Field sales

Field sales runs your sales reps on the road. The back office decides who each rep is, what they may sell, which customers they visit on which day and which van they drive. The rep works from the rep app on their phone: they visit customers, take orders, invoice and collect on the spot, and hand over their stock and cash at the end of the day.

How it fits together

Part	What it is
Field rep	A user who signs in to the rep app. Their rep profile sets their role, their van, their catalog, their collection accounts and what they may do.
Van	The rep’s warehouse, set up in Inventory as a Mobile warehouse with a parent warehouse that loads it. See Set up a sales rep’s vehicle.
Catalog	The list of items a rep may sell and load. Each rep works from one catalog.
Journey plan	A rep’s weekly template: which customers to visit on each weekday, in which order.
Daily route	One rep’s stops for one day, built from the journey plan at midnight.
Visit	One stop at a customer, from check-in to check-out. Orders, invoices, payments and returns are taken during a visit.
Territory	A group of reps, for figures by territory and for handing a rep’s customers to another rep.
Cash end of day	The rep’s count of the cash and card or transfer takings at the end of the day, for a manager to approve.

What a rep’s day creates

Everything a rep does lands in the module that owns it:

• An order arrives in Sales ‣ Transactions ‣ Orders as a draft, with the rep and the rep’s van filled in. See Sell on sales orders.
• An invoice taken on the spot is posted at once in Receivables, priced by the server for the customer, and the goods leave the rep’s van.
• A payment is recorded in Receivables and booked into the rep’s cash account (for cash) or clearing account (for card and bank transfer).
• A return arrives in Sales ‣ Transactions ‣ Returns, where it is approved, received and settled as for any return. See Take back customer returns.
• Loading or unloading the van raises a draft transfer in Inventory between the van and its parent warehouse, for the back office to post.
• The rep’s stock count at the end of the day waits in Inventory for a supervisor to review and close.
• The rep’s cash end of day waits in Field ‣ Operations ‣ Cash end of day. Approving it raises a draft journal in Finance that moves the money to your main accounts.

Nota

The rep app needs a connection to the server. Prices, stock and credit are checked by the server when the rep sends a document, never on the phone alone.

Before you start

The back-office screens check the access level of the user doing each task:

Task	Access level needed
See field reps	View on Field rep profiles
Add a rep profile, or change one	Create or Edit on Field rep profiles
Add catalogs and their items	Create and Edit on Rep catalogs
Archive or restore a catalog, territory or skip reason	Full on that resource
Plan routes, reorder stops, sync today’s route	Create and Edit on Route planning
Add and edit territories	Create and Edit on Territories
Hand a rep’s plan to another rep in a territory	Edit on Route planning
See the field dashboard, the rep pages, the visit log and territory figures	View on Field dashboard
Approve a cash end of day	Approve on Cash reconciliations
Change the field sales settings	Edit on Field ops settings

The rep app checks no role. It checks that the user is marked as a field representative, has an active rep profile in their subsidiary, and that the profile holds what the task needs: a van to sell, a catalog to sell from, a cash account to take cash, and so on.

Where to start

1. Prepare the rep’s user and van, then create a catalog and the rep profile.
2. Set the cash end-of-day accounts and decide how field returns are handled.
3. Plan the rep’s week.
4. Give the rep the rep app guide.
5. Each day, post the van transfers, close the van counts and approve the cash.
6. Follow the day on the field dashboard, and look up any visit in the visit log.