Field sales route planning: free Excel template

By Manuel Ober · September 6, 2026 · 4 min read

The template

Download the Excel template (10 KB, opens in Excel, LibreOffice and Numbers)

One thing up front, so the download holds no surprise: this is the original German file. The sheet names and the column headings are in German. Everything in it still works in any language version of Excel, and you can overwrite the headings with your own wording without breaking the formula. Below is what each column is for.

Three sheets, no macros, no sign-up:

Kunden (customers). Name, Straße und Nr. (street and number), PLZ (postcode), Ort (town), Kategorie (category), Rhythmus (Tage) (call cycle in days), Letzter Besuch (last visit), Fällig am (due on), Öffnungszeiten (opening hours), Ansprechpartner (contact), Notiz (note). The "Fällig am" column works itself out from the last visit plus the call cycle. Three example rows show how it is meant; you can overwrite them.
Woche (week). Monday to Friday with an hourly grid, and underneath it visits, kilometres and the question about the overnight stay.
So geht's (how it works). The five steps in short form.

Why the addresses sit in separate columns

Because otherwise the list only ever works inside Excel. Anyone who later wants to see the customers on a map needs street, postcode and town kept apart, with no extras such as "second floor" inside the address. The template is built so that it drops straight into a route planner. What to watch out for when you clean up an existing list is in the guide Getting your customer list from Excel onto a map.

The call cycle is the most important column

"Rhythmus (Tage)" is the interval you want between two visits: 30 for an A customer, 45 for a B customer, 90 for a C customer. Together with the last visit it gives you the due date, and the due date is the answer to the only question that counts on a Friday: who is up this week?

Set the filter on "Fällig am" and keep everything up to the end of next week. That is the 15 to 25 customers your week gets built from. Not the 300.

How to plan the week with the template

Filter. "Fällig am" up to the end of next week.
Group by area. Sort the filtered list by town or postcode. Everything in the same district belongs on the same day.
Spread across the days. Into the "Woche" sheet, one district per day, and only then the order within the day.
Check the opening hours. The column is in the template so that the pharmacy with a lunch break does not end up at 12:45.
Leave a buffer. One appointment a day that is allowed to fall through.

The full method is in the guide Route planning in field sales: plan your week in ten minutes.

Where Excel stops

There are three things the template cannot do, and it is only fair to say so:

Drive times. Excel does not know that there is a river between customer 2 and customer 3. The order within a day is something you have to work out in your head or type into the sat nav leg by leg. Why that costs 40 minutes every day is in the guide Why the field sales day runs longer than planned.

The map. A list does not show you that three customers are in the same street and two are 80 kilometres apart.

The rebuild. If a customer cancels on Tuesday, Excel works nothing out again.

For many people the template is still enough for a year. When it stops being enough, the step across is short: trakki reads exactly this "Kunden" sheet, shows the due dates in colour on the map and works out the drive times for each day itself. Trying it costs nothing, to the home page.

Call planning with the same template

Route planning is the question about the day; call planning is the question about the year. How often does each customer see you, and does that add up at all?

Both sit in the same file. The column with the call cycle is your call planning; multiplied by the number of customers in each class it gives you the visits per year. If that total is more than 200 working days can deliver, the cycle is wrong, and no route planning in the world repairs that.

The arithmetic for it, with example figures for a territory of 300 customers, is in the guide Sales territory planning.

Frequently asked questions

Does the template work in Google Sheets and LibreOffice too?

Yes. The due-date formula is a simple addition and runs in Excel, LibreOffice Calc, Numbers and Google Sheets. Filters and formulas survive the upload to Google Sheets.

Can I enter more than 200 customers?

Yes. The "Fällig am" formula is prepared down to row 200; below that you just copy the formula further down.

Can I pass the template on inside my company?

Yes, with no conditions. It contains no links other than the address of the German version of this guide on the "So geht's" sheet.

Keep reading

Field sales software: what is actually out thereAn honest overview of software for field sales: team CRM, route optimisers, Excel and planning apps — what each kind can do and what it costs.
Field sales tips: what really helps on the roadTwelve field sales tips from the road: plan the week on Sunday, cluster calls, fit cold calling into routes you drive anyway, write reports in the car.
Route planning with Google Maps: the limitsWhat Google Maps can do in field sales: several stops, custom maps, offline areas. And where it stops, because it knows no due dates and no day length.
Field sales call report: Excel and Word templateFree call report templates for field sales: an Excel list that counts the month for you and a Word form to print. And what belongs in a report.
Get your Excel customer list onto a mapHow to prepare an Excel customer list so that every address lands on the map, and what that first map teaches you about your own territory.
Drive times in field sales: why the day runs longGoogle Maps knows the next leg, not the whole day. Where the 40 minutes of delay come from, and how to plan with real drive times instead.
Overnight or drive home? Multi-day tripsWhen an overnight stay pays off in field sales, how to plan a two- or three-day trip, and the mistakes that make the night more expensive than the drive.
Route planning in field sales: a week in ten minutesA five-step method: field sales reps plan the whole week in ten minutes, with real drive times, due dates and the territory on a map.
Sales territory planning: grading your customersHow to plan a new field sales territory in three steps: grade the customers A, B and C, set a call cycle per class, and build the weeks from that.