Location Verification & Movement Tracking

What this guide covers: registering and verifying a location's GLN; issuing public verification links for movement permits; granting temporary live tracking access to a livestock movement; reading the tracking map; and how automated GPS evidence works.

What it doesn't cover: system administration, jurisdiction setup, animal/herd records, disease reporting, or ICAR/ADE data export. Those have their own workflows.

Why this exists

Livestock traceability depends on being able to answer three questions with confidence: where did this animal come from, where is it going, and can anyone outside the system check that for themselves without having to trust a phone call or a piece of paper?

Agribantu answers this with a small family of features that all live under Authority Command Centre → Locations and Authority Command Centre → Movements:

• Location identity (GLN) gives every farm, abattoir, auction house, feedlot or border post a verifiable Global Location Number — the same GS1 standard used internationally for supply-chain traceability.
• Movement permit verification lets anyone holding a printed or digital permit confirm, instantly and without a login, that it is genuine and still valid.
• Live movement tracking lets an authority, sender or receiver watch a permitted movement's live position on a map while it is genuinely in transit — without ever having to trust an unverifiable "the truck is on its way" message.
• Automated GPS evidence adds machine-confirmed proof that a vehicle actually left the origin and reached the destination, on top of the paperwork your staff already record.

Every one of these produces a public link — something you can put on a printed certificate, text to a transporter, or hand to a receiving abattoir — that works without asking the other person to create an account. This is deliberate: farmers, transporters, and receiving premises should never need an Agribantu login just to check that a document is real or to see where a truck currently is.

Key concepts

The three kinds of public link — and why they must never be confused

This system deliberately uses three separate link types, each with a different purpose and a different lifetime. Understanding the difference matters because it directly affects what a link can and cannot do:

Location Identity (GLN)

Found at Authority Command Centre → Locations.

A.1 What you're looking at

The Locations page is a registry of every location identifier your jurisdiction has issued — GLNs mostly, but also PICs, farm numbers, abattoir codes, auction codes, feedlot codes, and other regional schemes. Each row moves through a lifecycle: Registered (awaiting authority sign-off) → Verified (authority confirmed) → Active (live in traceability chain) — or sideways into Amended (a newer identifier now applies) or Retired (location closed).

A.2 Registering a new identifier

1. Click Register Identifier (top right).
2. Choose the identifier type — GLN is the default and recommended standard; PIC, Farm Number, Abattoir Code, Auction Code, Feedlot Code, Government Location and Other are available for regionally-specific schemes.
3. Enter the identifier value. For a GLN this is validated against the real GS1 13-digit format — an invalid GLN is rejected with an explanation before it's saved.
4. Choose the issuing authority (GS1 South Africa, RMIS, Dept. of Agriculture, Local Authority, or Other).
5. Optionally link it to a specific holding (farm/premises) in your jurisdiction.
6. Click Register. The new identifier starts in Pending status.

A.3 Verifying an identifier

A newly registered identifier sits in Pending until an authority officer confirms it's genuine. Click Verify on the row. This is a deliberate, audited step — every verification is logged with who performed it and when.

A.4 Amending an identifier

Use Amend (pencil icon) when the underlying facts about a location genuinely change — for example, a holding's official GLN value is reissued, or the issuing authority changes. Amending retires the current record and creates a brand-new one, starting again from Pending status. This is intentional — an amendment is a real change of record, not a quick edit.

A.5 Retiring an identifier

Use Retire (archive icon) when a location permanently stops participating in traceability. This cannot be undone from the UI. All historical movement and event records that reference the identifier remain intact; retiring only stops it from being used in new traceability envelopes and marks it honestly for anyone checking the public link.

A.6 The public verification link & QR code

Click the QR code icon on any row to open Public Verification Link. This shows a QR code (generated locally by Agribantu, never sent to a third-party service), the verification URL itself (copyable with one click), and a Regenerate option that issues a brand-new token, permanently invalidating the old QR code/link.

The public page (what the other person sees, with no login) shows the identifier's status in plain language, the identifier type and value, issuing authority, country, holding name, location type, and verification/effective dates. It never shows your organisation's internal IDs, tenant information, or anything beyond what's listed here.

A.7 Printing a verification certificate

From the same dialog, click Print Certificate. This opens your browser's print dialog with a formatted certificate built from the exact same data the public link shows — so a printed certificate can never say something different from what a QR scan on it would reveal live.

A.8 Assigning a geofence

Holding-linked GLN rows have a small hexagon icon in the GEOFENCE column — solid green if a geofence is assigned, outlined red if not. This is deliberately separate from Amend — assigning or clearing a geofence does not retire the identifier or send it back to Pending status.

1. Click the geofence icon.
2. Enter the Geofence ID — the ID of the geofence boundary already drawn around this location inside your organisation's GPS tracking platform. Your GPS/fleet administrator sets these up.
3. Click Save. Or leave the field blank and Save to clear an existing assignment.

Assigning a geofence here is what enables the automated GPS evidence described in Part D — without it, tracking shares for movements to/from this location will simply show "Geofence automation unavailable" instead of GPS-confirmed departure/arrival evidence. Everything else about tracking continues to work normally either way.

