You want to check up on them, but their busy and you don’t want to distract them or appear to be micromanaging them while they are doing their job.

What do you do?

You can wait until your weekly sales meeting, or until you see them back in the office, but you want some feedback now not later.

Is there a way to manage them without getting in their way?

Yes.

One of the most useful features of the MileTrackGPS Dashboard is its radar screen management tool. The radar screen allows you (the manager) to poll any or all of the devices that are in the field and see their current location. This allows you to manage your sales team (it could be any type of team) without micromanaging or being intrusive.

We built MileTrackGPS for Teams to not only streamline the process of mileage reimbursement for organizations, but also to help you manage your teams when they are out in the field.

MileTrackGPS for Teams is an automatic mileage reporting solution, but it can also be used as a small scale fleet management tool, so you can see where your team members are at all times.

The insights gained from being able to view the movement of your teams in real time will allow you to build more accountability and efficiency into your business process, and help your business grow.

When you use MileTrackGPS for Teams, you are not only getting a great mileage reporting solution but you are also getting the benefits of a logistics management tool as well.

The value you get out of MileTrackGPS depends entirely on how you use it.

Whether you simply want a streamlined way to reimburse your team members without all of the headache of doing it the old way, or you want to manage your sales team in real time and use it more like a dynamic management tool, MileTrackGPS for Teams is a great solution.

In fact, we encourage you to use MileTrackGPS for Teams in any way that benefits your organization. Our mission is to help you achieve your business goals in a more responsible, accountable, and efficient way.

The post A Better Way to Manage Team Movement appeared first on MileTrack GPS.

Frankly, we were tired of the way that many of the big software and technology companies were using and abusing their customers’ data, that is, helping them to enhance their algorithms through deeply invasive tracking methods all in order to increase not only their own advertising revenue but that of the companies to whom they sell copious amounts of user metadata and behavior patterns, all for the sake of making their already behemoth companies bigger and more powerful. In essence we were sick of how many of these big technology companies’ products are only bait to get their hands on the real product.

And what is the real product? This answer is more complex than you might wish to imagine. If you’re like many consumers you may think this question so obvious that it isn’t even worth asking. Consumers like this may answer the question of what the real product is by saying something like, “The product is what I am using every day. Isn’t that easy to see?” Let’s call consumers with this belief ‘blind believers in technology companies’ benevolence.’ Their belief that technology companies have their best interests in mind is wrong, but for now we will let them enjoy their ignorance (although it has dire consequences for them).

The second type of consumer when asked what the real product is may answer, “The real product is our data, which is proxy for our behavior patterns, which in turn is proxy for us. Their real product is us. We are the product.” While this second type of consumer is closer to being correct than the first type of consumer (the blind believer in technology companies’ benevolence) they are still incorrect, though in a much less extreme way.

This leaves us with the third type of consumer, who will give us the correct answer. When asked what the real product is they will tell you that the real product of the technology companies isn’t just your data which is proxy for you, but the prediction products that are made by processing your data (aka: your behavior) through their series of complex algorithms in order that they can sell their behavioral predictions of you to the highest bidding company so that that company can sell you exactly what you will want in the future back to you. Basically, the real product of these technology companies is an attempt to alter your future for their monetary gain.

In an interview with Sam Biddle from The Intercept on February 2, 2019, Shoshana Zuboff, author of the extremely insightful book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power helps us understand this situation more clearly when she says,

They (these technology companies) are just secretly scraping your private experience as raw material, and they’re stockpiling that raw material, constantly flowing through the pipes. They sell prediction products into a new marketplace. What are those guys really buying? They’re buying predictions of what you’re gonna do. There are a lot of businesses that want to know what you’re going to do, and they’re willing to pay for those predictions. That’s how they get away with saying, “We’re not selling your personal information.” That’s how they get away also with saying, as in the case of [recently implemented European privacy law] GDPR, “Yeah, you can have access to your data.” Because the data they’re going to give you access to is the data you already gave them. They’re not giving you access to everything that happens when the raw material goes into the sausage machine, to the prediction products.

Having heard this whole story, it should be clear to you why we wanted to start a new type of technology company, a technology company that will never look at your data, never put it through complex algorithms, never make prediction products out of your life, and most of all, will never sell your data or predictions products made from your data to anyone.

At MileTrackGPS we don’t want to keep track of your life, we want you to keep track of your life. That’s why we started this company in the first place.

The post MileTrackGPS: A Different Type of Tech Company appeared first on MileTrack GPS.

You’re sitting in your home, you could be in your office, you could be in the kitchen, it doesn’t matter; but you’re probably on your computer or your phone, or more likely both at the same time. You might be looking at new listings on the MLS, or making some new listings of your own.

