Field Sales

For a company whose reps walk a territory and book orders at shop doors. There is no counter and no purchase: the office owns the catalogue and the channel (stockist, distributor, retailer), managers run the team and its targets, and each rep works a route on a phone in the SKS Field Sales app. A manufacturer runs the same field team beside its own channel.

Set up before the first round

Do these in order. The owner does all of them from SKS Market in the office; reps cannot work until their territory, their shops and their login exist.

1. Decide the shape of your territory Setup > Settings > Field Sales > Territory setup. A new business starts with State, District / Territory, Town, Beat and Route. Tick the sales ranks you actually hire under Sales hierarchy (Area Sales Manager and Sales Representative to begin with), and whether a visit must carry a location fix. The channel tiers (stockist, distributor, retailer) are set for you when the business is created.
2. File the map Planning > Territory: add the states, districts, towns, beats and routes your team walks. A shop can only go on a round once its route exists.
3. Add your products under Setup > Items, with their rates. Under Channel Rates in the Field Sales settings, pick which rate each rung of the channel is billed at.
4. Add the channel and the shops from the Directory: stockists and distributors in their own lists, and every retailer with its route (and street, if you file by street). Price rules for a party, a route or a whole area are set the same way as at a counter.
5. Make a staff record for each person under Directory > Staff. An order is credited to that name and targets read against it.
6. Add each team member Field Team > Team > Add: their rank, login, staff record and territory (see Who signs in).
7. Set targets and the week's beats in Planning > Targets and Planning > Beat Plan.
8. Walk one test round: a rep signs in to SKS Field Sales, taps Start Route, books one order and records one no-order call. Check the office sees both on the Desk and the Daily Sales Report.

How the work flows

The rep's steps happen on the phone in SKS Field Sales; the manager's and the office's in either app. Nothing here prints on paper: the order goes to the shop on WhatsApp and the day's sheet is shared or exported.

The whole journey on one page:

flowchart TD
    A[Start Route
who and which date · manager may pick a rep] --> B[Pick the stretch: area > route]
    B --> C[Route page: shops in door order
search box at the bottom]
    C --> D[Tap a shop]
    D --> E{Order?}
    E -->|yes| F[Order sheet: products · qty
price rules applied · bills through nearest tier]
    F --> G[(Order booked
call logged with its location)]
    E -->|no| H[No-order reason]
    H --> V[(Call recorded with its outcome)]
    G & V --> C
    N[New Shop] --> N1[Where is this shop? area > route > street] --> N2[Party form] --> C
    G --> DSR[Daily Sales Report
rows: shops · columns: product codes]
    G --> T[Targets: achieved vs target
per rep · per territory · per product group]
    G --> O[Office: orders to dispatch
channel stock points]

Who signs in

A field business hires a person, not just a login: the rank, the login, the staff record, the territory and the switches are one form, Add Team Member. The rank decides the switches a new person starts with and the ground they are offered. Any switch can be changed afterwards.

1. Make their staff record under Directory > Staff if it is not there yet.
2. Open the form Field Team > Team > Add (or User Login on the staff row's menu). In SKS Field Sales a manager uses Add Team Member under Programme.
3. Pick the designation: SR, ASM, RSM, ZSM, NSM, or Office. A manager is offered only the ranks below their own.
4. Set the login. On a cloud business, enter the email of the person's own SKS Market account; the account must already exist, because SKS Field Sales cannot create one. They sign in with that email and its password, or with Google.
5. Choose the staff record and the territory, review the switches and save. The person picks up any later change at their next sign-in.

The owner opens SKS Market on the Dashboard with the same phone bar as Office, and keeps every field screen. Signing in to SKS Field Sales, an owner gets the manager's view.

Counter, accounts and delivery logins that are not on the field team are added the ordinary way, under Setup > Settings > Users; team members are not shown in that list, they are on the Team page. The rules shared by every trade are in Users, Roles & Permissions.

Where it is in the app

The screen is chosen by the seat, not just the trade. Walking a route happens in SKS Field Sales: a rep who signs into SKS Market is shown a page pointing them at it rather than dropped on screens they have no permission for. SKS Market has the office half: reading what the team turned in, and setting what they are held to.

SKS Field Sales groups its screens as the four questions a seat has: what am I doing now, who am I calling on, what am I held to, and how did it go.

Collections and Collect Payment appear only where reps take money (see Rep Collections below) and the seat holds Payment Entry. The Reports group needs View reports, which the rep form does not offer.

SKS Market on a computer: the menu bar

Across the top: your opening screen, the Dashboard, then one menu each for Field Team, Planning, Sales Order, Reports, Directory and Accounting, and Setup. A menu left empty does not appear.

SKS Market on a phone or tablet: the side menu and the bottom bar

The side menu starts with My Work — your opening screen, then the Dashboard — followed by Field Team, Planning, Sales Order and Office (Reports, Directory, Accounting). A screen on the bottom bar is not repeated in the side menu. A login holding Take field orders gets a Start Order button that walks a route and books its orders.