Movement Permit Verification

Found at Authority Command Centre → Movements → Permit Register.

B.1 Generating a public permit verification link

Any movement-type permit in the register has a QR action available. Click it to generate (or view) the permit's public verification link, exactly as described for GLNs in A.6. Only movement permits get this treatment — import, export, treatment and slaughter permits are a different kind of authorisation and are not covered by this public verification flow.

B.2 What the public sees

Anyone who scans the QR code or opens the link sees, without logging in: the overall status shown honestly (Active, Expired, or Revoked, each with a plain-language explanation), permit number, permit type, issuing authority, issue and expiry dates, and every movement recorded against the permit, shown as origin/destination location identifiers (GLNs), movement status, and departed/arrived timestamps.

If a movement's origin or destination location doesn't have a public GLN yet, the page says so honestly rather than silently hiding the gap — this is your cue to go register/verify that location's GLN (Part A).

What it never shows: driver identity, vehicle registration, animal-level detail, or any live position — a permit verification link is a paperwork check, not a tracking link. For live position, you need a tracking share (Part C).

Live Movement Tracking Shares

Found at Authority Command Centre → Movements, inside the expanded detail of any movement whose permit is a movement type — look for the Track Movement button.

C.1 When you can create a share

The Track Movement action only appears for movements linked to a movement-type permit. Opening it shows the Movement Tracking Shares dialog — every existing share for this specific movement, plus a form to create a new one.

C.2 Creating a share

Click Create Share. If the movement hasn't departed yet, the share is created as Pending and will automatically switch to Active the moment your staff record loading/departure. If the movement has already departed, the share is created Active immediately.

C.3 Understanding share status

C.4 Sharing the link / QR code

Every share in the Existing Shares list shows a QR code (generated locally) and the tracking URL (copyable with one click). Send either to the recipient by whatever means is convenient — no account or login is required to open it.

C.5 Revoking a share

Click Revoke next to any pending or active share to end it immediately. This cannot be undone — the link stops working permanently. If tracking access is needed again, create a new share.

C.6 What recipients see — the public tracking page

The page's look changes honestly with the share's real status: Awaiting Departure before loading, Active with permit number, movement status, origin/destination GLN, departure time and live position if available, Completed once tracking has ended, Revoked, or Expired. If the movement's own permit becomes inactive partway through, the page reflects that too — permit validity is re-checked on every single view, not just once when the share was created.

C.7 Reading the map

When a live position is available, the page shows an interactive map: a single marker for the movement's own vehicle (never a fleet-wide view), a popup card on click with permit number, movement status and origin/destination GLN, a Streets/Satellite toggle, navigation controls, and a "Last seen" badge. If the most recent fix is more than 15 minutes old, the badge turns amber and reads "Stale" — the map should never look "live" when the data isn't recent.

What the map deliberately does not show: the vehicle's past route, an estimated time of arrival, the driver's identity, or the vehicle's registration number.

Automated GPS Evidence (Geofences)

D.1 What it does — and what it doesn't

Once a geofence is assigned to a location's GLN (A.8), Agribantu can automatically detect when a tracked vehicle crosses that boundary and add supporting GPS evidence to the relevant active tracking share: GPS-confirmed departure and arrived at destination geofence — awaiting offloading confirmation.

Neither of these ever changes a share's status. A departure geofence exit is only ever recorded if the share is already Active — GPS crossing a boundary can never, by itself, activate a pending share. An arrival geofence entry never completes a share; the movement stays open until your staff genuinely record offloading.

D.2 Setting up: what needs to be in place

For automated evidence to appear, all of the following need to be true: the movement's vehicle is registered in your fleet and linked to a GPS tracking device; the origin holding's GLN has a geofence assigned; the destination holding's GLN has a geofence assigned; and a tracking share for the movement is Active. Missing any of these doesn't break anything else — you'll simply see "Geofence automation unavailable" for whichever leg is missing a geofence.

D.3 Reading the evidence chips

D.4 A note on timing

GPS evidence chips can take a little time to appear after the actual crossing — position and geofence data arrives from your GPS provider on its own schedule. If a vehicle has clearly departed but no chip has appeared after a reasonable time, it's worth checking with your fleet administrator whether the vehicle's tracker is online.

Privacy: What Is Never Shown

Every public link described in this guide is built around the same rule: show only what the recipient needs, never more. The following are never included on any public page, regardless of link type or share status:

• Driver name or driver contact details
• Vehicle registration number
• Any internal organisation/tenant identifiers
• Animal-level identifiers or herd/group detail
• Route history or breadcrumb trail
• Estimated time of arrival
• Any financial information
• Fleet-wide vehicle positions

Troubleshooting & FAQ

Quick Reference

The golden rule, restated once more: loading and offloading, confirmed by your staff, is what makes a movement legally tracked from start to finish. GPS — whether a live position on the map or automated geofence evidence — only ever adds supporting detail on top of that. It never substitutes for it.