Field Ops: Rosters, routes and dispatch for any field team.
One field-work application shared across sectors: incoming jobs, rosters and beat plans, route order, dispatch that respects your rules, licence and document checks, safety alerts and settlement, set up for your kind of work.
What does Kinnow Field Ops do? It plans work that happens away from a desk, sends the right person to it, watches it run and turns what they did into an order, a collection, a stock movement or an invoice. The same application serves sales reps on a beat, delivery riders, staff-transport drivers, security guards and service technicians. A ready-made setup for your kind of work decides the words used, the documents a person must hold and what happens to the result. It runs on the web, and there is no app for field staff. Nothing is filed, paid or posted without a person.
Your Monday morning, before and after
A typical distributor with 25 sales reps on beat plans, a dozen delivery vans, and a few vehicles on contract for staff transport.
| Today | On Kinnow Field Ops |
|---|---|
| Beat plans live in Excel, one per area sales manager. A rep on leave means a shop does not get visited and nobody knows. | A roster is generated from the pattern you use (a shift rota, a duty rota, a delivery wave, an appointment book, a beat cycle) and shows where you are short. |
| The dispatcher phones around to find a driver. Someone's licence has lapsed and it is discovered at a police check. | Kinnow ranks the people available for the job. Anyone whose required document is invalid does not appear as an option. This is a hard stop, not a warning you can click past, and the screen lists who was left out and why. |
| Licences, permits and insurance expire quietly. | Every document a person or vehicle needs is on one list with a risk score out of 100. Warnings go out at 30, 15 and 7 days, and on the day of expiry the person or vehicle is blocked automatically. |
| A rep says an order was taken. The collection cash is reconciled a week later. | Each completed visit becomes a result that goes to the application that owns it: an order to Sell, a collection to Account, a stock movement to Stock and ship, an audit or reading to Know. If it fails, the reason is shown rather than the item sitting in a pending pile. |
| A lone guard or driver goes silent at night. It is noticed in the morning. | SOS, panic, lone-worker, missed check-in and route-deviation events notify your listed recipients by SMS and email, open an incident, and escalate again if nobody acknowledges. |
| Per-km and per-visit payouts are worked out on a calculator, and arguments follow. | A settlement quote shows what a job would bill, with the working: which slab applied, which distance, which minimum. |
A day of field work, step by step
| # | Who | What happens | Where someone decides |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Operations coordinator | Work arrives as jobs to be done: from a client booking, an internal plan such as a beat or patrol round, or a recurring contract. A batch can be imported from a client's shift calendar or a beat plan. | The coordinator reviews what has been created. |
| 2 | Area manager | Builds the roster for the dates needed, from the pattern you use. | The manager confirms the roster. |
| 3 | Dispatcher | Puts the stops in order. The order follows the straight-line distance between stops, and stops without coordinates are listed as unplaced, not dropped. | The dispatcher can change the order. |
| 4 | Dispatcher | Assigns people. First come the must-pass checks: valid documents, the right skills and category, and a level your setup allows. Then a ranking by distance from the first stop, cost level and how healthy their documents are. | The dispatcher chooses. If a job falls apart mid-shift, such as a no-show or a breakdown, it is reopened and assigned again. |
| 5 | Field worker | Checks in at the site. The record keeps the distance from the site and whether the check-in was inside the site boundary (geofence); a check-in outside it is recorded, neither silently accepted nor refused. Then fills in the form for the work: duty slip, order, proof of delivery, patrol log, job sheet, meter reading. | A supervisor can judge a check-in outside the boundary. |
| 6 | Kinnow | Turns the closed record into a result and prices it on the rate you set: per kilometre, per hour, per visit, per shift, per drop, a distance slab, or labour plus parts. | None until it is passed on. |
| 7 | Accountant, sales manager | The result reaches the application that owns it as pending, then passed on, or failed with the reason written on it. | The receiving application applies its own approvals. |
| 8 | Safety recipient | If an SOS, panic or missed check-in is raised, acknowledges it, then resolves it or marks it a false alarm. | Acknowledging is what stops the escalation. |
How routes and dispatch work
Routes are ordered by distance. Kinnow arranges the stops to cut the straight-line distance travelled, using a route optimiser where one is installed and a simple nearest-next-stop method, with a tidy-up pass, otherwise. There is no cap on the number of stops. It does not plan around customer delivery windows, appointment times or vehicle load, so do not expect it to promise a delivery slot.
One safety rule is built into the order for staff transport: where your setup switches it on, a woman travelling alone during dark hours is not left as the final drop, even though it costs distance.
