What the hour after work costs your field team

Evening reports are expensive, and they make data worse. A calculation you can do yourself.

6 min read

Many field teams don't end their day at the last customer but at the kitchen table. That's where visits are filled in, photos sorted and queries answered. This time doesn't appear in any route plan, but it costs every day.

The real problem is data quality

What is entered from memory in the evening is less accurate than what is recorded in the moment. Head office then steers with data that is glossed over or incomplete, without anyone wanting it to be.

How to calculate it yourself

The calculation is simple: people in the field team times minutes of after-hours work per day times working days per year gives the hours. With the full cost rate per hour, this becomes an amount that appears in no budget line.

Record it as it happens

The way out is not more discipline but less effort: results with one tap, reports that emerge from the process, and hints that come at the right time. Whoever records at the customer has nothing to fill in at night.

• Record results right at the customer, not in the car
• Let the report be generated from the visit workflow
• Clarify queries via an inbox instead of phone and email