Glossary
Geofencing
A virtual boundary drawn around a location, like a job site or approved service area, that triggers an alert when a tracked vehicle or asset enters or leaves it. Used for theft deterrence and enforcing usage terms.
What Geofencing means in practice
Geofencing is a virtual boundary drawn around a location, such as a job site, yard or customer address, that triggers an alert or a log entry when a tracked vehicle or asset enters or leaves it. Its most common use is automatic arrival and departure logging. A zone around a customer site or job location records when each vehicle entered and left, which becomes time-on-site data for billing, detention claims and service reports without the driver logging anything. Zones around a yard, combined with a time window, flag a vehicle that moves at night while ignoring the same movement at 7 a.m.
Most geofence problems are drawing problems. A zone tight to a building's footprint misses trucks in the lot, and one drawn over the whole block catches the coffee shop next door. Draw customer zones around the property, lot and approach included, keep billing zones separate from alert zones, and name zones the way the office talks about them.
Expect a crossing to be flagged shortly after it happens, at the pace of the vehicle's position updates, not to the second. On construction projects, zones should be redrawn as the work area changes.
Read the full explainer
The definition above is the short version. The page below explains Geofencing in depth, with the rules, numbers and examples behind it.
GPS Fleet Tracking & Management SoftwareGuides that explain Geofencing
- Heavy Equipment GPS Tracking: Which Tracker Fits Each Machine?
- What Is Telematics? Fleet Telematics and GPS Data Explained
- Rental Equipment GPS Tracking: Billing, Returns and Utilization
- What Is Geofencing? How It Works in Fleet Tracking
- Company Vehicle GPS Tracking Policy: Can My Employer Track Me?
- Delivery Fleet Management: How Last-Mile Companies Hit Delivery Windows
- What Is Dispatch Software? How It Works and Who Uses It
- Construction and Concrete Dispatch Software: Sites, Equipment, Loads
Geofencing: common questions
How accurate is geofencing?
Geofencing is accurate to the vehicle's GPS reporting, so it flags a crossing shortly after it happens rather than to the second. Accuracy also depends on how the zone is drawn: a radius set too wide around a dense downtown site can trigger a false arrival from a vehicle still a block away. Drawing zones with sensible margins fixes most problems.
Can a geofence send an alert only after hours?
Yes. A rule can combine a zone with a time window, so a vehicle leaving the yard at night raises an alert while the same movement at 7 a.m. does not. Fleets use this for theft deterrence and faster recovery, especially on construction equipment left on a site outside working hours.
How many geofences can a fleet create?
In the High Point GPS platform there is no practical limit. Fleets group zones by type, such as yards, customer sites and no-go areas, so a rule applies to a whole group instead of one zone at a time. Zones can also be imported in bulk from a customer list with addresses, then redrawn if they fire wrong in the first month.