Planning a day of visits: putting stops in order for each rep

The best order for a day of visits is the one that starts where the rep starts, never crosses the same part of town twice, and keeps the number of stops to what fits in a working day. Software does this by trying orders until the total travel time stops falling, on real roads where it can. For a team, the stops are first shared out by area so each rep gets a compact patch, and then each patch is put in order.

This article is for sales managers, merchandising leads, service coordinators and anyone who hands out visit lists. It covers the three ways to split a day between reps, what each stop should carry when the route lands on a phone, the difference between a road route and an estimate, and how to make it happen every morning without anyone sorting a spreadsheet.

Why the order matters more than the list

A visit list usually arrives in the order it was made: alphabetical, by account number, or by when the lead came in. Driven in that order, a rep zigzags. Picture a made-up list of twelve pharmacies across Nairobi sorted by name: the first sits in the west, the second in the east, the third back in the west. The same twelve in route order become one loop. The visits are identical; the hours on the road are not.

Order also decides what gets done when the day runs late. A rep who runs out of time at stop nine of a good route has seen the nearest nine. A rep on a zigzag route may have skipped a cluster of four shops sitting next to each other.

Three ways to split a day between reps

The Route planner block offers three set-ups. Choose by how your team is organised:

• One route. Every stop in one loop, for a single rep, technician or inspector.
• One route for each rep, by a field. Each item already says whose it is, for example in an owner field. This fits teams with fixed accounts, or reps who start from home. Run Split by territory first if the stops are not yet assigned: it shares them into compact areas of about the same size and writes the owner on each.
• Share between reps. The stops are shared between 2 and 10 reps who all start from the same place, such as a depot or an office, and each gets a compact day.

Two more settings shape the day. By chooses car, walking or cycling, which changes the roads followed and the times. Come back to the start adds the last leg home to the totals; switch it off when reps finish at their last call. Most stops in a route (up to 50) keeps a day doable: stops past it wait for the next run, and the step says how many.

What each stop carries

A route is only useful if the rep can follow it from a message. Each stop keeps its own fields (name, phone, notes, score) and gains:

• visit_order: its place in the day, from 1.
• leg_km and leg_min: the distance and minutes from the stop before.
• arrive_after_min: minutes of travel from the start to this stop.
• route_stops, route_km, route_min: the whole day at a glance.
• route_link: a directions link for that part of the route. A link holds at most 9 stops between its start and end, so a longer day comes with several links.

Road routes and estimates

When the routing service plans the route, the order, distances and minutes follow the real road network for the way of travel chosen. When it cannot (it is not set up, the day's share of it is used, or a call fails), the block still gives an order, worked out on straight lines: distances are 1.3 times the straight line and times assume a typical speed, 30 km/h by car. Each stop then carries route_estimate set to Yes, and the step and every email say so.

An estimate is fine for deciding who goes where. It is weaker for promising arrival times to customers, especially where rivers, rail lines or one-way systems make the straight line misleading. A route planned once for the same stops is kept for 30 days, so asking again does not repeat the work.

A worked example

A made-up example: a medical supplies company in Manila has three reps starting from one office and 30 clinics to see this week, found by a flow that looks for new clinics every Monday. With Share between reps set to 3, each rep gets about ten clinics in a compact part of the city, in order, with a link for each part of the day. The Monday email lists the three routes one under the other; each rep reads their own and taps the first link.

If the same company later moves to fixed patches, the flow changes by one block: Split by territory names an owner for each clinic, and the Route planner switches to one route for each rep by the owner field.

Mistakes that spoil a route

• Stops without a position. An address that was never placed on the map cannot be routed. Those items go on after the routes without a visit_order; place them before planning.
• Too many stops. Forty stops on paper is not forty visits. Set the cap to what a rep really manages and let the rest roll to tomorrow.
• The wrong start. Pick the office, depot or home from the search so it has a position. A start typed loosely may sit in the wrong district.
• Driving routes in a walking city. In dense centres, walking or cycling routes follow paths that cars cannot, and give honest minutes.

Routes every morning with an AI employee

1. A Schedule on weekdays at 07:00.
2. Your stops: My data for planned visits, or Nearby places followed by Only new for prospects found that morning.
3. Optionally Split by territory, if reps own areas.
4. Route planner, with the start, the way of travel, the number of reps and the cap.
5. An Email or a WhatsApp message per rep with the stops in order and the links.

What lands each morning is a short list per rep: the order, the minutes between stops, the length of the day and a link to follow. When visits are done, reps can check in at each stop from their phone, so the next plan starts from what really happened.