Dispatch ranks by distance, level and document health, but only among people who already pass the must-pass checks. A shorter list is explained, not just shown: six drivers excluded for an expired permit is a different problem from nobody being available.
Documents, lists and reports
| Output | What it contains | Who uses it |
|---|---|---|
| Jobs list | All your jobs at every status. | Coordinator |
| People, vehicles and sites | Your roster of people and vehicles, and the places you send them. | Operations |
| Documents list | Each document with days to expiry, a risk score and a block on the day it lapses. Where document reading is switched on, the number and dates are read off the file and compared with what was typed; what you entered is never changed. | Compliance, HR |
| Live list | The latest position for each active job, with flags for leaving the route, speeding and long stops. A list, not a map. | Dispatcher |
| Safety list | Events, who was told, what was done, whether it failed. | Safety head |
| Capture forms | Duty slip, incident note, order, collection receipt, merchandising audit, competitor survey, van stock count, proof of delivery, patrol log, job sheet, as your setup defines them. | Field staff, supervisors |
| Settlement queue and quote | Results pending, passed on or failed with the reason; the working behind any quote. | Accountant |
Agents that work here
Five agents work here, and none of them acts on its own. The route optimiser puts stops in order. Smart dispatch recommends who should take a job, and a scheduled sweep looks for jobs nobody has been assigned. The roster optimiser scores a generated roster on coverage against demand and on fairness, and reports the gap, not just the count. Credential Guard rechecks everybody's documents and raises the 30, 15 and 7 day warnings. Safety Monitor reads positions and check-ins for leaving the route, speeding, long stops and missed check-ins, and ranks what the control room should look at first. We check each agent with you before it works on your records, and everything it produces waits for your team.
Ask Kinnow about your field team
Ask in plain English. Before it answers, Kinnow shows the records it will read and what that will cost. Where records are missing, it says so instead of guessing.
Whose documents expire in the next 30 days?
Person or vehicle, document, expiry date and risk score.
Which jobs are still unassigned for tomorrow?
Job, site and the reason no one was ranked.
Which settlements failed, and why?
Result, where it was headed and the reason written on it.
Which safety events were not acknowledged?
Event, time raised, who was told and whether it escalated.
What would this trip bill?
The quote with its working: slab, distance and minimum.
Where are my vans right now?
The latest position per active job, as a list.
The controls an owner cares about
- An expired document is a hard stop on assigning someone, not a warning, and the block starts automatically on the day it lapses.
- Jobs, dispatch and results belong to one company in your group, and every money figure goes to that company's books.
- A settlement that fails stays visible as failed with its reason. It is never quietly retried into the pending pile.
- Goods and people are kept apart: an e-Way bill is never raised for a passenger trip, an order-only sales call or a guard shift, and the record says why not.
- If your kind of business has no ready-made setup, a general one is used and every screen says so, so a security firm is not asked for driving licences.
- Alerts go to the safety recipients you list. If none are listed, the alert goes to your company account's admin email, and the row says so.
- Veil, our privacy layer, holds back bank, tax and ID numbers and swaps names for placeholders before an AI call. It covers Ask Kinnow and most agents today; the rest are being added.
Connects to
- Sell: a booked order from a visit, and the invoice a closed job raises.
- Account: money collected in the field, as a receipt to allocate.
- Stock and ship: van stock handed over, or a technician's parts consumed.
- Know: merchandising audits, surveys and meter readings.
- Maintain: a service call closed against its work order.
- Serve: a safety event opens an incident in the service queue.
Questions
Does Field Ops include a driver or technician app?
No. The web screens are available. A phone app for field workers is not built.
How are routes planned?
By distance. Stops are put in an order that reduces the straight-line distance, with no cap on the number of stops. Delivery windows and vehicle load are not considered.
Can it stop an unlicensed driver from being assigned?
Yes. Allocation excludes anyone whose required document is invalid, and lists them with the reason. Expiring documents are warned at 30, 15 and 7 days and blocked automatically on the day they expire.
Which kinds of field work does it cover?
Five ready-made setups are included: staff transport and mobility, field and van sales, last-mile delivery, security and facility guarding, and field service. They set the words, documents and rules. Each is confirmed with you during set-up, and most clients see first results in about two weeks.
What does a failed settlement look like?
It is shown as failed with the reason written on it, such as nowhere to send that kind of result, so the backlog you see is the real one.
What happens when an agent is wrong?
It cannot act on its own. A ranked list or a route order waits for your team, and a blocked document is a rule you set, not a guess.
Start with one need. Switch on the next in a day. Same records, same login, no new licence.
Tell Kinnow what slows you down.
Answer three questions. Get the applications, the agents and a two-week plan for your business.