Plan routes and visits

A journey plan is a rep’s standing week: which customers they visit on each weekday, and in what order. Each night, at midnight in the subsidiary’s time zone, Axon Suite turns the plan for the coming day into the rep’s daily route, and the rep app shows it as their schedule.

Choose how a rep plans their day

Each rep works in one of three planning modes, set in Planning mode on their rep profile:

Mode	What the rep gets
Free-form	No route. The rep sees their customers and visits whom they choose.
Optional plan	A daily route from their journey plan, and they may also visit customers who are not on it. With nothing planned for the day, they work free-form.
Strict plan	A daily route, and they may check in only to the customers on it. Without a route for the day, they cannot start their day.

Use Strict plan when every visit must be agreed in advance, for example for key accounts.

Plan a rep’s week

1. Go to Field ‣ Planning ‣ Journey plans and pick the Rep.
2. Find the customer on the map, or type part of their name or code in Search customers by name or code….
3. Click the customer’s pin. A card opens over the map.
4. Pick the Day of week and click Add.

The customer joins that day’s list on the right, at the end of the order, and the day’s distance updates. A customer can be on several days; the list notes Also on the other days. The bar above the map shows how many of the subsidiary’s customers are on the plan, as coverage.

Only customers with a location on the map can be planned. A rep can capture a customer’s location in the rep app when they create or edit the customer.

Add many customers at once

1. Click Lasso and drag a rectangle over the customers on the map, or hold Shift and click each pin.
2. Click Add to day….
3. Pick the day in Add to and click Add.

Customers already on that day are skipped.

To share out every customer who is not yet on the plan, click Auto-balance. Tick the days in Distribute across and click Distribute. The customers are split evenly across those days, keeping neighbours on the same day, and each day is put in order by the nearest stop.

Put a day’s stops in order

Drag a stop up or down the day’s list to change the visiting order. To let Axon Suite order the day, click Optimize on the day: each next stop is the nearest one, starting from the van’s location when its warehouse has one on the map, or from the first stop when it does not.

Example

A bakery supplier plans its north-side cafés on Mondays and Thursdays. After adding eight cafés to Monday, the planner clicks Optimize and the tour drops from 41 km to 26 km. They then use Clone to another day… to copy Monday to Thursday.

Copy a day to another

Open the day’s actions menu, click Clone to another day…, pick the day in Copy to, and click Clone. Customers already on the target day are skipped.

Pause or remove a stop

Open a stop’s actions menu:

• Click Deactivate to leave the customer off the route for now. The stop stays on the plan, marked Inactive; click Activate to bring it back. Switch on Show inactive to see paused stops.
• Click Remove and confirm to take the customer off that day for good.

Send today’s changes to the phone

Changes to the plan reach the rep’s next route at midnight. When you change today’s plan, send it to the phone straight away: pick the Rep and click Sync now. Today’s route is rebuilt from the plan, and the rep sees it when they refresh their schedule.

Group reps into territories

A territory groups reps, for example by city district, so you can compare their figures and hand one rep’s customers to another.

1. Go to Field ‣ Planning ‣ Territories and click New territory.
2. Enter the Code and Name, and a Description of what it covers.
3. Leave Active on, and click Save.
4. Put reps in it with the Territory field on their rep profile.

Open a territory to see its reps’ figures over a date range, this week to start with: the number of Reps, the Visits done with the planned stops completed, the Productive visits, the Sales and the amount Collected. Below them, the Reps table is the same as on the field dashboard; click a row to open the rep’s page.

Note

A territory does not limit which customers a rep sees or sells to. Every rep sees all the active customers of their subsidiary; the journey plan decides whom they visit.

Hand a rep’s customers to another rep

When a rep leaves a round or is away for a long time, move their journey plan to a colleague in the same territory.

1. Open the territory and click Reassign rep.
2. Pick the From rep and the To rep. Both must belong to the territory.
3. Pick the Mode: Replace all (handover) moves every stop and leaves the first rep with no plan; Append (split) copies the stops and leaves both reps with the same schedule.
4. Click Reassign.

Stops the second rep already has on the same day are skipped.

Set the reasons for skipping a visit

When a rep cannot make a planned visit, they mark it skipped and pick a reason from this list. The field dashboard then shows why visits were skipped.

1. Go to Field ‣ Master data ‣ Skip reasons and click New skip reason.
2. Enter a Code, such as CLOSED, and a Name the rep reads, such as Customer closed.
3. Enter the Display order: reasons appear on the phone in this order.
4. Click Save.

Messages you may meet

Message	What to do
This customer is already on the rep’s plan for that day.	Nothing to add; pick another day if you meant one.
A plan is built for a rep who holds an active rep profile in this subsidiary.	Create or reactivate the rep’s profile.
Rep is on free-form mode — no route to sync	The rep has no route to send. Change their Planning mode if they should follow a plan.
Rep has no template for this day	Add customers to today’s weekday first.
A journey plan moves between two reps that both belong to the territory named.	Put both reps in the territory on their profiles, then reassign.
Reps are still assigned to this territory; move them to another before archiving it.	Pick another Territory on those reps’ profiles, then archive.
A skip reason with this code already exists.	Use another code, or restore the archived reason.