Sales Visit Reports from the Field, Straight from the Phone

Why the visit spreadsheet falls apart

Reps usually type their visits into a shared spreadsheet at night, or post a photo and a few words in a group chat and someone in the office copies it over. Store names get spelled five different ways, a row gets overwritten, and the manager only finds out on Friday that half the outlets on the east side were never visited.

The sheet mixes two different things in every row: the store, which stays the same for years, and the visit, which happens once. Keep the stores in one table and let each visit be a new record linked to its store, filled in on the spot. The questions below are the ones managers and reps ask most.

Who visited which store today?

Every record in Ambisius can show the system properties Created by and Created at. You don't add them to the form and nobody types them: when a rep presses Submit, the app fills in who sent the report and the exact time. The Visits table links each visit to one store, so the store name is picked from a list and is never misspelled.

Save a view called "Visits today" with a filter on Created at set to Relative to today, Today. Group it by Created by and you get one section per rep, each with the stores they've been to so far. A photo of the shelf, taken with the phone camera inside the form, plus the time stamp, is the proof that the visit happened. Ambisius doesn't track location, so there's no GPS check-in.

Try the form below. Pick a store, choose a result, add an order value and press Submit. The new visit appears in the list under You, with the time it was sent.

What did each rep sell this week?

Give each visit an Order value, a Currency property. If you want the products too, add Line Items to Visits so a rep can add one line per product with its quantity, and let a Rollup on the visit add up price × quantity into the order value. Then save a view with Created at set to This week. Add a bar chart of order value per rep and pin it to the workspace's Dashboards page, so the weekly number is one tap away on the manager's phone.

Which stores haven't we visited in a while?

This is where linked tables pay off. On the Customers table, a Rollup counts each store's visits, and a Formula written in plain words, such as "days since the last visit", sits right on the store record. Filter Customers for more than 14 days since the last visit, sort by that number, and you have the list of stores to plan next week around.

How do I stop reps changing each other's reports?

Be clear about what's possible. Ambisius doesn't lock a record to the rep who created it: any Member who is an Editor on the Visits table can change a visit. What you do get is a record of who changed what. Hover over a cell and it shows who last edited it, and you can add Last edited by and Last edited at as columns. The Owner and Admins can open History mode to see past values, and roll the whole workspace back if something goes badly wrong.

Protect the data that shouldn't change at all. Set the Customers table to Restricted and give reps Viewer access, so they can pick stores but can't rename or delete them.

Can reps fill it in without a laptop?

Yes, that's the whole idea. Reps use the Ambisius app on Android or iOS. They don't see a grid: each visit is a card showing the few fields you put first, and they swipe between tables and views. The Owner or an Admin builds a custom form called "Visit report" that hides everything the rep doesn't need, makes Store and Result required, and gives Result a default value. Reports sync live, so the manager sees a visit the moment it's sent.

Set it up in an afternoon

1. Create a Customers table with the store name, owner's name, a Phone property (tap to call) and the area.
2. Create a Visits table and link it to Customers, one store to many visits. Add Result as a Single Select (Ordered, No order, Not met / closed), Order value, a photo and a note.
3. Add Created by and Created at to Visits so every report shows who sent it and when.
4. Make the "Visit report" custom form: Store and Result required, a default Result, and everything else hidden.
5. Save the views "Visits today" and "This week", add the chart, and invite your reps as Members.

Questions people ask

Start small: two tables on the Free plan, plus Products if you want order lines, or ask the agent to build them for you on the Starter Trial. Your reps can send their first visit report from their phones the same day.