to Users.
2. Select the employees that will need geofencing enabled.
3. When the popup bar appears, click “Track/Untrack location”, then select “Track location for all selected users” on the popup window.
4. Click “Save”.
Watch how to verify location tracking is enabled for employees.
Next, enter the job address or verify the location address by following these steps.
1. Open the Jobs/Tasks menu.
2. Navigate to the job assignment for which you need to create a geofence.
3. Click the update job icon, shown as a pencil.
4. Select location details.
5. Enter or verify the location address and then check the box to “reposition the address on map”.
Verify the job address before you define your geofence.
Once you have verified the job address, you are ready to create your custom polygon geofence.
From the location details screen, complete these steps:
1. Click the box to “require geofencing”.
2. From the two geofencing options presented, choose “Custom Geofence (Polygon)”.
3. On the map you will see a square icon in the top right corner, located above the trash can icon. Click the square icon to begin using Timeero’s polygon geofencing feature.
4. Once you have defined three points of your polygon on the map, click one of the points to create a movable polygon shape.
5. To customize the polygon to accommodate your farm’s irregular boundary lines, click the outline of the polygon shape. You will notice several dark orange circles have appeared along the outline. Click and drag these additional points to enlarge and adjust your polygon geofence.
6. If you are not satisfied with the boundaries you have drawn, click the trash can icon to delete the polygon geofence and start over.
Note: If you are using a desktop computer your cursor should turn into crosshairs when you begin to draw your polygon. If you are using Timeero’s mobile app, orange dots will appear as you touch the screen to define your boundaries.
Increase location accuracy and curb time theft by drawing custom polygon geofences
If you’re looking for a fresh way to approach geofencing, give polygon geofences a try.
Take Control of Your Farm's Efficiency!
Discover how polygon geofences can transform your operations.
Jessica is a skilled writer and proofreader with a unique flair for crafting engaging and impactful content. Her work reflects her ability to connect with clients on a personal level while successfully addressing their most pressing concerns. Jessica's professional background includes: teaching, social media marketing, and e-commerce. She resides in Alabama and loves the Golden Girls sitcom.
%202.svg)