You probably have an open house or two this weekend and a couple showings every day until then; some showings are close to where you live, some are so far away you wonder if it is even worth your while to go. You are going to go anyway, it’s your job as a realtor after all.

It’s 4:30 and your 5:00 o’clock showing is creeping up on you and as you’re getting your coat on, your phone rings, it’s another client, you grab your brief case, run out the door— your still on the phone no doubt— and jump in your car, off to your showing.

You’re too busy to look at the clock, you’re too busy to look at your car’s odometer, and you drive off in a rush. The showing goes well— this is a good day— you’re busy with the client and paper work, you finally get home around 8:30, throw your keys on the side table, hang up your coat in the hall closet, and are glad to be back home for the night and that the day is finally over.

Did you remember to look at your odometer when you got home? No.

Did you remember to record your mileage in your logbook? No.

Does it matter? No.

Why?

Because you know yourself. You know how busy your life is as a realtor, and how forgetful you can become when things get super busy, that’s why months ago you got MileTrackGPS.

Now you don’t have to worry about looking at your odometer, logging your miles, categorizing your trips, or worrying about having the right mileage records when tax season comes around because you MileTrackGPS does it all for you.

The post If You’re A Realtor, Meet Your New Best Friend appeared first on MileTrack GPS.

This crisis is anything but ordinary, yet for you it’s just part of your job description. Sacrifice, risk, putting yourself in harm’s way to help others, it’s what drew you to this career, this calling. And what you do is a calling, it’s more than just a job or career, it’s beyond that. Studs Terkel, the great American oral historian, in his book entitled Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do wrote that

“I think most of us are looking for a calling, not a job. Most of us have jobs that are too small for our spirit. Jobs are not big enough for people.”

While this may be the case for many working people, you’re job surely contradicts this claim. Helping people is a calling that takes an enormous amount of spirit and courage, and you are living proof of this every day.

As an itinerant nurse or field healthcare worker you are busy and often overburdened, and we wanted to do something to help you do your work more easily, something to take the load off a little, that’s why we created MileTrackGPS. We wanted to make sure that there was an easy way for you to log and manage your mileage, to ensure that you get the tax benefits and reimbursement you deserve.

While MileTrackGPS can be used by anyone, in any industry, we specifically had field healthcare workers in mind when we began developing and designing the MileTrackGPS device, Mobile App, and Management Dashboard.

Whether you use MileTrackGPS for yourself, or to manage a whole team of field healthcare workers, we think you’ll find MileTrackGPS to be a helpful tool that will reduce your administrative work load and let you get back to your true calling: helping people.

The post MileTrackGPS: Built for Field Healthcare Workers appeared first on MileTrack GPS.

We started MileTrackGPS because we could not find any reasonably priced, easy-to-use mileage logging system designed to help small teams track mileage for reimbursement, expense reporting, and tax purposes. We designed MileTrackGPS to specifically occupy the market space between the fleet management and personal mileage tracking market spaces.

While we are situated in both market spaces, we differentiate ourselves from our competitors in both the fleet management and personal mileage tracking spaces by optimizing our technology for the “in-between” sized customer: the small sales team, a school, churches, clubs, sports teams, or any other organization where keeping track of people and miles is important.

With our current capabilities we are well suited to not only occupy the personal use mileage logging space but also, the white space between the personal mileage tracking and fleet management spaces, which right now does not have a suitable, reasonably priced solution.

We believe the MiletrackGPS system is that solution. MileTrackGPS is a way for individuals and groups of individuals to keep track of their movement as well as manage movement in real-time via our web-based User Dashboard.

Our device, mobile app, and dashboard are tools that we designed to make your life easier, more organized, and more convenient. We designed MileTrackGPS to save you time, money, and frustration, all while maintaining your privacy and security.

The post Easy-to-Use Mileage Logging System appeared first on MileTrack GPS.

We move: to, from, across, and away. With maps or without, planned or impromptu, we zig and zag, we make our way, tacking like ships to destinations known and unknown.

How can we keep track of our traveling? How will we know where we’ve gone after we’ve been there and left again; gone home? How will we keep a record?

In life, what is of most importance? Is arrival meaningful in and of itself, or is it the journey we must take before arriving that gives the arrival its meaning?

“It’s the road, not the inn,” Cervantes has Don Quixote so concisely reminds us in the beginning of his great novel. And Shakespeare, in his play The Merchant of Venice, tells us that “All things that are, are with more spirit chased than enjoyed.”

Look back on your own life and ask yourself, how often you have worked for something and achieved it only to feel a strange emptiness overtake you as if something has irrevocably been lost?

Surely, it’s the journey, not the destination that gives life its meaning and importance.

And since it’s all about the journey, shouldn’t we have some way of keeping track of what we experience and where we go along the way?

Shouldn’t we have some way of making sense of where we have been and what we have done, some way of keeping a record, of writing a personal history of sorts? Of course we should, and we do.

