November 2025: where is everybody? Live monitoring begins
Every business with more than one van asks the same question sooner or later. November 2025 began live monitoring: the team on one map, with the phone app as the tracker.
Part 29 of 39 of Building TradeYoke, the story of how the platform was built, from January 2024 to today. Previous: October 2025: one set of maps, built on Google Maps. Next: December 2025: consent first, and tracking a team fairly. See every part on the build timeline.
Quick answer
Quick answer: TradeYoke's live monitoring shows everyone who is sharing their location on one Google map, with the phone app acting as the tracker so there is no extra hardware to fit. It is part of the Ultimate plan. The Android, iPhone and Windows apps are in pilot and not yet in the app stores.
Key takeaways
- Live monitoring shows who is where on one map.
- The phone app is the tracker, so no extra hardware is fitted.
- Customers, jobs and vehicles can be shown on the same map.
- It is part of the Ultimate plan, and the apps are in pilot.
The question behind the feature
As soon as a business has two people working, a question appears: where is everybody? It is asked on the phone ("where are you?"), usually while someone is driving. The honest reason is rarely suspicion. It is usually practical: a customer is ringing about an arrival time, or a job has overrun, or someone needs to be sent to the nearest gap.
The approach: the phone is the tracker
The traditional answer is a tracking box fitted to each van. That is cost and fitting time, and it only tells you where the van is, not where the person is. We took a different approach. The phone the person already carries, running TradeYoke, is the tracker. There is nothing to buy or fit. It also means you see people, not just vehicles, which matches how a small business actually works.
What November delivered
- A live map of everyone sharing their location, on the shared Google map.
- Different kinds of things on one map: people, plus customers, jobs and vehicles as places you can see.
- A current-location panel on a record, so you can see where a person or a job is from where you are already looking.
- A widget in the app so it is one tap away.
Van tracking without the hardware explains this in more detail for a business owner.
What it depends on
Live monitoring is part of the Ultimate plan. The tracker is the phone app, and the Android, iPhone and Windows apps are in pilot and not yet in the app stores; email hello@tradeyoke.net if you would like early access. We have not finished checking every phone background mode on a real device, and we would rather say so than claim it.
Next
December: the part that matters more than the map, which is consent.
Questions people ask
Does TradeYoke need tracking hardware in the van?
No. The phone app is the tracker, so there is nothing to buy or fit. Live monitoring is part of the Ultimate plan.
What can I see on the live map?
Everyone who is sharing their location, plus customers, jobs and vehicles as places on the same map.
Try it on your own week
30 days of Essentials free, no card. Bring your customers and see it against a real week.