SKS Field Sales has a bottom bar on a phone (the first screens in the order above, the rest under More) and a side rail on a tablet or computer. A rep's app drops what they cannot use rather than showing it and refusing: no Team, no Targets, and no Incentives or Rep Cash without View channel money. A rep can add a missing route or street on the Territory screen; which levels the map has stays an office setting.

Screens

Desk

Today's calls, orders and value for the seat: the rep's own, the manager's team, the owner's whole book.

Start Route and the route page

Asks whose day and what date (a manager keying in a rep's round is the case that breaks "current user"), then which stretch. The route page lists every shop on it in calling order with what each has taken today; a call can be taken off if mis-keyed.

Order sheet

Books one shop's order or records that it took none, with a reason from the business's own list. Lines carry the party's price rules and re-calculate exactly as the voucher screen does - including a rule scoped to the shop's whole territory (a route or the area above it), a brand-wide rate, or a pack price ("5 cartons for 4000") quoted for the round rather than per shop. The order bills through the nearest channel tier above the shop (stockist, distributor) as the territory defines it; a stockist working its own round bills through itself. When the shop has a phone number, the order confirmation goes to it on WhatsApp.

Shops and channel tiers

Shops are customers filed on a route; the channel tiers (Super Stockists, Stockists, Distributors) are customers of a higher tier, each with a warehouse when channel stock is on. Location is an area > route > street chain; the shop stores only its route and street.

Team, Targets, Daily Sales Report

Team lists the reps and managers with their rank and territory, and adds new ones. Targets sets a monthly figure per rep or per territory, whole book or per product group, and shows achievement. The DSR is one rep, one day, as the paper sheet: shops down, product codes across; a row leads to the order behind it. It shares a summary on WhatsApp and exports.

Channel Stock Points

For a manufacturer with Channel Stock Points on, a stockist or distributor is a ledger with its own warehouse; a dispatch to it is a mirrored sale and purchase so each book sees its own side. See Manufacturer and Stock & Warehouses.

The order’s journey

flowchart TD
    A[Rep books the order at the shop door] --> B[Sales Order in the office]
    B --> C{Bills through a channel partner?}
    C -->|yes| D[Stockist or distributor invoices the shop]
    C -->|no| E[Company invoices the shop directly]
    D & E --> F[Dispatch from the right stock point]
    F --> G[Delivered]
    G --> H[Payment collected]
    H --> I[Rep’s target and DSR updated]
    I --> J[Manager reviews: calls · orders · value]
    J --> A

Settings

Setup > Settings > Field Sales holds the territory setup, the switches below, and the Channel Rates (which rate each rung is billed at) and Incentive Ladder (what a rep earns for reaching a share of target). Order Stock Check appears where stock is tracked.

What each person may do

Seven switches, set on the team member itself (Add Team Member) rather than in the ordinary Users list, along with their rank and the territory they work. View channel money is the read switch, so it survives a view-only login; the others are writes. The rest of a person's permissions are under Other permissions on the same form.

The manager ranks are also offered View reports here, which opens the report screens.

Rank, and what a person can see

A team member carries a rank, and the business chooses which ranks it uses. Sales Representative is always in play.

Each rank is granted one level above the rank below it, counted up from the finest level your map uses, so switching a level on or off moves the ranks with it.

The rank is a label and a starting set of switches. What a person can actually see is their territory, not their rank. Granting somebody a district means they see every rep, customer and order under it — that is the whole reporting hierarchy, with no separate manager-to-rep list to keep in step.

A seat with no territory is unrestricted, which is what the office and the owner get. Empty means the whole book, never nothing — which is why a manager must pick a territory for everyone they add.

A stock point narrows things the same way and composes with territory: a stockist’s own staff are granted their one stock point and then see only its stock, its documents and its money. A seat can be bounded by territory, by stock point, or by both. Stock-point logins are a manufacturer's; see Manufacturer.

Reports

Nine field reports, each its own entry rather than a tab of one, so the menu can say every one of them exists:

• Territory - orders by district, drilled down to the route.
• Rep Performance - calls, strike rate and value, rep by rep.
• Channel Split - which leg of the channel the sales were on.
• Target vs Achievement - every figure set for the month against what has been sold.
• Fill Rate - how much of what was ordered got billed, and what fell away.
• Incentives - what each rep earned against their number.
• Shelf Distribution - how many counted shops actually stock each product, and what the competition held beside it.
• Beat Coverage - the round that was rostered against the round that was walked.
• Rep Cash - what each rep took at the doors, what reached the office, and what is still in the bag.

Plus the ordinary Sales Register and Customerwise Sales via the office.

Three of them are charted in SKS Market - Rep Performance, Channel Split and Beat Coverage - with the picture above the table. Each chart reads the same query as the table under it, so the two can never disagree. Charts are screen-only and do not appear in an exported PDF or spreadsheet, and SKS Field Sales shows the tables only.