At MileTrackGPS we are committed to helping you keep track of where you go and how you got there. This concept is simple, but without a record of where we’ve been, how will we know who we are, or what all of our movement has been for?

MileTrackGPS is here to help you keep track and make sense of your travel.

Travel with purpose, intent, and efficiency.

Keep Track of your Travel with MileTrackGPS.

The post Keep Track of Your Travel with MileTrackGPS appeared first on MileTrack GPS.

What childishness is it that while there’s a breath of life

in our bodies, we are determined to rush

to see the sun the other way around?

-Elizabeth Bishop, “Questions of Travel”

To say these are strange times is an understatement we have heard so often over the last few weeks that it seems less like a statement of fact and more like an attempt we are making to quell our fear and uncertainty of what is going on. These are uncertain times, and it is apparent that the current pandemic is changing most aspects of our lives. It is changing where we can go, what we can do, who we interact with, and where and to what extent we can travel. And while these changes to our daily lives are painful right now, when we still feel the absence of our previous, “normal” life acutely, we will adapt to these changes as they come and will even learn lessons during this trying time that will no doubt help us live better, more aware lives when they are over.

One lesson we are learning has to do with travel and transportation. As shelter-in-place orders and travel regulations are growing more and more common throughout the country, we are beginning to see just how much we actually travel on a daily basis. It’s a funny thing about human nature, when something is taken away from us we begin to see it in a clearer way. And I think this is what we are experiencing now in relation to travel.

The sudden absence of our freedom to move where we wish, when we wish, is forcing us to reconsider the way in which we move through the word in a very real, existential way. This current reduction of travel is especially hard for us Americans, as travel is in our blood. It is in many ways an instinctive birthright: traveling across oceans and vast swathes of land is how we all came to be where we are. What is more American than the open road, a joy ride, or a Sunday drive? We are a people of the road, always on the way, always on the go.

But right now, during this time of crisis, we have been brought to a halt by something that cares nothing for our way of life, our freedom, or our instinctive need to move. And while these temporary losses are painful they are also a perfect time to ask ourselves questions about travel.  We believe that this crisis can teach us some much needed lessons about travel.

If we learn anything about how we move through the world from this crisis it should be two things: intent and purpose. Traveling with intent means to ask yourself why you are going where you are about to go and if you really need to go there, and traveling with purpose means having a fixed destination and going there without heedlessly bustling about. Traveling with increased intent and purpose means traveling more carefully, with less wasted time and fuel; it’s about traveling with awareness as well as traveling efficiently as possible.

Questions as simple as, “Where am I going?” and “Why am I going where I’m going?” seem superfluous in “normal” times, but ask yourself how your answers to these questions have changed since the crisis began. It doesn’t take a long time of reflection to realize that during the crisis we are putting more thought and planning into our travel, that is, we are moving through life more carefully, with more intent and more purpose. After this crisis is over, let’s remember how it affected us, how it made us reconsider what is important and unimportant. Hopefully this crisis can teach us how to live a more intentional and purposeful life, even in “normal” times.

Image Credit: Auguste Rodin

The post Travel with Increased Intent & Purpose appeared first on MileTrack GPS.

When we redesigned and rebuilt MileTrackGPS we did it with the goal of making it a simple and easy to use tool that could add value to two particular sets of users: individuals and teams.

And for the last six months, we have been rebuilding and redesigning all aspects of MileTrackGPS, including a complete redesign and rebuild of the device, mobile app, and dashboard. We also completely changed and improved the branding and marketing, including a new website, new logo, and new color scheme.

MileTrackGPS is very different than it was when it started back in 2014.

In addition to all of the technical and design changes we have made over the last several months, we have also recommitted ourselves to providing our customers with the best mileage reporting solution on the market today.

We Rebuilt MileTrackGPS for Individuals & Teams

When we were developing our redesign strategy we wanted to make sure that the new MileTrackGPS would be useful for individuals looking to keep track of their everyday mileage, as well as being useful to small organizations looking to manage their teams. Whether sales teams, field service teams, small distributors, or any other team that could benefit from a simple, easy to use mileage logging and mileage reporting system.

A Mileage Reporting Solution for Individuals & Teams

Field Healthcare

Real Estate

Distribution Companies

Sales Teams

Contractors

Freelancers

MileTrackGPS is a great mileage reporting solution for individuals, and its also one of the best mileage reporting and team movement management tools available on the market.

We built MileTrackGPS for teams to not only streamline the process of mileage reimbursement for organizations, but also to help team managers to better and more easily manage their teams out in the field.

MileTrackGPS for Teams is an automatic mileage reporting solution, but it can also be used as a small scale fleet management tool, so you can see where your team members are at all times.

