Vehicle Tracking - the many benefits of reporting

One feature of vehicle tracking definitely worth mentioning is reports. You can view a historical overview of both the vehicle and driver's activity, setting specific requirements as to what you want to look at in seconds. Furthermore, you can set a particular report so that it gets sent to your personal email on a regular basis, without having to go to your computer and searching for a certain report every time.

In addition there is a large variety of reports that you could run, each one telling you different bits of information about either the driver or vehicle. You could access each individual trip made by a vehicle or driver by running a 'Trip report', so you could ensure that every trip is accounted for. Or, you could run an 'unauthorised trip report'. This will show you when a vehicle has been used, out of a set time frame which you will have already created. You can also check to see whether your drivers are abiding by the speed limit by running a 'Over speed report', or see how long a vehicle has been used for in one day, by running a 'Time sheet report'. This will allow you to check on how many hours an employee has been working in the day, so you can pay them an accurate wage. One more type of report worth mentioning is the 'Idle report'. This will show you if the engine has been left running for a long time while the vehicle is in a stationery position.

Personally i fell that using the reports can make a business that much more efficient, as not only can you track the whereabouts of each, individual vehicle and driver, but you can also access more detailed information like the speed of the vehicle making it much easier for an employer to keep track of vehicle activity.

Vehicle tracking – moving forward with Smartphone technology

The take up of vehicle tracking amongst very small businesses has always been plagued by one particular customer objection, "I don't have time to spend looking at the tracking software". There are plenty of answers to this, alerts can be generated for a variety of events and the user then prompted to look at the system – removing the need to sit looking at a PC all day. That's fine, but what if you are on the road? Many owner/directors spend a considerable amount of time in the field, driving or carrying out customer visits. Great to receive an alert if you can then go and check the activity of a driver and view mapping or a report.


Smartphone technology offers the solution to this problem. Over the next few years, Smartphones and networks will become more sophisticated and the mobile internet connections faster. Whether its an iPhone app, Blackberry or Windows Mobile device that instant tracking information can be available in the palm of your hand. This is not a technology pipe dream but a reality now. Early versions of these applications are appearing on the vehicle tracking market and it is only investment into research and development that can slow it down.