The insights gained from being able to view the movement of your teams in real time will allow you to build more accountability and efficiency into your business process, and help your business grow.

When you use MileTrackGPS for, you are not only getting a great mileage reporting solution but you are also getting the benefits of a logistics management tool as well.

The value you get out of MileTrackGPS depends entirely on how you use it.

Whether you simply want a streamlined way to reimburse your team members without all of the headache of doing it the old way, or you want to manage your sales team in real time and use it more like a logistics tool, MileTrackGPS for Teams is a great solution.

In fact, we encourage you to use MileTrackGPS in any way that benefits you or your organization.

Simply put, our mission is to help you carry out yours.

The post Redesigned and Rebuilt for Individuals and Teams appeared first on MileTrack GPS.

We have procrastinated long enough and have inevitably begun to don our green visors and become accountants, form fillers, and number crunchers, looking everywhere for ways to keep our money.

This is just the way of things. There are two certainties in life, we have been told: death and taxes.

And while tax season is upon us, hopefully after reading this short blog, you will have learned something to make your tax season feel less dreary and less deathly, so you can file your taxes and enjoy the end of winter and the beginning of early spring without all the morbid thoughts.

One of the best ways to save money this tax season is to submit mileage reports for all the miles you drove in the past year that were for business, charitable, medical, or moving purposes.

But to submit mileage reports requires that you kept an accurate and timely mileage logbook of all of your deductible trips (click here for IRS standard mileage rates for 2019).

How many of us did this well?

We’re not sure, but for years we’ve known that there has to be a better, more reliable, and compliant way to do this than just jotting down approximate trip mileage in a small paper notebook after we’ve arrived at our destination.

Now there is. We call it MileTrackGPS.

We started MileTrackGPS to make mileage logging easier and less stressful.

One of our original customers recounted to us what a nightmare his mileage logging experience was before he started using MileTrackGPS, saying,

I despised tracking mileage when I used my personal vehicle for business purposes. If I didn’t forget to write down the starting odometer reading when I left, you can bet I forgot to write down the ending odometer reading when I got back. Sometimes I forgot both. 

Then it was off to Google Maps to re-trace my route and logically deduce what the odometer readings must have been for my trip. And don’t even get me started what to do when part of the trip was really a personal errand I decided to run while I was out. 

Now take that experience and multiply it by hundreds and you can easily imagine how chaotic tax season can become if you don’t have a reliable, easy to use, mileage logging and reporting system like MileTrackGPS.

We started MileTrackGPS to help you keep track of what’s yours: your miles, your money, your time, oh, and your sanity.

Prepare for next year’s tax season now by taking a look at how MileTrackGPS can help you keep track of what’s yours.

The post Tax Season Now Requires Mileage Reporting appeared first on MileTrack GPS.

Your life is your life

Don’t let it be clubbed into dank

Submission.

Charles Bukowski, ‘The Laughing Heart’

Our world is complex and growing more so every day. Our lives are busier than they have ever been and yet are continually growing busier and busier. Our lives are filled with activity and there seems to be less and less time in the day to get things done, let alone to have time left at the end of the day to enjoy our families and friends, or to do something we like to do or simply do nothing at all.

At MileTrackGPS we see technology as a tool that if designed conscientiously and used wisely can give all of us the productivity we desire with a healthy dose of the humanity of which we are increasingly in need. We think your mobile apps and wireless devices should give you more time to spend away from the constant hustle bustle of your lives, more time to spend meaningfully, with others or simply by yourself. In short, good technology would require less of your attention, not more.

Technology was originally intended to give us more leisure and freedom, yet as it has developed it has done just the opposite. Our peace has been replaced with busy-ness, our attention has been usurped by endless distraction, and we have willingly traded our privacy to mammoth entities we do not know (yet who know all about us) for access to their entertainments and promises of convenience and ease.

Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it. But we are delivered over to it in the worst possible way when we regard it as something neutral; for this conception of it, to which today we particularly like to pay homage, makes us utterly blind to the essence of technology.
-Martin Heidegger

That is why we designed our Mobile App, Pylon device, and Dashboard to be simple, intuitive, and easy to use. This is also why we are committed to keeping your trip data yours and no one else’s, that is, private and secure. At MileTrackGPS we will never go through your data looking for trends and patterns that we can aggregate and then sell to advertisers and analytics companies.

When you use your MileTrackGPS you can be confident that your data is your data and your trips are for your use only.

This simple commitment to your privacy and security differentiates us from other mileage tracking companies as well as most other technology companies whose products you use every day.

Our device, mobile app, and dashboard are tools that we designed to make your life easier, more organized, and more convenient. It was designed to save you time, money, and frustration, all while maintaining your privacy and security.

The post MileTrackGPS: Your Data is Your Data appeared first on MileTrack GPS.